Crosspost complaint command

Crosspost complaint command

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

I've added a new command to send complaints on excessive crossposting
to Red Gnus 0.11 -- `S M-c'.  (Process/prefixed, etc.)  It'll quote
the message and add the following text at the top:

(defvar gnus-crosspost-complaint
  "Hi,

You posted the article below with the following Newsgroups header:

Newsgroups: %s

The %s group, at least, was an inappropriate recipient
of this message.  Please trim your Newsgroups header to exclude this
group before posting in the future.

Thank you.
"
  "Format string to be inserted when complaining about crossposts.
The first %s will be replaced by the Newsgroups header;
the second with the current group name.")

Perhaps one should add "asshole" and "moron" somewhere, but I just
wasn't able to work that in gracefully.  :-)

(Ideas for a better messages are, as always, welcome.)

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@ifi.uio.no * Lars Ingebrigtsen

Re: Crosspost complaint command

[Per Abrahamsen]

Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@ifi.uio.no> writes:

> I've added a new command to send complaints on excessive crossposting
> to Red Gnus 0.11 -- `S M-c'. 

I think it would be more useful if it would ignore articles with
followups set to something that does not include the current group.

Complaining to people who have taken care to redirect the followups
appropriately would be counterproductive.

Re: Crosspost complaint command

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Per Abrahamsen <abraham@dina.kvl.dk> writes:

> I think it would be more useful if it would ignore articles with
> followups set to something that does not include the current group.
> 
> Complaining to people who have taken care to redirect the followups
> appropriately would be counterproductive.

Yup.  I've now added a check for this.

-- 
  "Yes.  The journey through the human heart 
     would have to wait until some other time."

Re: Crosspost complaint command

[Joev Dubach]

Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@ifi.uio.no> writes:

> I've added a new command to send complaints on excessive crossposting
> to Red Gnus 0.11 -- `S M-c'.  (Process/prefixed, etc.)

Unsolicited email has been annoying me more lately, so I hacked up a
bit of elisp to do something with it; perhaps you'd like to include
it, or something like it, in Red Gnus?  The main difference between it
and the way you deal with bad news is that I prefer to forward rather
than reply to a mail message so as to preserve the headers for the
benefit of tracking forgery.

Caveats: I haven't used it a lot, it's not very configurable, and I
didn't quite manage to disable the courtesy-message (since it's posted
to news.admin.net-abuse.misc as a coincidence to its being emailed,
rather than vice-versa, it'd be nice to not claim that it's being
emailed as a courtesy).

---- ~/.junk-mail-complaint begins ----
I received the following unsolicited email spam from you.  This
behavior is unacceptable, and I hope you will do everything in your
power to ensure that it does not reoccur.

I am cc'ing this message to the postmaster and abuse accounts at your
site on the basis that they may be interested in preventing
anti-social behavior at your site; I am cc'ing it to my own postmaster
on the basis that they may be interested in preventing similar actions
from harming their system and users; and I am posting it to
news.admin.net-abuse.misc on the basis that it is the appropriate
newsgroup for net abuse notifications and discussion.

Thanks,
Joev
---- ~/.junk-mail-complaint ends ----

---- junk-mail-complain.el begins ----
;; junk-mail-complain.el
;; Joev Dubach <dubach1@husc.harvard.edu>.

(defun do-nothing-to-original ())

(defvar temp-courtesy-message nil)

(defun cleanup-courtesy-message ()
  (setq message-courtesy-message temp-courtesy-message)
  (remove-hook 'message-sent-hook 'cleanup-courtesy-message))

(defun junk-mail-complain-with-file (fname)
  "Compose mail to the originator of a message, the postmaster at his site, 
and the abuse address at his site.  
The named file will be inserted before the forwarded copy of his article."
  (interactive "f")
  (gnus-summary-reply)
  (setq temp-courtesy-message message-courtesy-message)
  (setq message-courtesy-message nil)
  (add-hook 'message-sent-hook 'cleanup-courtesy-message)
  (message-goto-to)
  (search-backward "@")
  (forward-char 1) ; set point to start of domain name
  (re-search-forward "[-a-zA-Z0-9\\.]+") ; search for end of domain name
  (let ((dom (buffer-substring (match-beginning 0) (match-end 0))))
    (message-goto-cc)
    (insert "postmaster@")
    (insert dom)
    (insert ",abuse@")
    (insert dom)
    (insert ",postmaster@fas.harvard.edu"))
  (message-goto-newsgroups)
  (insert "news.admin.net-abuse.misc")
  (message-goto-body)
  ;; Make sure we're at the start of the line.
  (unless (eolp)
    (insert "\n"))
  ;; Narrow to the area we are to insert.
  (narrow-to-region (point) (point))
  (insert-file fname)
  (goto-char (point-max))
  ;; Insert the separators and the forwarded buffer.
  (insert message-forward-start-separator)
  (let ((message-cite-function 'do-nothing-to-original))
    (message-yank-original))
  (goto-char (point-max))
  (insert message-forward-end-separator)
  (widen)
  (message-goto-body))

(defun junk-mail-complain-standard ()
  "Compose a junk mail complaint containing the standard response in
.junk-mail-complaint."
  (interactive)
  (junk-mail-complain-with-file (expand-file-name "~/.junk-mail-complaint")))
---- junk-mail-complain.el ends ----

Joev                            <URL:"http://www.math.harvard.edu/~joev/">

  "Use with extreme caution, and don't come crying to me when you
   discover that the regexp you used matched the wrong group and all
   your important mail has disappeared.  Be a *man*!  Or a *woman*!
   Whatever you feel more comfortable with!  So there!"
          -- Lars Ingebrigtsen, on Gnus mail-reading features

Re: Crosspost complaint command

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

dubach1@husc.harvard.edu (Joev Dubach) writes:

> Unsolicited email has been annoying me more lately, so I hacked up a
> bit of elisp to do something with it; perhaps you'd like to include
> it, or something like it, in Red Gnus? 

The problem is that in most cases, the address in the From header is
totally bogus and the only thing in these mails that point to
something usable is an URL deep down in the document.  Mail spammers
want to make it as difficult as possible to complain.

Perhaps one could go through the mail looking for mail-like addresses
in the body of the mail and send complaints to the postmaster and
abuse contacts to the domains one finds?  I don't know.

-- 
  "Yes.  The journey through the human heart 
     would have to wait until some other time."