Password protected files

[reg_user]

Is anyone else noticing an increase in the number of files that are password protected (with the text file claiming the password can be retreived at <TMI> but no password being available)?

Surely this practice is nothing more than "Spamming" and Newsdemon should do something about it. Surely it's easy enough for Newsdemon to identify the poster and prevent this - or am I being too simplistic here?

[Quade]

Nobody has any control over what's posted to usenet. You could post unpassworded files for instance to help people out.

[DThor]

One man's meat is another man's poison. It's pretty clear to most what are undesirable files, but auto deleting makes for a quandary, since the posters will simply mimic legitimate posts, many already do, and boom you've just lost a bunch of legitimate material. It's akin to wishing that email spam would be 'dealt with ', except it's even tougher since usenet is a relatively small and less used part of the internet. It's designed to be uncensored, although of course it is somewhat, but heavy handed solutions aren't the best approach.

DT

[reg_user]

One man's meat is another man's poison. It's pretty clear to most what are undesirable files, but auto deleting makes for a quandary, since the posters will simply mimic legitimate posts, many already do, and boom you've just lost a bunch of legitimate material. It's akin to wishing that email spam would be 'dealt with ', except it's even tougher since usenet is a relatively small and less used part of the internet. It's designed to be uncensored, although of course it is somewhat, but heavy handed solutions aren't the best approach.

DT

It seems to me that dealing with this form of spam is something that would pay dividends to the people that sell access to usenets - afterall, there are a lot of people out there that have monthly download limits set by their ISP's - if these people find that they are wasting 5/10 Gb of download bandwidth per month to spam they'll very soon stop using that service thereby causing the access provider to lose customers. As you said, usenet is a relatively small part of the internet and should therefore, by definition be easier to deal with.

I understand it may cause a few difficulties along the way but if we simply didn't attempt to achieve anything because it may be "a little difficult" then where would we be. Surely it's not beyond the wit of man to identify and deal with these spammers?

[reg_user]

Nobody has any control over what's posted to usenet. You could post unpassworded files for instance to help people out.

Surely Newsdemon/Astraweb/Giganews etc has control? Surely they can take control and monitor what is being posted - it can't be too difficult to identify files that have "get your password for this file here" text files attached to them?

[Quade]

1 - No they can't, not without becoming liable for what's posted to the groups. Right now they're a common carrier, they don't know, they don't want to know what's posted. They have to respond to DMCA requests but, even then, the copyright owners just tell them the message-id. They still don't know what's in the posts.

2 - You assume that there's something wrong with groups using usenet to pass around passworded files. I don't like it and you don't like it but, who are you or me to tell these people what to post? If they pay giganews, they have a right to use it for their own purposes. I've been thinking about using it to post up encrypted backups. I pay my $40 a month, who are you or anyone else to tell me I shouldn't use giganews as an offsite file store?

Just because I don't like it, that doesn't give me any right to try to tell people what to do.

[richy99]

Nobody has any control over what's posted to usenet. You could post unpassworded files for instance to help people out.

Surely Newsdemon/Astraweb/Giganews etc has control? Surely they can take control and monitor what is being posted - it can't be too difficult to identify files that have "get your password for this file here" text files attached to them?

with millions of posts going thru the servers im sure it is not just a simple thing to solve

and to be honest id rather see all whats available than people tell me what i can and cannot see, its justa another form of denial of access

[DThor]

... and just to beat a dead horse, the comment about Usenet being a less used part of the internet results in precisely the opposite of your conclusion - it's gets *less * resources thrown at it than email. The thing itself is bloody massive, though!

Nobody's trying to gang up on you, here. It's a perfectly valid observation when you and I can glance at a post list and immediately see likely candidates for crapdom, clearing that junk out should be easy, but sadly, it's not.

DT