Thanks for taking care of these, Eric! Alicia On Dec 31, 2009, at 8:36 AM, Eric Scoles wrote:
> We've been getting some. Probably about 1 per week for the past > several weeks. This is actually not a very high rate, compared with > other lists I've been on. Most appear to be either trojan-bait > (trying to get you to let a trojan be put on your system) or > phishing (trying to persuade you to provide lucrative info). > > So, here are some things you should do whenever you see a post by a > member you don't recognize: > If the content isn't SF'nal or otherwise relevant, and you don't > know the poster, you should probably ignore it anyway. Bots are not > devious enough to stay on topic. > If it contains links, don't follow the link without examining it > closely. If it's a full-length URL, use the "hover test" (hover over > it with your mouse pointer and look at the destination that's > displayed in the status bar of your browser) to see where the link > actually goes; make sure that it's not a "spoof link", designed to > look like YouTube or NASA (e.g. "youtube.com.xz.kg"). > If it's a shortened URL (e.g. http://tinyurl.com/yl4s6ex), be leery > of it unless it comes with a plausible explanation. E.g., Dave H. > often uses short URLs so you can more easily pass them along to > others, but he more often than not tells you that's what he's doing > (either explicitly or implicitly). (Anyway, his stuff would always > be on-topic.) > If you do follow a link and it pops up a dialog asking you to > download something, for pity's sake don't. And don't click any > buttons on such a popup window, even if that seems to be the only > way you can get rid of it. You can usually get rid of the window by > clicking the CLOSE button on the browser chrome for that window (an > X in the upper-right on Windows and the red dot at the left on a Mac). > > What I've been doing to these messages is this: > Reporting as Spam using the Google Groups spam reporting tool. > Hopefully this helps to train our Group's spam filter. > Banning the poster, if they are in fact a member.* > Posting a warning about the message. [Haven't always remembered to > do this.] > Removing the message. > > That's all I'm planning to do, for now. There are some steps we can > take, but: > I'm not sure they'd help. It's not entirely clear that the people > posting these messages are always members at the time they post > them. (I.e., it's possible someone's found a way to post to Google > Groups set to allow posting only by members, without becoming a > member.) > They'd require making the group less accessible to new participants. > > > > _ > *In most cases, the person posting doesn't appear on the members > list by the time I get to the group membership screen on the web. In > cases where they do, I suspect the person's account has been co- > opted by a bot. > > > -- > eric scoles ([email protected]) > > -- > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" > group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected] > . > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en > . -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en.
