you can block the sender with your software. The only other way as far
as I know would be to develop a monitored newsgroup - however such a
group presents a whole set of new problems because the decision to allow
a post would be vested in a few people.
Greta

As with Eva, I have not seen any pornographic etc material for at least a
couple of weeks.  I could usually tell it was nothing I would be interested
in without opening the posts and just deleted them.  It was a nuisance,but
didn't stop me from reading.
Sandy L

Christina, this is an unmoderated "alt" Usenet newsgroup, which means in
principle that anyone is free to post whatever they like, and no-one
controls anything.  Any restrictions are effectively imposed by individual
ISPs, or down to the powers of persuasion of group members.  This is anarchy
in action.

First perhaps a little explanation of how Usenet works would be in order.
Usenet is a broadcast news medium which predates the internet.  In its
present incarnation, it utilises 'idle' time on the internet to propagate
posts around the world.  When you post a message on a newsgroup, you send it
to your ISP's news server.  Your ISP then broadcasts it on the internet.
All ISP news servers (millions of them) listen for broadcasts, and store
them on their hard disks.  As some are inevitably missed there is a
mechanism for 'peer' servers to check against each other to fill in any
gaps.  The news servers decide whether to store a message depending on such
things as whether they intend to carry that newsgroup, and whether they have
enough disk space for that class of message (eg text or "binary" (usually
graphics) may be different classes).  Then when you read the posts in a
newsgroup you are accessing the copies stored on your own ISP's news server.
Each article is only transmitted over the internet once, but many copies are
stored.

This is quite different from the world-wide-web, where a single copy of the
data is stored on one server and is transmitted separately to each reader
around the world on demand, and so each article is transmitted many many
times.  There are also Usenet-to-Web servers around, like Google.

Most ISP's would consider it a breach of their conditions of use to post
offensive or blatantly off-topic material on Usenet.  It is harder to
conceal the origin of Usenet posts than say email, so it is always worth
reporting Usenet spam to the originating ISP, which you can find in the
headers, as a "complaints-to" field, also as the last part of the
"message-id" field.

Of course there are uncontrolled spammers around, and most ISPs also
implement some level of spam filtering to remove these, eg by looking for
cross-posts to certain 'fake' newsgroups the no-one really posts to.  Like
others, I haven't seen any recent porn spam, so my ISP has obviously
filtered out what you are seeing.

So in this case your first port-of-call would be a complaint to your own
ISP's news service.

Tim Jackson

thanks everyone for clarifying this subject.  especially thanks to tim for
the thorough explanation of what the heck we're all doing here logistically.
obviously, i have not quite mastered the electronic age.  i just sort of
stumble around till i find something good, like this group.
hope everyone is well this weekend, and thanks again.  i'll find a way
around the stuff i don't want.

-christina

I'm seeing them here too. Infact there were 4 news ones when I logged on
just now. I won't dignify them by giving "thread titles"  {ugh!}
I don't have the luxury of getting rid of them so I can't see them, as
I'm on a Webtv.
I truly wish there was more we could do also so that we didn't have to
deal with them. {those of us that don't have the option of not seeing
them}
We can always hope that someday there will be a way to deal with this
garbage, for lack of a better word and I do have them but "garbage" is
polite in mixed company... ;-))
Take care there dear/God bless
annie  

Ultimately.....we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a
freedom.

"Courage"...is *fear* that has said it's prayers.