Has Yahoo Groups become a haven for porn and spammers?In the early days of the Internet, back when we called it a "dirt road" and were delighted when email bounced from UUCP connection to UUCP connection as is slowly wound its way from one end of the topological jungle to the other, email mailing lists were quite the cool thing. Years have passed and we now have sophisticated web-based discussion boards, blogs and many other venues for interpersonal interaction, but email remains, to me, the killer application, and it's on my mailing lists that I encounter the freshest thinking and most valuable information. I can remember when there were two main places to find mailing lists too (other than the List of Lists and other short-lived directories), Topica and Yahoo Groups. Google's added its own collection -- of course -- with Google Groups too, but in many ways, Yahoo Groups was always my favorite place to look for people with similar interests. Which is why it's so distressing to see that it's become an absolute safe haven for porn and spammers in ways that were unanticipated when Web-based lists were first envisioned... Rather than just talk about it, let me show you a group invitation I just received:  Clearly this violates the terms of service of Yahoo Groups (at least, I certainly hope it does) but I find it fascinating that I get a lot of spam from many sources, but Yahoo Groups is the only Web-based mailing list management service that has started delivering this sort of junk to my mailbox. And this isn't the first. I'd estimate that I get two or three of these every week that creep through my spam filter, and indeed, you can imagine that even Google's Gmail service has a tough time differentiating a spammy or porn Yahoo group invitation from a legitimate group invitation, so it's pretty sneaky/smart on the part of the spammers. Sure, I can ostensibly report this group invitation to Yahoo, but they are unlikely to take action against these spammers, and if they do, will it do any good anyway? Have you seen any porn or spam invitations of this nature, and what's your opinion of this intrusion into what I certainly still view as one of the pearls of the Internet community?
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Never miss another useful Q&A article again! Subscribe to AskDaveTaylor with Google Reader. I regularly get spam at my Yahoo mail account that has "Yahoo Domain Keys" certification, usually from Yahoo addresses. It means the spammer has gamed Yahoo Mail or gamed Domain Keys. And because Yahoo automatically gives a higher level of trust to Domain Keys certified mail, it is more likely to get through their spam filters. This has been going on for months. I finally had to institute my own manual filters to block it, which worked for a while, until the spammers changed their format. I've complained directly to Yahoo, but how much do you think that helped? Yahoo makes efforts to control spam from outside sources, but they do little or nothing about it when it comes from within. Posted by: Greg Bulmash at June 7, 2007 10:15 AMDave, While I can certainly understand that this is annoying, I have to agree that there is not much that can be done. The reason is that, like all free services, if you do complain about it to Yahoo!, they will respond by shutting down the group. Unfortunately, the spammers will just open their "business" under a new name. I am familiar with your issue, and the reverse, which is the fact that the complaint itself can be used as an attack against legitimate groups. Yahoo! does not investigate most of the time, they just destroy the "offender". *shrug* You accept their hospitality, you live by their rules. Unfortunately, the rules don't prevent spammers from making groups, they just allow you to get them shut down when they offend.
Chrystoph Posted by: Chrystoph at June 8, 2007 6:26 AMWhile it's probably impossible to eliminate all SPAM, there are ways to at least limit the damage. I was getting overwhelmed with my Yahoo Groups, so I tried Grouply (www.grouply.com). Grouply provides a better interface to your existing Yahoo Groups. You can access all your groups from one website, and each day you receive a single "smart digest" email that covers all your groups, highlighting what's interesting to you and hiding what's not. This is particularly useful for folks like yourself who have lots of groups. If you like Grouply, please tell your groups about it. The more people who are on Grouply, the better it gets! Posted by: Rich R at September 26, 2007 12:11 PMI have a lot to say, but ...
I do have a comment, now that you mention it!
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