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- From: tskirvin@killfile.org (Tim Skirvin)
- Newsgroups: news.admin.net-abuse.bulletins,news.admin.net-abuse.usenet,news.admin.net-abuse.sightings,news.admin.net-abuse.misc,news.answers
- Subject: Cancel Messages: Frequently Asked Questions, Part 2/4 (v1.75)
- Supersedes: <cancelfaq20030915050002$497f@news.killfile.org>
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- Date: Sat, 15 May 2004 00:00:02 -0500
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- Summary: This is a list of Frequently Asked Question about cancel messages
- on Usenet. It mainly discusses how cancels work, who issues
- them, their history, and what to do about them. It is more of
- a general purpose FAQ than anything else; it's not required
- reading anywhere, just more of a reference.
- X-Auth: PGPMoose V1.1 PGP news.admin.net-abuse.sightings
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-
- Archive-name: usenet/cancel-faq/part2
- Posting-Frequency: monthly
- Last-modified: 1999/09/30
- Version: 1.75
- URL: <URL:http://www.killfile.org/faqs/cancel.html>
-
- Cancel Messages
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Part 2/4
-
- This document contains information about cancel messages on Usenet, such
- as who is allowed to use them, how they operate, what to do if your
- message is cancelled, and the like. It does not contain detailed
- instructions on how to cancel a third party's posts. It is not intended
- to be a fully technical document; its audience is the average Usenet user,
- up to a mid-level administrator.
-
- This document is not meant to be a comprehensive explanation of Usenet
- protocols, or of Usenet itself, but a basic knowledge of these concepts
- is assumed. Please refer to news.announce.newusers, RFC1036, and/or
- RFC1036bis if you wish to learn them.
-
- Disclaimers: The information contained within is potentially hazardous;
- applying it without the permission of your news administrator may cause
- the revocation of your account, civil action against you, and even the
- possibility of criminal lawsuits. The author of this document is in no
- way liable for misuse of the information contained within, nor is he in
- any way responsible for damages related to the use or accuracy of the
- information. Proceed at your own risk.
-
-
- Table of Contents > = In other parts of the FAQ
- ================= * = Changed since last update
- >I. What are cancel messages?
- >II. How do cancels work?
- >III. So your post was cancelled...
- IV. What does it take to cancel messages?
- A. I want to cancel posts! How do I do it?
- B. I'm not kidding; I really do want to do it. How do I do it?.
- C. What is a cancelbot?
- D. Sounds cool. Where do I get one?
- E. What? Why not?
- F. Fine then, I'll write it myself.
- * G. Right; I've got a cancelbot. Now what?
- V. That idiot forge-cancelled my posts!
- A. My post is gone; it was forge-cancelled, wasn't it?
- * B. No, I'm sure, it was cancelled. Why?
- C. How do I track the bastard down?
- * D. Who's done this before?
- E. What, are there only bad guys?
- F. Is there anything I can do on my own?
- VI. What moral issues are involved with cancel messages?
- >VII. What's going to happen to cancels in the future?
- >VIII. What about these other things?
- >IX. What are the current cancel issues?
-
- >Changes
- >To Do
- >Contributors
- >Pointers
-
- >Appendix A: Dave the Resurrector
- >Appendix B: Retromoderation
-
-
- IV. What does it take to cancel messages?
- =========================================
- A. I want to cancel posts! How do I do it?
-
- You must be kidding.
-
-
- B. I'm not kidding; I really do want to do it. How do I do it?
-
- *sigh* Well, I'll bet you really haven't thought about it very
- much yet. Read this section before you do anything, alright?
-
- Anyway...
-
- On a small scale, you can issue them by hand - see the Newsgroup
- Care Cancel Cookbook (<URL:http://www.xs4all.nl/~rosalind/faq-care.html>)
- for the details and warnings you'll need to get started. On a bigger scale,
- you're going to want a cancelbot.
-
-
- C. What is a cancelbot?
-
- A cancelbot is a program that searches for messages matching a
- certain pattern and sends out cancels for them; it's basically an
- automated cancel program, run by a human operator.
-
-
- D. Sounds cool. Where do I get one?
-
- If you have to ask, you're probably going to have a hard time
- getting one, and even if you do you probably won't be impressed with
- the quality. I wouldn't even consider using a cancelbot unless you've
- written it yourself or know exactly what it's doing (in which case you
- might as well have written it yourself anyway).
-
-
- E. What? Why not?
-
- Giving out a cancelbot is like handing out loaded guns with no
- safeties. Even if the recipient is well-intentioned, screw-ups are
- fatal; you need the proper training first. There may be people out there
- that will still give you that gun without the training, of course, but
- it's a good idea to question their motives...
