Reporting Spam in Google Groups

Hi All
I found this on rasfc, thought it might be appropriate to pass it
around to see if we can do something to cut all the crap in here:


 > > The headers of posts made via Google include this:

> >    Complaints-To: groups-abuse@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > I assume that you'd simply write a brief note and attach the
> > offending post, complete with headers.  (Actually, the
> > headers alone ought to suffice, since they include the
> > Message-ID.)

> Thanks, I did that last night.  My note asked them to please make it
> stop, and I got an automated reply that my message had been sent to the
> Gmail abuse team.  It made me feel better, anyway.

If anyone else wants to complain, you can either do as Brian and Bill
describe, or (through the web interface):

1. Go to http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.composition/
(*)
2. Click to open the offending threads.  (This is where tabbed
browsers
come into their own:  on a Mac, I open-apple-clicked on all 16 on the
first page, and then moved on to the next step.)
3. Find the name with the email address in green - to the right is
'View
profile'(1) and further along 'More options' - click this 'More
options'
link.
4. This brings up a selection of links; on the second row is 'Report
this message'.
5. You get a form to fill out.
   a. If you don't want to give them your email I imagine a fake one
will work just as well.  After you've filled it out the first time, if
you've got a nice browser you'll only have to type the first letter to
bring it up again for subsequent reports.
   b. Leave the radio buttons as they are.
   c. Type something generic in the text box:  I used "This
spam/pornography is flooding rasfc at the moment; can it please be
filtered?" and copied it into my clipboard to use on all 16 reports I
made (deleting 'pornography' when not appropriate).

If you're doing a whole bunch at a time, you soon get into the rhythm
of
it; I reported 16 in about 5 minutes.

One hopes that the more people complain, the more likely Google will
actually do something about it.


(1) Following this allows you to report entire users using pretty much
the same process.
--

(*) replace '/rec.arts.sf.composition/' with appropriate NG name