Cancelbot
Encyclopedia
A cancelbot is an automated or semi-automated process for sending out third-party cancel messages over Usenet
, commonly as a stopgap measure to combat spam
.
's second spam wave,, as it was created in response to Canter & Siegel's better known "Green Card spam" in April 1994.
Usenet spammers have alleged that cancelbots are a tool of the mythical Usenet cabal.
Pseudosites are referenced in cancel headers by legitimate cancelbots to identify the criteria on which a message is being canceled, allowing administrators of Usenet sites to determine via standard "aliasing" mechanisms which criteria that they will accept third-party cancels for.
Currently, the generally accepted criteria (and associated pseudosites) are:
By general convention, special values are given in X-Canceled-By, Message-Id and Path headers when performing third-party cancels. This allows administrators to decide which reasons for third-party cancellation are acceptable for their site:
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
, commonly as a stopgap measure to combat spam
Spam (electronic)
Spam is the use of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately...
.
History
One of the first recorded cancelbots was created in June 1994 by Arnt Gulbrandsen within minutes of the first post of Canter & SiegelCanter & Siegel
-External links:* Ben Delisle, - 1994 Usenet post giving background on Canter and Siegel]* Ray Everett-Church, , Wired magazine, April 13, 1999* Sharael Feist, , CNET News, March 26, 2002* John M. Moran, , Hartford Courant, June 30, 2002...
's second spam wave,, as it was created in response to Canter & Siegel's better known "Green Card spam" in April 1994.
Usenet spammers have alleged that cancelbots are a tool of the mythical Usenet cabal.
Rationale
Cancelbots must follow community consensus to be able to serve a useful purpose, and historically, technical criteria have been the only acceptable criteria for determining if messages are cancelable, and only a few active cancellers ever obtain the broad community support needed to be effective.Pseudosites are referenced in cancel headers by legitimate cancelbots to identify the criteria on which a message is being canceled, allowing administrators of Usenet sites to determine via standard "aliasing" mechanisms which criteria that they will accept third-party cancels for.
Currently, the generally accepted criteria (and associated pseudosites) are:
| Pseudosite | Criterion |
|---|---|
| Breidbart Index Breidbart Index The Breidbart Index, developed by Seth Breidbart, is the most significant cancel index in Usenet.A cancel index measures the dissemination intensity of substantively identical articles. If the index exceeds a threshold the articles are called newsgroup spam... above the cancel threshold for the group or hierarchy |
cyberspam!usenet |
| "Make money fast" schemes | mmfcancel!cyberspam!usenet |
| "Spew" (large number of nonsense or repeated postings) | spewcancel!cyberspam!usenet |
| Binary files posted to a group that doesn't allow them | bincancel!cyberspam!usenet |
| Retromoderation (only applies to groups that have a retromoderation policy in place) | retromod!cyberspam!usenet |
| Ad cancels within the biz.* hierarchy | adcancel!cyberspam!usenet |
| Messages originating from sites or networks under active Usenet Death Penalty (UDP) Usenet Death Penalty On Usenet, the Usenet Death Penalty is a final penalty that may be issued against Internet service providers or single users who produce too much spam or fail to adhere to Usenet standards... sanction by the community; the UDP is exceedingly rare, requiring a broad consensus that a Usenet site is acting in a manner generally harmful to the community, and active cancellation under a UDP is even rarer still |
sitenameudp!udpcancel!cyberspam!usenet |
By general convention, special values are given in X-Canceled-By, Message-Id and Path headers when performing third-party cancels. This allows administrators to decide which reasons for third-party cancellation are acceptable for their site:
- The $alzRich SalzRich Salz is currently the technical lead for the XML appliance products at IBM. He came to IBM when he was Chief Security Officer of DataPower, which was acquired by IBM in 2005....
convention states that the Message-Id: header used for a third-party cancel should always be the original Message-Id: with "cancel." prepended. - The X-Canceled-By: convention states that the operator of a cancelbot should provide a consistent, valid, and actively monitored contact email address for their cancelbot in the X-Canceled-By: header, both to identify the canceler, and to provide a point of contact in case something goes wrong or questions arise regarding the cancelbot's operations.
- The !cyberspam convention states that specific pseudosites should be given within the cancel message's Path to identify them as complying with certain cancel criteria, see above.