I thought Google Groups was defunct. But it appears you can still set
up mailing lists through it. And some spammers have been taking
advantage of this.

Going back about a month, I started getting these spam messages coming
via such mailing lists, which I had never asked or consented to be on.
And to add to the irritation, various other recipients on the list
(typically tech-support addresses) would send out autoresponse
messages, which in turn would be relayed to everybody on the list.

I suppose I should be thankful there were no autoresponses to those autoresponses ...

And when I blocked one such email domain, another one would start up a
few days later.

I figured out how to block them all, by setting up a header_checks
file for Postfix containing the line

/^List-Unsubscribe\:\s*.*\@googlegroups\.com/ REJECT

I?ve been checking my mail logs every few days, to confirm the
effectiveness of the rule (and of course to watch out for false
positives, just in case). And I found a whole bunch of blocked
messages logged from just a couple of days ago, from the latest
attempt.

Can?t think why Google would permit this sort of thing to continue ...

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2026-04-18, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:

I thought Google Groups was defunct. But it appears you can still set
up mailing lists through it. And some spammers have been taking
advantage of this.

[...]

Can?t think why Google would permit this sort of thing to continue ...

If they really cared, they'd have addressed that problem when it was
brought up, instead of just ending the USENET peering.

--
Nuno Silva

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 18.04.2026 07:02 Uhr Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:

I thought Google Groups was defunct. But it appears you can still set
up mailing lists through it. And some spammers have been taking
advantage of this.

The issue is that anyone can just subscribe hundreds of addresses
without double opt-in for the list.

Such a design clearly shows that this service is made for spammers.

--
kind regards
Marco

Send spam to 1776488577muell@stinkedores.dorfdsl.de


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Sat, 18 Apr 2026 07:02:57 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:

I figured out how to block them all, by setting up a header_checks
file for Postfix containing the line

/^List-Unsubscribe\:\s*.*\@googlegroups\.com/ REJECT

Why not just unsubscribe them? They're useless now anyway.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 19.04.2026 15:26 Uhr JJ wrote:

On Sat, 18 Apr 2026 07:02:57 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro wro

te:

I figured out how to block them all, by setting up a header_checks
file for Postfix containing the line

/^List-Unsubscribe\:\s*.*\@googlegroups\.com/ REJECT

Why not just unsubscribe them? They're useless now anyway.

The spammers subscribe your address to the list - without your consent.

--
kind regards
Marco

Send spam to 1776605208muell@stinkedores.dorfdsl.de


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Sun, 19 Apr 2026 17:32:26 +0200, Marco Moock wrote:

On 19.04.2026 15:26 Uhr JJ wrote:

On Sat, 18 Apr 2026 07:02:57 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:

I figured out how to block them all, by setting up a header_checks
file for Postfix containing the line

/^List-Unsubscribe\:\s*.*\@googlegroups\.com/ REJECT

Why not just unsubscribe them? They're useless now anyway.

The spammers subscribe your address to the list - without your consent.

GG's has a setting on its "Global settings" gear icon.
Section "Allow group managers to:" has:
"Add me to their groups" checkbox.
"Invite me to their groups" checkbox.

Mine are all unchecked. IIRC, they're disabled by default, but I may be
wrong.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

In article <n3i0tu17bg60$.1xrsrip1ituht.dlg@40tude.net>,
JJ <jj4public@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, 18 Apr 2026 07:02:57 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:

I figured out how to block them all, by setting up a header_checks
file for Postfix containing the line

/^List-Unsubscribe\:\s*.*\@googlegroups\.com/ REJECT

Why not just unsubscribe them? They're useless now anyway.

Because the spammers will just subscribe you to new ones.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

JJ <jj4public@gmail.com> wrote:

The spammers subscribe your address to the list - without your consent.

GG's has a setting on its "Global settings" gear icon.
Section "Allow group managers to:" has:
"Add me to their groups" checkbox.
"Invite me to their groups" checkbox.

Mine are all unchecked. IIRC, they're disabled by default, but I may be >wrong.

I don't have a google account. I have no google groups account. I do not
have any connection to google.

Yet, I get hourly spam from google groups. Procmail is my friend.
--scott


--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2026-04-19, JJ wrote:

On Sun, 19 Apr 2026 17:32:26 +0200, Marco Moock wrote:

On 19.04.2026 15:26 Uhr JJ wrote:

On Sat, 18 Apr 2026 07:02:57 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:

I figured out how to block them all, by setting up a header_checks
file for Postfix containing the line

/^List-Unsubscribe\:\s*.*\@googlegroups\.com/ REJECT

Why not just unsubscribe them? They're useless now anyway.

The spammers subscribe your address to the list - without your consent.

GG's has a setting on its "Global settings" gear icon.
Section "Allow group managers to:" has:
"Add me to their groups" checkbox.
"Invite me to their groups" checkbox.

Mine are all unchecked. IIRC, they're disabled by default, but I may be wrong.

One of Google Groups' main shortcomings is that this is all nice... as
far as you do have a Google account.

I had to subscribe to one group with a Google account so that I could
toggle the "nomail" option. Which is silly, yet another place where
Google can't do what at least some of the - I guess - most common list management systems offer...

--
Nuno Silva

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Sun, 19 Apr 2026 15:26:48 +0700, JJ wrote:

On Sat, 18 Apr 2026 07:02:57 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:

I figured out how to block them all, by setting up a header_checks
file for Postfix containing the line

/^List-Unsubscribe\:\s*.*\@googlegroups\.com/ REJECT

Why not just unsubscribe them?

One by one? Do all that work just to confirm to the spammers that the
email address works?

This way, I block them all at once, now and forever. With no further
effort.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:54:27 +0700, JJ wrote:

On Sun, 19 Apr 2026 17:32:26 +0200, Marco Moock wrote:

On 19.04.2026 15:26 Uhr JJ wrote:

Why not just unsubscribe them? They're useless now anyway.

The spammers subscribe your address to the list - without your
consent.

GG's has a setting on its "Global settings" gear icon.

Don?t use, don?t know, don?t care.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2026-04-19, Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> wrote:

One of Google Groups' main shortcomings is that
this is all nice... as far as you do have a
Google account.

I had to subscribe to one group with a Google
account so that I could toggle the "nomail"
option. Which is silly, yet another place where
Google can't do what at least some of the -
I guess - most common list management systems
offer...

--
Nuno Silva

Wow. 2026, and human beings still don't know
how to skip what they don't want to read?

In my newsreader (slrn) the keyboard shortcut
'n' does it.

My condolences to those for whom such constitutes
proverbial rocket science.

--
v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v
| this line was supposed to be clever | ^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 20.04.2026 00:54 Uhr JJ wrote:

GG's has a setting on its "Global settings" gear icon.
Section "Allow group managers to:" has:
"Add me to their groups" checkbox.
"Invite me to their groups" checkbox.

Mine are all unchecked. IIRC, they're disabled by default, but I may
be wrong.

I do not have a Google account, so I do not have such a setting.

--
kind regards
Marco

Send spam to 1776639267muell@stinkedores.dorfdsl.de


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> wrote at 07:58 this Saturday (GMT):

On 2026-04-18, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:

I thought Google Groups was defunct. But it appears you can still set
up mailing lists through it. And some spammers have been taking
advantage of this.

[...]

Can?t think why Google would permit this sort of thing to continue ...

If they really cared, they'd have addressed that problem when it was
brought up, instead of just ending the USENET peering.

I guess it was really that expensive to run a USENET server. To be fair,
I don't know a single person who still cares about GG, but Google
famously loves killing off services (google graveyard) so I'm surprised
it's still going.
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)