Spam
"Spam" is the term for irrelevant articles posted to newsgroups. This is something you should never do. If you think that what you have to say would be welcomed by millions of people in engaged in thousands of Usenet conversations, you are WRONG.
The most prevalent form of spam is in the form of "Make Money Fast" schemes. (See MMF)
The people who use Usenet, (there is no single governing body) deal with spam in a number of ways:
- Some administrators refuse to propagate articles that are cross-posted to more
than a fixed number of newsgroups (8 or 20.)
- Some programs are constanly running which look for spam articles and automatically cancel them.
- By sending you or your internet service provider a complaint.
(If only 1% of the annoyed people complain, you might get 1000 complaints in
a single day!)
- By punishing you, either sending so much mail to you that it causes you (and your
ISP a problem) (mail-bombed) or finding your U.S postal address and subscribing you to
erotic and lingerie catalogs, calling your telephone at odd hours of the night, and other
annoyances. Some of these amount to harassment, and therefore are illegal. But don't
think that means you won't be harassed.
Remember that there are lots of people who choose to break the rules of society, even
when they are well aware of the rules. Don't you start by posting spam.
Handling the complaints that spam generates is often so burdensome that Internet Service Providers prohibit their users from engaging in the practice, and will terminate their service of any user who attempts it.
Usenet RKT: Censorship
Advertising on Usenet: How to Do It, How Not to Do it
http://www.danger.com/advo.html.
Emily Postnews, foremost authority on proper net behaviour, gives her advice on how to act
on the net. (Satire) http://www.clari.net/brad/emily.html
Usenet RKT For Users
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Copyright 1997, Forrest J. Cavalier III, Mib Software, INN customization and consulting