Cancelbot

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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[1].

[edit] History

It has been widely alleged (usually by Usenet spammers) that cancelbots are a tool of the mythical Usenet cabal.

One of the first recorded cancelbots was created in April, 1994 by Arnt Gulbrandsen within minutes of the first post of Canter & Siegel's infamous "Green Card spam"[2][3].

[edit] 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 administratiors 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[1][2]:

  • Messages with a Breidbart Index above the cancel threshold[3] for the group or hierarchy. (Pseudosite: cyberspam!usenet)
  • "Make money fast" schemes (Pseudosite: mmfcancel!cyberspam!usenet)
  • "Spew" cancels (cancels for a large number of nonsense or repeated postings) (Pseudosite: spewcancel!cyberspam!usenet)
  • Binary cancels (issued when binary files are posted to a group that doesn't allow them) (Pseudosite: bincancel!cyberspam!usenet)
  • Retromoderation cancels (only applies to groups that have a retromoderation policy in place. (Pseudosite: retromod!cyberspam!usenet)
  • Ad cancels within the biz.* hierarchy (Pseudosite: adcancel!cyberspam!usenet)
  • Messages originating from sites or networks under active Usenet Death Penalty(UDP)[4] sanction by the community. - Note that 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. (Pseudosite: 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 $alz 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.

[edit] References

  1. ^ The Net Abuse FAQ. Retrieved on September 2, 2006.
  2. ^ Canter, Laurence. Green Card Lottery- Final One?. Retrieved on September 2, 2006.
  3. ^ Gulbrandsen, Arnt. Now comes the C&S crunch... let's see. Retrieved on September 2, 2006.
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