How do I block this twit

[CW]

I am using Outlook (not express). Is there some way I can block this dizum fool?

[Kyle Boatright]

Click on an offending message, then choose the "message" drop down at the top of the screen and choose "Block sender".

[Dave Hinz]

That blocks the people being impersonated as well, allowing said problem people to more effectively disrupt the group. In all honesty, Outlook isn't very well suited for reading Usenet, many other programs out there have much better capabilities (including blocking troublesome senders while not blocking the people they're imitating).

[Leon]

That does not block the CORRECT person does it? Does that not block the putz and the person that he is impersonating?

[CW]

Yes, that's the problem.

[CW]

[Frank McVey]

Hi CW,

Read David Eisan's FAQ on troll posts, especially wrt NewsProxy. This is a small filtering program which intercepts news posts from the server, filters them and passes them on to your newsreader. It is now hosted by Robert Bonomi and you can download it from him at:

'm no computer expert, but by shamelessly plagiarising David's suggested filters and Robert's latest filters, it does a very effective job of blocking the current crop of clowns.

It's not that hard to set up and doesn't seem to compromise performance at all. I use it with Outlook Express, but Robert reckons it works with most MS/Windows newsreaders.

It really is worth the effort.

HTH

Frank

[Dave Balderstone]

Framk's given you a good response. I've sent you an email with the specifics on what works for me (non-Windows).

djb

[Leon]

CW If Outlook has the same filters as OE, you can use the filter for news groups to filter this out.

You do have to run this step manually and choose the news group but it works well.

Simply choose to look at the header or title and to look for certain words and make the list as big as you want. For the special characters simply copy the word and its special character and past in into the filter list.

[Han]

"Frank McVey" wrote in news:c6ed32$eec$ [e-mail]:

I am running with some basic filtering, after I got the program finally installed. I am just thoroughly confused by the *.bin files. How are they converted into language for the nfilter.dat file?

(I feel stupid)

[Tom Veatch]

On Sat, 24 Apr 2004 18:53:23 +0000 (UTC), "Frank McVey" wrote: =snip=

I'll testify to the fact that it works flawlessly with Agent on Windows XP Pro. Its method of operation is such that I see no reason it wouldn't work for any newsreader that allows you to specify the name or address of the news server. That's assuming an Intel based machine (or virtual machine) at least. I don't know enough about the code to know if it makes calls to the Windows API and requires a Windows OS.

Tom Veatch Wichita, KS USA

[Dave Balderstone]

With Mac OS x (which is BSD Unix based) there are similar tools, but they are also Unix based and I haven't sorted them out yet.

But bottom line is there are tools available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X that will allow one to filter the crap.

djb

[Denny]

Thanks Frank, I just set it up to run with Outlook Express. Easy install. Denny

[Robert Bonomi]

For the ones from

simply _rename_ them. All they are is text files. *exactly* what you see on the screen if you view the filter set on the web-page.

The 'download' links are named as '.bin' so that web browsers will _not_ try to display the contents on screen, but automatically download to disk.

If you 'look at' the filter sets on the web-site, the directions are at the beginning of the file. Obviously, they're _inside_ the '.bin' file, too, but you have to know how to look at the downloaded file, before you can see that.

[Frank McVey]

Hi, Han.

I didn't really download the .bin files. NP uses a .dat file, which is basically a text file. If you're using basic filtering, then you'll already have set NFilter.dat file up.

All I did was to open nfilter.dat by maximising NP, selecting >Edit >

Filters from the menu bar. You'll see the lines of text in Notepad (if that's your default text editor).

Then you click on the .bin file download link- for example, on Robert's website you'll see as part of para 4 :

Robert Bonomi's filter sets: The basic filters Last update: Apr 9 03:15 (download) a conservative set of filters that drops messages originating from "anonymous remailers" and other identified troll-only sources. Also drops anything posted to four or more newsgroups.

If you click on the (download) link, it opens a text file containg the filter information. By simply copying and and pasting this text into the nfilter.dat text file you already have open for NP in Notepad, then saving it, you have added that series of filters to the .dat file. Do the same for the other filters Robert suggests. You don't really have to understand how they work, only how to copy them into your nfilter.dat text file. Note that you don't really have to copy any lines with a # symbol in front of them - these are simply comment lines, written by the author to let you know what he's doing - the program doesn't use them.

The only other thing to note is that nfilter doesn't like to see blank lines in its .dat file. Delete any that you might have introduced as part of your pasting process. The file should consist of a solid block of text, no blanks.

Don't forget to save it when you've finished editing it.

Nah, not at all - it took me a bit of figuring, digging and seeking advice before I got it to work. The majority of us on this ng are woodworkers, not computer whizzes, but I'm very grateful to those who do know something about it and are prepared to help the rest of us out.

Come back if you still have problems. Not guaranteeing that I can fix it, but there certainly will be other people who can - there's a world of talent on this ng.

Best of luck,

Frank

[Han]

[e-mail] (Robert Bonomi) wrote in news:7b36a$408b0d8c $44a75e7a$ [e-mail]:

Thanks Robert, much obliged! Thanks to Frank as well!

[Dave Hinz]

I'm using "slrn" as a newsreader on OSX, which has very configurable killfiles (score files). Watch for (blah) in (place) and (act). Pretty much any newsreading software should be able to do that, but you may have to use something intended specifically for News, rather than an email or browser tool that "also works with news".

Yup.

Dave Hinz