Newsgroup Spam - Google Usenet News Archive

Google Usenet News Archive

Unfortunately, the advent of the large Usenet archive kept as part of the Google Groups website, has made Usenet more attractive to spammers than ever. The goal in this case is not just to reach the members of a newsgroup, but to also take advantage of the fact that Google gives a higher pagerank to websites that are referred to by these messages, which are catalogued and mirrored in multiple languages at Google's top-level domain. Critics have suggested that Google has ulterior motives for "turning a blind eye" to the problem since the websites being pointed to use Google ads, which potentially generate revenue for both the spammer AND Google. The spam is extremely unfair to the companies paying Google and the spammer for an ad-click, as the most prevalent current spam (2010) is trying to trick readers into clicking on web ads by referring to them as images and saying that a link is hidden in them "due to high sex content" or that a link hidden in the image (Google ad) will take them to a "PayPal form" that will give them money.

While most newsreaders filter the spam at either the server or user level, Google does not filter spam out of its Usenet News archive. Google does, however, offer spam filtering for groups that decide to abandon Usenet and form a moderated Google Group, which gives another reason why Google would turn a blind eye to spam in its archive of Usenet News.