CompuServe gives in to Usenet anti-spam pressure

Like UUNET before it, CompuServe Corp. today gave into a "Usenet death penalty" and will do more to stop spammers from bombarding Usenet from its network.

Two days after a group of Usenet users began cancelling all Usenet postings with compuserve.com addresses, the company said it would post an acceptable use policy that bans spam later today, according to Rick Buchanan, a systems engineer and "cancelbot" operator who issued the "death penalty."

For months, Usenet news administrators and concerned users had been complaining to CompuServe about increasing amounts of spam, but to no avail, Buchanan said today.

"This is not a step we take lightly. We have made every possible attempt to inform Compuserve about their growing problem, and have repeatedly offered to assist them in dealing with it," Buchanan said. "Their unresponsiveness has been utterly awe-inspiring, and unprecedented in my experience as a spam-fighter."

Less than 48 hours later, CompuServe called the leaders of the UDP movement to talk about the cancellations, Buchanan said.

"CompuServe has pledged to me that they are going to enforce the terms of their acceptable use policy and provide a conduit for complaints," he said.

He said that in addition to spam from actual CompuServe users, CompuServe was failing to stop non-members from "hijacking" its NNTP servers for posting messages to large numbers of inappropriate newsgroups. The company also failed to block its users from hijacking servers of other Usenet providers, he said.

In August, UUNET Technologies was subjected to similar action from the Usenet community that lasted about 48 hours.

Although UUNET remains the No. 1 Internet service provider for spam, CompuServe was consistently in the top five, Buchanan said, adding they warned CompuServe of their findings.