-
- In general, until you know *exactly* how to use a cancelbot, you
- shouldn't be experimenting with one - and most people that write the 'bots
- know this. Cancelbots are dangerous, and can be used irresonsibly; more
- than that, if you screw up with a cancel-bot you can cause *large*
- problems, and it's fairly easy to screw up. For these and other reasons,
- it's generally accepted that only those that are willing and able to
- write their own cancelbot will ever actually get one.
-
- Sidenote: even if you trust the source of the code, it's not a
- good idea to trust it blindly. What security holes might it have? What
- bugs may be in it? Is it optimized for the ways that you're planning on
- using it? It's a lot safer to write your own code than to rely upon others;
- not only is it easier to modify for yourself, but you at least then have an
- idea what's still wrong with it...
-
-
- F. Fine then, I'll write it myself.
-
- Sure, go right ahead, but a word of wisdom: make sure you know
- what you're doing.
-
- Richard Depew, Usenet's current main bincanceller, was one of
- the first people to use cancelbots in a large way. One of the most famous
- bot-related incidents of all time was his ARMM cascade, in which a simple
- spelling error on his part caused a large spew in news.admin.policy for
- several hours before it was turned off. It was generally considered a Big
- Oops.
-
- Richard's incident was also far from the worst; that honor would
- have to go to the incident where a misconfigured cancelbot was auto-
- cancelling everything from netcom.com. Bigger Oops. And these examples
- just scratch the surface of what can go wrong when writing a
- cancelbot...
-
- Before you test out your cancelbot on actual Usenet stuff,
- double and triple check to make sure it *works*. Make sure that you've
- gone through all the potential bugs and vulnerabilities - add safeties,
- redundancies, internal logic checks, and what have you. Start a local
- group, test the 'bot out in that group *only*. Whatever. Just remember,
- you only get one chance at this, so do it right...
-
- While writing a cancelbot, make sure you follow the conventions
- that you plan on using ($alz, etc). In addition, once you've got the
- basics down, mail Chris Lewis (clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca). He'll give
- you some more tips.
-
-
- G. Right; I've got a cancelbot. Now what?
-
- Well, the obvious thing is to start using it. Don't. Before you
- do so, make sure you've considered *everything*; cancels raise plenty of
- interesting questions, and using a cancelbot isn't something to enter
- into lightly.
-
- Before you do anything, make sure you've thought a _lot_ about
- _all_ of the following issues. Trust me, you'll need it.
-
- 1. Who is going to be affected by this, and how will they react?
-
- Cancelbots tend to affect a lot of people. By running one, you
- are messing with a lot of people - and, generally, making them
- upset. Many are going to complain. Some are going to retaliate.
-
- Succinctly, before you start up your cancelbot, make sure you can
- handle any incoming mailbombs, that your network's security is
- strong enough to stand up to persistent cracking attempts, that
- you're on good enough terms with your bosses and administrators
- that they won't fire you or drop your account the second they
- get any complaints about you, that you've gotten your phone
- number made unlisted, and that you've got a good lawyer handy.
-
- That's a start, at least.
-
- 2. What kinds of problems will this cause legally?
-
- In the USA, at least, the current best information/guess about
- the legality of cancel messages says that non-content-based third
- party cancels are legal, and that content-based ones are illegal.
- However, this has just plain not been tested in anything resembling
- a court of law, and wouldn't apply to other countries even if it
- had been tested.
-
- Even if cancels are legal in your place of work, of course, this
- doesn't mean that you won't face legal harassment. It's almost
- trivially easy to find some reason to sue somebody today; if you
- hork somebody off by cancelling their posts, there is a chance
- that they'll try this on you. Remember, to many it often doesn't
- matter if they're going to win or lose the lawsuit; all that is
- important is that they have forced you to spend money and time
- to respond to the charges.
-
- Regardless - there is definitely some legal risk associated with
- third-party cancels. This risk is probably enough that you should
- talk with your higher-ups first, or, if possible, a lawyer. It
- could save you a lot of trouble down the line.
-
- 3. Is this a moral thing to do?
-
- Even if cancel messages were perfectly legal, they still aren't
- the nicest thing in the the world. By issuing a cancel you are
- deleting somebody else's words; many would call this censorship,
- and, even if their use is justified, they may be right.
-
- The most commonly used moral argument about cancels is known as
- the "slippery slope". The use of cancel messages leads down the
- road to censorship, which is a Bad Thing; however, it may be
- possible to keep the system under control by staying near the top.
