• Google Groups Spam Continues

    From Lawrence =?iso-8859-13?q?D=FFOliveiro?=@[email protected] to comp.misc on Sat Apr 18 07:02:57 2026
    From Newsgroup: comp.misc

    I thought Google Groups was defunct. But it appears you can still set
    up mailing lists through it. And some spammers have been taking
    advantage of this.

    Going back about a month, I started getting these spam messages coming
    via such mailing lists, which I had never asked or consented to be on.
    And to add to the irritation, various other recipients on the list
    (typically tech-support addresses) would send out autoresponse
    messages, which in turn would be relayed to everybody on the list.

    I suppose I should be thankful there were no autoresponses to those autoresponses ...

    And when I blocked one such email domain, another one would start up a
    few days later.

    I figured out how to block them all, by setting up a header_checks
    file for Postfix containing the line

    /^List-Unsubscribe\:\s*.*\@googlegroups\.com/ REJECT

    I’ve been checking my mail logs every few days, to confirm the
    effectiveness of the rule (and of course to watch out for false
    positives, just in case). And I found a whole bunch of blocked
    messages logged from just a couple of days ago, from the latest
    attempt.

    Can’t think why Google would permit this sort of thing to continue ...
    --- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Nuno Silva@[email protected] to comp.misc on Sat Apr 18 08:58:27 2026
    From Newsgroup: comp.misc

    On 2026-04-18, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:

    I thought Google Groups was defunct. But it appears you can still set
    up mailing lists through it. And some spammers have been taking
    advantage of this.
    [...]
    Can’t think why Google would permit this sort of thing to continue ...

    If they really cared, they'd have addressed that problem when it was
    brought up, instead of just ending the USENET peering.
    --
    Nuno Silva
    --- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Marco Moock@[email protected] to comp.misc on Sat Apr 18 11:52:38 2026
    From Newsgroup: comp.misc

    On 18.04.2026 07:02 Uhr Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:
    I thought Google Groups was defunct. But it appears you can still set
    up mailing lists through it. And some spammers have been taking
    advantage of this.
    The issue is that anyone can just subscribe hundreds of addresses
    without double opt-in for the list.
    Such a design clearly shows that this service is made for spammers.
    --
    kind regards
    Marco
    Send spam to [email protected]
    --- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From JJ@[email protected] to comp.misc on Sun Apr 19 15:26:48 2026
    From Newsgroup: comp.misc

    On Sat, 18 Apr 2026 07:02:57 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D�Oliveiro wrote:

    I figured out how to block them all, by setting up a header_checks
    file for Postfix containing the line

    /^List-Unsubscribe\:\s*.*\@googlegroups\.com/ REJECT

    Why not just unsubscribe them? They're useless now anyway.
    --- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Marco Moock@[email protected] to comp.misc on Sun Apr 19 17:32:26 2026
    From Newsgroup: comp.misc

    On 19.04.2026 15:26 Uhr JJ wrote:
    On Sat, 18 Apr 2026 07:02:57 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:

    I figured out how to block them all, by setting up a header_checks
    file for Postfix containing the line

    /^List-Unsubscribe\:\s*.*\@googlegroups\.com/ REJECT

    Why not just unsubscribe them? They're useless now anyway.
    The spammers subscribe your address to the list - without your consent.
    --
    kind regards
    Marco
    Send spam to [email protected]
    --- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From JJ@[email protected] to comp.misc on Mon Apr 20 00:54:27 2026
    From Newsgroup: comp.misc

    On Sun, 19 Apr 2026 17:32:26 +0200, Marco Moock wrote:
    On 19.04.2026 15:26 Uhr JJ wrote:

    On Sat, 18 Apr 2026 07:02:57 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D�Oliveiro wrote:

    I figured out how to block them all, by setting up a header_checks
    file for Postfix containing the line

    /^List-Unsubscribe\:\s*.*\@googlegroups\.com/ REJECT

    Why not just unsubscribe them? They're useless now anyway.

    The spammers subscribe your address to the list - without your consent.

    GG's has a setting on its "Global settings" gear icon.
    Section "Allow group managers to:" has:
    "Add me to their groups" checkbox.
    "Invite me to their groups" checkbox.

    Mine are all unchecked. IIRC, they're disabled by default, but I may be
    wrong.
    --- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From kludge@[email protected] (Scott Dorsey) to comp.misc on Sun Apr 19 16:11:33 2026
    From Newsgroup: comp.misc

    In article <n3i0tu17bg60$[email protected]>,
    JJ <[email protected]> wrote:
    On Sat, 18 Apr 2026 07:02:57 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D�Oliveiro wrote:

    I figured out how to block them all, by setting up a header_checks
    file for Postfix containing the line

    /^List-Unsubscribe\:\s*.*\@googlegroups\.com/ REJECT

    Why not just unsubscribe them? They're useless now anyway.

