[Info-vax] A cry for help

[Neil Rieck]

On Monday, October 23, 2023 at 6:32:53 AM UTC-4, Henry Crun wrote:
> If anyone has a remedy for the slew oc 'Black Magic' and 'Love potions" spam, please let me know. 
> Otherwise I am going to have to -- unwillingly -- lose contact with VMS after something like three decades 
> -- 
> No Micro$oft products were used in the URLs above, or in preparing this message. 
> Recommended reading: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#befor

It is now Saturday morning and I was preparing to write a python program which would scan "https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.vms", detect trigger phrases, then mark the message as SPAM.

That's when I noticed that the google nerds had added a tool that I just noticed:
(1) display a page of 30 messages
(2) click on the colored icon of any message you wish to flag (you can click up to 30)
(3) click on the icon containing a circled exclamation (a dialog will pop up)
(4) SPAM will usually be selected by default so click the button "submit report"

I have no idea if/when google's algorithms will kick in to stop this ridiculous non-sense at the source BUT I am hoping that if multiple visitors of this newsgroup do the same as me, then this activity will set off a few alarms somewhere.

Neil Rieck
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
https://neilrieck.net
https://neilrieck.net/OpenVMS.html