Gary,
I was reading the thread when all of a sudden this message
flashed right
over the top of post i was reading. My folders were all closed
and all I
had open was the usenet. Never saw that sort of thing before
but I will say
that I've been getting 50 to 100 spam a day - 50% in Korean.
I'm so sick of
it I haven't posted anything anywhere and I was hesitant to say
anything
about this event. The whole spam thing is so tiresome that if
it happens
again I think that'll be it for the newsgroups.
Rgds,
Scott

If you are using a PC and a mail or news reader that allows you
to block senders, you can get rid of MOST of the Korean spam by
creating three "rules" to block them.

The first should block this character ± in the FROM box
The second should block the same character in the SUBJECT box
The third should block that character in the MESSAGE box

You create that character (±) by holding down the ALT key on your
PC and typing (from the numeric keypad) 0177

There's another character (the A with an umlaut over it) that you
should also make those three rules for, but I forget the ALT
numeric characters for it.

As for the other spam, most will come from bogus addresses, so
you need to get creative about blocking them. One method, that
gets rid of a number of them, is to block the phrase "feedback
form" in the MESSAGE box. Another is to block "to be removed" --
although that could catch some mailing lists which include that
phrase at the bottom of the messages, like we used to. You will
have to read some of that junk to find other repeated phrases,
then create blocks for them. There probably are common phrases
in those African relatives who offer to let you share their
wealth -- or that *&^%$#@ evangelical who bombards me about God
knows what.

A useful program that catches a lot of spam before it reaches
your mailbox is Mailwasher. www.mailwasher.com, I think. Or do
a search for it on Google.

Your popup sounds like something you caught from the web, not
from a newsgroup. The only advice I can offer there is:

1. to be very careful where you go, and
2. set your browser to accept NO cookies (which means you will
not be able to participate in interactive web pages), and
3. Use Ad Aware regularly (it's free). Also, visit their website
and get updates and the new data files with some regularity.

Those popup blockers that some folks tout are so much trouble to
set up that they're not worth the effort (IMHO). They also seem
to foul up your system if you have IE set to open pages in new
windows.

Jim Lewis - - Tallahassee, FL -- Bonsai List
manager

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