 nwrickertsand groperPremium,MVM
join:2004-09-04
Geneva, IL
kudos:7
 ·AT&T U-Verse
| reply to SYNACK
Re: [Spam] Yahoo groups spammers Fortunately, I don't have that bad a problem.
I did create a throw-away email address to use with Yahoo groups. And I see that being occasionally spammed, though not often enough for me to throw away the address.
My guess has been that spammers are joining the groups, perhaps lurking for a while, then sending email to group members.
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I agree with the other comments - Yahoo seems pretty useless with respect to reporting spam.
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 SYNACKJust Firewall ItPremium,Mod
join:2001-03-05
Venice, CA
Networking
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ZyXEL
| said by nwrickert:
My guess has been that spammers are joining the groups, perhaps lurking for a while, then sending email to group members.
In this case, the spammers are creating the groups from scratch, signing up members, and are the only ones posting. Yahoo "handles" all the spammingsending. I have never been a voluntary member of any yahoo groups.
They are signing up new members at a rate (40-60/week) that apparently does not trigger some yahoo flags (if there are any). Each post contains a link to a spam site and is offtopic to the stated group category (foosball, interactive fiction). Posts are often deleted from the group site soon after posting.
Example groups involved in recent spams:
ppggvx: 841 members, 60 new. (1 message/day since August).
ahqkje: 111 members, 40 new. (4 messages/day since this December).
bujuur: 271 members, 40 new. (1 message/day since November).
All these groups are in blatant violation of at least points 4&5 of the Yahoo groups guidelines. |
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| If the moderator is lax, you get spam. Some groups have prohibited Grouply and Friendster. Legitimized spam if you get Yahoo digests.
(I don't) |
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SYNACKJust Firewall ItPremium,Mod
join:2001-03-05
Venice, CA | ... the moderator is the spammer here.  |
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Reviews:
 ·RipNet
| reply to SYNACK
If you have a Yahoo account, go to groups.yahoo.com and click "My Email Preferences" near the top-right of your groups page.
In there, you can set the preferences for each registered e-mail address. I recommend setting all options to No.
But Yahoo admits (in their help pages on abuse) that only solves a few fairly specific situations. All they say is keep reporting the errant groups/members and they'll deal with it. I believe Yahoo is one of the few that actually *does* nuke members & groups that are spamming. But probably not as proactively as we'd all like.
Brad.
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SYNACKJust Firewall ItPremium,Mod
join:2001-03-05
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| said by b_p_smith:If you have a Yahoo account, go to groups.yahoo.com and click "My Email Preferences" near the top-right of your groups page.
That is actually my main point! I don't have a yahoo account, never had, and probably never will. In order to report anything, they want to first force me to create a yahoo account.
For example, clicking the link "send us a copy" here simply kicks me back to the main help screen where all contact links are greyed out. There is no abuse e-mail address contact listed anywhere (of course I could guess or google what it might be  ). There is no classic "contact us" section. |
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Reviews:
·RipNet
| Yeah, being able for a group owner to invite people by external e-mail address just shouldn't be permitted by Yahoo anyway. Minimal value for such a huge risk of abuse. Your situation is listed as one of the "unfortunately..." limitations.
The "send a copy" link works for me, but *only* in IE. In Firefox the page comes up but doesn't work properly. I walked through the initial pages (yes, more than one) and it's a bit of a PITA. Obviously Yahoo doesn't *really* want to encourage reports.
And yes, Yahoo is not supporting an "abuse@" e-mail. SpamCop's reporting supposedly has a mechanism to get reports to them, but there's really zero evidence that reporting via SpamCop (to anybody, not just Yahoo) actually has any effect at all.
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SYNACKJust Firewall ItPremium,Mod
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| said by b_p_smith:Yeah, being able for a group owner to invite people by external e-mail address just shouldn't be permitted by Yahoo anyway.
An invitation I can ignore. They are subscribing me directly. There should be an opt-in confirmation mechanism in the welcome e-mail (see 12/05/2011 message "welcome to the ... group" in my original list), and, unless I click on that link, i will not be added. Even better, there should also be a special link in the welcome message to report fraudulent subscriptions to yahoo. This could be fully automated on the yahoo side. Any group that reaches a complaint threshold could get flagged automatically.
Currently, the welcome e-mail contains the following text and link:
Report abuse:
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Because Yahoo! Groups values your privacy, it is a violation of our
service rules for moderators to add subscribers to a group against
their wishes. If you feel this has happened, please notify us:
»help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups···use.html
Reporting via that link is a lengthy multi-click affair and has the Yahoo ID as required field on the last form, i.e. a dead end for me. Why can't the link encode the offending group and destination address directly in its url instead for a simple one-click action?? If they allow forced subscriptions without yahoo ID, they should not require one to report abuse! Right?
Actively unsubscribing here might not be a good idea, because it indirectly confirms the validity of the original e-mail address to the spammer. |
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Reviews:
·RipNet
| What happens if you put a fake Yahoo ID in that last form field? You're right that requiring an ID to report abuse shouldn't be required.
Personally, I rank Yahoo just under AOL in the "don't give a rat's a** about preventing abuse" category. At least I get *some* valid Yahoo e-mail. AOL I just block entirely now.
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