What to do about spam.

Google Groups is the major source of spam on Usenet. Google Groups is
also a large source of off topic and/or idiotic posts. For that reason,
a growing number of people and even some news servers, are now blocking
all posts from Google Groups.

http://www.improve-usenet.org/index.html (Who's computer is this?)

It is easy to avoid the deluge of spam from Google.
First, use a news server other then Google.
Second, download a news reader that allows filtering.
Filtering can be used to block most spam or alternatively, to simply block
all Google posts (most efficiently done filtering on Message-ID).

NNTP news servers
Most ISP include a news server with the account
http://www.teranews.com (Who's computer is this?) (one time $3.95 set up cost, worth it)
http://news.aioe.org (Who's computer is this?) text only, no cost

News servers that block spam
http://www.glorb.com/usenet.php (Who's computer is this?)
http://news.motzarella.org (Who's computer is this?) no cost
http://news.datemas.de (Who's computer is this?) no cost
http://www.albasani.net (Who's computer is this?) no cost
http://individual.net (Who's computer is this?) 10 Euro/year

News servers that block spam and all posts from Google Groups
http://www.usenet4all.se (Who's computer is this?) no cost
http://www.databasix.com/groups (Who's computer is this?) $50/year

News readers
Dialoghttp://www.40tude.com/dialog/download.htm (Who's computer is this?)
Xnewshttp://xnews.newsguy.com (Who's computer is this?) for file naming
cf. http://blinkynet.net/comp/xnewsrels.html (Who's computer is this?)
SeaMonkey (won't filter on Message-ID)
http://www.seamonkey-project.org (Who's computer is this?)
Thunderbird (won't filter on Message-ID)
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird (Who's computer is this?)
Forte Agent ($29, won't filter on Message-ID)
UnixPanhttp://pan.rebelbase.com (Who's computer is this?)
KDEhttp://kontact.kde.org/knode (Who's computer is this?)
XPNhttp://sourceforge.net/projects/xpn (Who's computer is this?)
Mac: MT-Newswatcher, hogwash, MacSOUP, thoth
Cross Platformhttp://www.claws-mail.org (Who's computer is this?)

Proxy news servers
NewsProxyhttp://bearware.info/NewsProxy/newsproxy.html (Who's computer is this?)
Hamster Playgroundhttp://www.elbiah.de/hamster/pg (Who's computer is this?)
UnixLeafnodehttp://leafnode.sourceforge.net/ (Who's computer is this?)
Nofflehttp://noffle.sourceforge.net (Who's computer is this?)

News sources, web and otherwise and references to news sites
http://www.readfreenews.net (Who's computer is this?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_news_clients (Who's computer is this?)
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Usenet/Public_News_Servers (Who's computer is this?)
http://www.alt.free.newsservers.net (Who's computer is this?)
http://freenews.maxbaud.net (Who's computer is this?)
http://news.motzarella.org (Who's computer is this?)
http://www.newsreaders.com (Who's computer is this?)
http://news.datemas.de (Who's computer is this?)

commercial news servers
Giganews http://www.giganews.com (Who's computer is this?)
Supernews http://www.supernews.com (Who's computer is this?) (bought Giganews, yuck)
Newsfeeds http://www.newsfeeds.com (Who's computer is this?)
Usenetserve http://www.usenetserver.com (Who's computer is this?)
Easynews http://www.easynews.com (Who's computer is this?)
Altopia https://www.altopia.com
Newsguy https://www.newsguy.com

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Newsgroups for Google spam, news servers, news readers and filters:
news.admin.net-abuse.usenet
news.software.readers

Newsgroup for discussing Google: alt.google-sucks
If your news server isn't carrying it, ask your
system administrator to add it to the active file.

Google should be given a Usenet Death Penalty (UDP)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet_Death_Penalty (Who's computer is this?)
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/U/Usenet-Death-Penalty.html (Who's computer is this?)
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/I/Internet-Death-Penalty.html (Who's computer is this?)

Use another web search such as
http://yahoo.com (Who's computer is this?)
http://www.webcrawler.com (Who's computer is this?)
http://www.ask.com (Who's computer is this?)
and some other email service than Google's gmail. Then eventually
Google may come to understand that it's doing something wrong.

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Essential features for a quality news reader.
Correct quoting.
Ascii-only posting.
Correct referencing of prior messages in the thread.
Filter capability to allow pruning of incoming messages.
Spell checking option for outgoing messages.
Offline news reading
No ads, cookies, etc.
Elimination of Google's "hide quoted", "show quoted" nonsense.

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