- The further cancels go, however, the more likely it is that they
- cannot be controlled - and once that happens, any benefit they may
- have once held will be gone.
-
- Common practice says that non-content-based cancels are not
- censorship. Instead, they are based on how "loud" the message
- was said; it's not censorship to stop someone from blaring their
- message out in the middle of the night using a megaphone. This
- hopefully means spam cancels and their like are not yet out of
- control, and that we haven't gone so far down that we can't return;
- then again, this point is certainly up to debate.
-
- 4. Do I really have the time to deal with this?
-
- Operating a cancelbot takes a lot of time. Just on a technical
- level, the 'bot has to be written, the parameters have to be set
- and constantly updated, and the thing watched to make sure it works;
- that, though, is the least of your worries.
-
- Once you get the 'bot running, people are going to take notice.
- Result: you will get comments, you might get praise, and you will
- probably get complaints. You *must* listen to them if you want to
- continue running your 'bot responsibly. No, you don't have to
- respond to everything, especially the more juvenile flames, but
- you do have to make sure you listen to suggestions and problems;
- after all, if your 'bot is cancelling something it shouldn't be
- cancelling, you'll only find out when somebody tells you.
-
- If you don't have time to deal with these comments and complaints,
- then just give up now. Trust me, you'll be better off.
-
- 5. Do I know for *sure* what this program will be used for?
-
- If people don't accept the purpose of your cancelbot, then your
- cancelbot will not be effective for anything except getting a
- whole lot of flames and your account nuked. As such, before you
- start cancelling you should make sure you won't get rejected from
- the job. Make yourself some rules:
-
- - What kinds of posts will I be cancelling?
- - Will I be expanding these criteria later?
- - How accountable will I be?
- - What if somebody asks me to include (or exclude) their
- hierarchy?
- - Will I give out my code to others?
-
- Get these rules down now, before you run out of time to think
- of them later on down the line. This way, when you're called on
- them you can respond appropriately.
-
- (Recap: the standard uses for third-party cancels are spams,
- spews, moderated group cleanup, binaries in non-binary groups, and
- forgeries. See section I.D. for details.)
-
- 6. Have I double- and triple-checked my code?
-
- Again, screwing up your code can cause *big* problems. Before
- you're ready to go operational, make absolutely sure that you know
- that the code works 100% of the time. I'd personally recommend
- asking yourself "could I operate this while drunk?" There are no
- second tries here; don't give yourself a chance to screw it up.
-
- This is, of course, especially important if your code is ever
- going to be even viewed by another human being...
-
- 7. Do I know what's happened in the past?
-
- The history of Usenet and cancels goes back a long, long way; it's
- not only fairly interesting stuff, but it teaches interesting
- lessons. Before you start the cancelbots, you should probably
- know what they were used for before; with knowledge comes power,
- after all, and this way you won't start repeating the mistakes of
- your predecessors.
-
- 8. Am I following all of the rules?
-
- While they may not be conventions, there are certain basic rules
- that are usually followed by operators of cancelbots that should
- probably be followed. A notice of the cancels should be posted
- to news.admin.net-abuse.bulletins; the original poster and their
- postmaster should be notified; a representative copy, or link to
- such, should be appended to the notice of cancellation. You should
- have a reliable contact address, so as to be fully accountable for
- your actions. And, as usual, all of the official conventions
- should be followed exactly.
-
- If you're not doing them "nicely", you're going to get more
- complaints than otherwise - and rightfully so. And if you aren't
- capable of doing them nicely, then you probably shouldn't be issuing
- cancels at all.
-
- Remember, it has been proven time and again that nice, polite
- cancel notifications make less enemies than angry, flamish ones.
- It's probably a good idea to make your notifications as kind as
- possible - though they should always include as much information
- (or links to information) as you can possibly fit in.
-
- 9. Do I actually have to do *this*?
-
- If you hadn't figured it out already, cancelbots are a pain in
- the butt. For this if no other reason, you should probably
- reconsider whether this is really necessary.
-
- If your problem has to do with too much off-topic or irrelevant
- traffic, maybe cancels aren't the solution. Talk about moderation
- with the regulars of the newsgroup you're worrying about; someone
- might be willing to help moderate the group, or maybe they have
- another idea to solve the problem. Maybe mailing the offenders a
- polite message saying "your message is off-topic" would help, or
- perhaps it will take mailing the posters' administrators before
- they'll stop; either way might be more effective than cancels.
-
- Even if reasoning with everyone you can think of doesn't work, you
- can still try other approaches. Post about it to news.admin.net-
- abuse.usenet; the regulars there have trained themselves to deal
- with obnoxious sites, and will help you if necessary. In many
- cases, you can stop the problem with judicious use of killfiles.
