Cancelbot

Cancelbot

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 [cite web | url=http://www.cybernothing.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq.html#3.13 | coauthors = Scott Southwick and J.D. Falk | accessdate=2006-09-02 | title=The Net Abuse FAQ] .

History

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" [cite web | url=http://groups.google.com/group/alt.pub.coffeehouse.amethyst/msg/477832eb09859797?dmode=source | last = Canter | first = Laurence | accessdate=2006-09-02 | title=Green Card Lottery- Final One?] [cite web | url=http://groups.google.com/group/news.admin.misc/msg/2e7ce912be3c373f?dmode=source&hl=en | last = Gulbrandsen | first = Arnt | accessdate=2006-09-02 | title=Now comes the C&S crunch... let's see] .

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: [http://www.killfile.org/~tskirvin/faqs/cancel.html]

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.

References


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