jQuery Dev Bemoans Overwhelming Spam On Google Groups

angryrice tips a blog post by John Resig, lead developer for jQuery, about the failure of Google Groups to manage spam, declaring attempts to use it as a public discussion system "completely futile." Quoting: "The final straw was placed upon my patience with the Google Groups system a few weeks ago. Spammers are now spoofing the email addresses of existing group participants to sneak their messages through. Previously you would've seen a delightful 'FREE MOVIE DOWNLOADS' spam from 'freemovies123@gmail.com' — but now you'll see it coming from existing group users — or even the group moderators themselves. This cheat completely bypasses the moderation system since the spammers are pretending to be pre-moderated users. The Google Groups system is completely fooled. The spam message comes in claiming to be from an existing group participant — and according to the Google Groups interface there is no difference. If you click the user's name you'll be taken to a full listing of that user's posts (with the spam messages delightfully interspersed)."

Comments

Re:Perhaps a new mail header?

[Volante3192]

An amazingly common misconception. People don't actually buy things advertised by spam. Err, [citation needed]?

Here's mine: http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/07/12-of-e-mail-users-try-to-buy-stuff-from-spam-e-mail.ars

Slightly less than half (48 percent) said that they have never clicked on a spam e-mail. That's the good news, but that means the other half have clicked on or responded to spam. But why? The answers will undoubtedly horrify you. A full 12 percent said that they were interested in the product or service being offered—those erection drug and mail order bride ads do reach a certain market, it appears.

Seventeen percent said that they made a mistake when they did so—understandable—but another 13 percent said they simply had no idea why they did it; they just did. Another six percent "wanted to see what would happen."