<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><br class=""><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Jun 3, 2019, at 4:06 PM, Bill Ricker <<a href="mailto:bill.n1vux@gmail.com" class="">bill.n1vux@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div class="">On Mon, Jun 3, 2019 at 4:54 PM Brian E Carpenter<br class=""><brian.e.carpenter at <a href="http://gmail.com" class="">gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">Maybe we can talk here about the history of anti-spam techniques.<br class="">When was the kill file invented?<br class=""></blockquote><br class="">Wikipedia says the Killfile was first in Larry Wall's 'rn', but<br class="">doesn't say which rev it was added to; implies that Jerry Pournelle<br class="">was the feature request in 1986, so likely about then?<br class=""> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_file#cite_note-pournelle198603-1" class="">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_file#cite_note-pournelle198603-1</a><br class=""></div></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div>Offhand, I don’t know what rev it was added to. I poked around the net.sources archive in Google Groups, and the earliest rev I found was 4.1, from 1984. The following link will get you to search results for that rev, hopefully:</div><div><br class=""></div><div><a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/net.sources/rn$20version$204.1;context-place=topicsearchin/net.sources/rn" class="">https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/net.sources/rn$20version$204.1;context-place=topicsearchin/net.sources/rn</a></div><div><br class=""></div><div>I know of some mentions of kill file use, such as the following 1985 post from Chuq von Rospach, who wore several Usenet hats, such as moderator and code contributor:</div><div><br class=""></div><div><a href="https://groups.google.com/d/topic/net.singles/C3xfuAe_Ipw/discussion" class="">https://groups.google.com/d/topic/net.singles/C3xfuAe_Ipw/discussion</a></div><div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><div class="">A little closer to Spam control, the Usenet Cancel Index dates to c.<br class="">1994-09-30 per<br class=""> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breidbart_Index" class="">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breidbart_Index</a><br class="">which has footnote [1] that links<br class=""> <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/news.admin.misc/EZYlshMcULU/GRCnSMAVf24J" class="">https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/news.admin.misc/EZYlshMcULU/GRCnSMAVf24J</a><br class="">(Anyone wishing to dig further into that, the eponymous Seth still has<br class="">same email address via Panix. Saw him just this last Saturday at a<br class="">Scotch event. MAP would approve.)<br class=""><br class="">The <a href="http://Killfile.org" class="">Killfile.org</a> archived Usenet FAQ doesn't appear to have history<br class="">going back far enough to answer anything, but likely has useful<br class="">reminders.<br class=""><a href="http://wiki.killfile.org/projects/usenet/faqs/" class="">http://wiki.killfile.org/projects/usenet/faqs/</a><br class=""></div></div></blockquote><br class=""></div><div>Cancelling posts with control messages (“cmsg cancel”) was part of the basic mechanism for article distribution, briefly discussed in <a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc850" class="">RFC 850</a>. I would have to poke around Google Groups to look for earlier examples of post cancellation.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>—gregbo</div><div><br class=""></div></body></html>