Cancelbot
{{short description|Automated process for sending out third-party cancel messages over Usenet}}
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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.{{cite web|url=http://www.cybernothing.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq.html#3.13 |author=Scott Southwick |author2=J.D. Falk |accessdate=2006-09-02 |title=The Net Abuse FAQ |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/19961101225021/http://www.cybernothing.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq.html#3.13 |archivedate=November 1, 1996 }}
History
One of the earliest uses of a cancelbot was by microbiology professor Richard DePew, to remove anonymous postings in science newsgroups.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LD3uBwAAQBAJ&dq=usenet+cancelbot&pg=PA35|title=From Usenet to CoWebs: Interacting with Social Information Spaces|last1=Lueg|first1=Christopher|last2=Fisher|first2=Danyel|date=2012-12-06|publisher=Springer Science & Business Media|isbn=9781447100577|language=en}} Perhaps the most well known early cancelbot was used in June 1994 by Arnt Gulbrandsen within minutes of the first post of Canter & Siegel's second spam wave,{{cite web | url=https://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=https://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}} as it was created in response to their "Green Card spam" in April 1994.{{cite web | url=http://rant.gulbrandsen.priv.no/canter-siegel | last = Gulbrandsen | first = Arnt | title = Canter and Siegel: What really happened}} 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:{{Cite web|url=http://wiki.killfile.org/projects/usenet/faqs/cancel/|title=Cancel Messages FAQ|website=wiki.killfile.org|access-date=2018-05-09}}
| class="wikitable"
! Pseudosite ! Criterion | |
| Breidbart Index above the cancel threshold for the group or hierarchy
| cyberspam!usenet | |
| "Make money fast" schemes | mmfcancel!cyberspam!usenet |
| "Spew" (large number of nonsense or repeated postings)
| spewcancel!cyberspam!usenet | |
| Binary files posted to a group that doesn't allow them
| bincancel!cyberspam!usenet | |
| Retromoderation (only applies to groups that have a retromoderation policy in place)
| retromod!cyberspam!usenet | |
| Ad cancels within the biz.* hierarchy
| adcancel!cyberspam!usenet | |
| Messages originating from sites or networks under active Usenet Death Penalty (UDP) sanction by the community; 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
| 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.