    Because the spammers will just subscribe you to new ones.
    --scott
    --
    "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
    --- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From kludge@[email protected] (Scott Dorsey) to comp.misc on Sun Apr 19 16:12:44 2026
    From Newsgroup: comp.misc

    JJ <[email protected]> wrote:
    The spammers subscribe your address to the list - without your consent.

    GG's has a setting on its "Global settings" gear icon.
    Section "Allow group managers to:" has:
    "Add me to their groups" checkbox.
    "Invite me to their groups" checkbox.

    Mine are all unchecked. IIRC, they're disabled by default, but I may be >wrong.

    I don't have a google account. I have no google groups account. I do not
    have any connection to google.

    Yet, I get hourly spam from google groups. Procmail is my friend.
    --scott
    --
    "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
    --- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Nuno Silva@[email protected] to comp.misc on Sun Apr 19 22:54:56 2026
    From Newsgroup: comp.misc

    On 2026-04-19, JJ wrote:

    On Sun, 19 Apr 2026 17:32:26 +0200, Marco Moock wrote:
    On 19.04.2026 15:26 Uhr JJ wrote:

    On Sat, 18 Apr 2026 07:02:57 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:

    I figured out how to block them all, by setting up a header_checks
    file for Postfix containing the line

    /^List-Unsubscribe\:\s*.*\@googlegroups\.com/ REJECT

    Why not just unsubscribe them? They're useless now anyway.

    The spammers subscribe your address to the list - without your consent.

    GG's has a setting on its "Global settings" gear icon.
    Section "Allow group managers to:" has:
    "Add me to their groups" checkbox.
    "Invite me to their groups" checkbox.

    Mine are all unchecked. IIRC, they're disabled by default, but I may be wrong.

    One of Google Groups' main shortcomings is that this is all nice... as
    far as you do have a Google account.

    I had to subscribe to one group with a Google account so that I could
    toggle the "nomail" option. Which is silly, yet another place where
    Google can't do what at least some of the - I guess - most common list management systems offer...
    --
    Nuno Silva
    --- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Lawrence =?iso-8859-13?q?D=FFOliveiro?=@[email protected] to comp.misc on Sun Apr 19 22:15:05 2026
    From Newsgroup: comp.misc

    On Sun, 19 Apr 2026 15:26:48 +0700, JJ wrote:

    On Sat, 18 Apr 2026 07:02:57 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:

    I figured out how to block them all, by setting up a header_checks
    file for Postfix containing the line

    /^List-Unsubscribe\:\s*.*\@googlegroups\.com/ REJECT

    Why not just unsubscribe them?

    One by one? Do all that work just to confirm to the spammers that the
    email address works?

    This way, I block them all at once, now and forever. With no further
    effort.
    --- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Lawrence =?iso-8859-13?q?D=FFOliveiro?=@[email protected] to comp.misc on Sun Apr 19 22:16:02 2026
    From Newsgroup: comp.misc

    On Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:54:27 +0700, JJ wrote:

    On Sun, 19 Apr 2026 17:32:26 +0200, Marco Moock wrote:

    On 19.04.2026 15:26 Uhr JJ wrote:

    Why not just unsubscribe them? They're useless now anyway.

    The spammers subscribe your address to the list - without your
    consent.

    GG's has a setting on its "Global settings" gear icon.

    Don’t use, don’t know, don’t care.
    --- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From oldernow@[email protected] to comp.misc on Mon Apr 20 01:26:30 2026
    From Newsgroup: comp.misc

    On 2026-04-19, Nuno Silva <[email protected]d> wrote:

    One of Google Groups' main shortcomings is that
    this is all nice... as far as you do have a
    Google account.

    I had to subscribe to one group with a Google
    account so that I could toggle the "nomail"
    option. Which is silly, yet another place where
    Google can't do what at least some of the -
    I guess - most common list management systems
    offer...

    --
    Nuno Silva

    Wow. 2026, and human beings still don't know
    how to skip what they don't want to read?

    In my newsreader (slrn) the keyboard shortcut
    'n' does it.

    My condolences to those for whom such constitutes
    proverbial rocket science.
    --
    v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v
    | this line was supposed to be clever | ^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^
    --- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Marco Moock@[email protected] to comp.misc on Wed Apr 22 20:03:07 2026
    From Newsgroup: comp.misc

    On 20.04.2026 00:54 Uhr JJ wrote:

    GG's has a setting on its "Global settings" gear icon.
    Section "Allow group managers to:" has:
    "Add me to their groups" checkbox.
    "Invite me to their groups" checkbox.

    Mine are all unchecked. IIRC, they're disabled by default, but I may
    be wrong.

    I do not have a Google account, so I do not have such a setting.
    --
    kind regards
    Marco

    Send spam to [email protected]

    --- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2