Netcom off the hook
Published: 03 Mar 1998 11:29 GMT
A loose coalition of system administrators and hackers on Monday called off a Usenet death penalty (UDP) against Netcom On-Line Communication Services Inc., saying the San Jose, Calif., Internet service provider had cleaned up its act. The UDP, which had been pending for the past week, would have effectively kept Netcom users from posting to Usenet.
The anti-spammers said they had achieved their goal of getting Netcom to reduce the volume of unsolicited, bulk posts flowing through its system to Usenet newsgroups. The death penalty, had it gone into effect, would not have affected Netcom's international operations. Netcom is owned by ICG Communications Inc. (ICGX).
"The [Usenet death penalty] was successful, since it didn't happen at all. That's the way we prefer it," said Dennis McClain-Furmansky, a spokesperson for the spam-killers. "We'd prefer even more not to have to even announce the possibility."
Usenet is a collection of thousands of bulletin-board-style newsgroups, arranged by topic, with titles such as alt.cheese.stilton. But many newsgroups today are so full of off-topic posts -- often advertisements for pornographic Web sites.
"Spam is actually ... making newsgroups almost inoperable, and that's contrary to what the Internet is all about," said Gene Shimshock, Netcom's vice president of marketing. "When it gets to the point where newsgroups aren't usable because of spam, we have to take action."
He said the UDP was an eye-opening experience for Netcom, and accelerated the ISP's adoption of anti-spam measures. Shimshock did not elaborate on exactly what measures Netcom has taken, but Usenet sources said the ISP installed Spam Hippo, a spam-blocking program developed for PathLink Technology and available free of charge to news server administrators.
Netcom's spam levels have fallen around 90 percent since it installed the software, Shimshock said. He added that Netcom is equally concerned about e-mail spam, but is approaching the situation differently. "E-mail has, obviously, a lot more strict privacy issues, and a different behaviour pattern," he said.
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