BaRoN wrote:
Joe Strout wrote:
How in the world did a pyramic-scheme spam get past the moderators?
(Not picking on them, just genuinely curious.)
That is a really good question. (Maybe we will see an answer?) :-)

Usenet doesn't have any automated authentication mechanism that checks that
a post was approved by the proper party - it is trivial to add the
appropriate header that approves a post to a moderated group. What stops
most people from approving their own posts is that:

1) They don't know how.
2) If they do know how they know doing so would violate their Terms of
Service (and therefore risk getting their Internet access cut).
3) If they do know how to do it without getting caught, they don't do it
because they know there are thousands of unmoderated groups where they are
free to post whatever they like.