Pet Forum / Miscellaneous / Animal Health / January 2008

I'm sure some/many of you have noticed the recent upsurge in spam in this
group. This spam is somewhat difficult to filter, as it seems that every
message comes from a different (apparently random) account. I've posted the
following before, but it might be time for a re-post.

1. Go to http://www.nfilter.org/download.html and download version 1.2.0
     2. This will download an EXE file to your hard drive.
     3. Unfortunately, there is something a little messed up going on and
the file isn't really an EXE file, its a zip file, so rename the file from
.exe
     to .zip (if you have trouble with this part, e-mail me, and I'll send
you a real .zip file that you can work with)
     4. Unzip the file (right click on it, and hit extract to folder)
     5. Install the program (double click on setup.exe)
     6. Run the program (installs under the name NewsProxy)
     7. Now we have to configure the program to run as we want it to. Click
     Edit->Configuration
     8. Under the general tab, click 'hide on startup'
     9. Click the network tab. Now enter your news server name under
"Server name or IP number" (if you have trouble here, let me know, and I'll
give you some details on how to find out...)
     10. Hit OK. Now we need to configure what we're filtering on.
     11. Click Edit->Filters, this will open up a text document. If there
is anything there, delete it, then add the line "* drop xref:*:*:*:*"
(without quotes) to the file. This will drop all crossposted messages
     12. Save the file and close it. Now you need to configure your
newsreader to look at your newly set up filtered news, rather than what your
ISP gives
     you. For outlook/outlook express,

         go to tools->accounts->news
         double click on the account there
         Click on server, where it says server name write what it says down
(or remember it). You'll need to put this back in if things don't work out
for you.
         Erase what is there, and put in the word 'localhost'
         Hit OK, until you are back at your main screen

     Presto, any new cross-posted messages will hit your filtering
software, and bounce off.

    To make it work right away (and filter out all the old messages that
are cross-posted), go to the newsgroup name at the left side of the
screen,  right click, go to properties->local file->Click Reset->Click yes
now click off the newgroup and back on again.

     If anyone has any trouble getting this to work, please e-mail me off
list (d a t k i n a t i b y c u s d o t c o m),
     or post a reply here.

     Dale Atkin