- And, if all else fails, you can always try NoCeM (section VII.D.).
-
- In general, just make sure you've tried *every* alternative before
- you start cancelling anything. It's a pain to start, it's a bigger
- pain to continue, and the biggest pain comes when you finally want
- to stop...
-
-
-
- V. That idiot forge-cancelled my posts!
- =======================================
- A. My post is gone; it was forge-cancelled, wasn't it?
-
- Before you do anything, check section III; double-check to make
- sure that someone really *did* cancel your post before you get all upset.
- Remember, no cancel message, no cancel.
-
-
- B. No, I'm sure, it was cancelled. Why?
-
- There are as many reasons to cancel a post as there are cancel
- messages. Most cancels are issued for valid reasons (which are detailed in
- previous sections), but sometimes they are done for what many people would
- consider illegitimate reasons. The people that issue such cancels are known
- as "rogue cancellers"; these are the ones to worry about.
-
- Why do they do it? It depends. One popular excuse, started by the
- infamous Church of Scientology, is that the message was a "Trade Secret" which
- must be protected. Another excuse has become prevalent in recent years is
- "if one may cancel, all may cancel" - the theory being that cancel messages
- themselves are evil and must be stopped, and the way to do this is to abuse
- the hell out of them so that sites will turn them off. Oddly, both of these
- excuses generally lead to cancels aimed at those the cancellers have declared
- "enemy", and usually end up backfiring.
-
- All of those reasons, though, are pretty much just excuses. What
- are the *real* reasons that somebody would do something like this? Simple:
- they want to keep something out from under public scrutiny, they didn't like
- what you said, or they just want to destroy a few messages.
-
- And yes, those are very bad reasons.
-
- In any case, rogue cancellers such as the above are *not* accepted
- by the Usenet community. End of story. The hunts to track down rogue
- cancellers often reach near-epic proportions, the searchers often spanning
- the globe, and virtually all such quests end with, at the very least, the
- cancels ending.
-
-
- C. How do I track the bastard down?
-
- If you have the cancel message, the best first step to tracking
- down the canceller is to post a (single) copy of the message to news.admin.
- net-abuse.usenet with a brief explanation of what's going on. The people
- on that group are veterans at tracing Usenet messages; they can probably
- help. While they're at it, they may also explain why your message may have
- been cancelled legitimately, in case there's anything you missed.
-
- For rudimentary analysis of who cancelled your post, check the
- NNTP-Posting-Host: header of the cancel. While it is possible to forge
- this header, it generally will say which machine was used to issue the
- cancel message. Other, less-forgable headers include the Path: and
- Sender: headers, and occasionally the Message-ID: header.
-
-
- D. Who's done this before?
-
- In the past, there have been many rogue cancellers of various
- skill, competence, and intelligence. Some are gone; others are still on
- the run, but appear occasionally. Here are a few of the most famous.
-
- o Kevin Jay Lipsitz: "Krazy Kevin", as he called himself in his
- spams, cancelled many posts on news.admin.net-abuse.misc
- concerning his spams. His theory was that, by cancelling the
- posts, it would take more effort to shut him down; on this point
- he failed miserably, instead merely causing the implementation
- of Dave the Resurrector (see Appendix A). During his time as
- a spammer Kevin was kicked off of many ISPs, but he has not
- been heard of for several months.
-
- o CrackerBuster: in December of 1994, an unknown computer person
- decided that he didn't like alt.2600, and decided to declare war
- on the group and anyone that supported it. In one of the first
- mass newsgroup attacks, CB issued cancels for every message in
- alt.2600 and alt.current-events.net-abuse and then flooded the
- groups with thousands of his own messages, effectively ruining
- them. Chris Lewis did much of the work cleaning up the mess;
- after he was done, he realized that he had himself a fully
- working cancelbot; after getting some updated detection software
- from Jonathan Kamens, Chris began work as Usenet's most prominent
- major spam canceller.
-
- o Crusader: Crusader's actions began with a very large neo-Nazi
- mass email, sent several times to just about every email address
- in existance. There were many systems involved in the sending of
- this unprecedented attack, most of which were cracked; this didn't
- stop a team of news.admin.* regulars from deciding they were going
- to track the perpetrators down. To slow down the trace, the people
- behind Crusader began to cancel all of the messages about the mass
- mailings; this merely forced the creation of a short-term mailing
- list and furthered the group's resolve to stop the attack. While
- the trail stopped at a cracked system in Italy, the mailings
- eventually stopped and the cancels ended.
-
- o Ellisd: soon after the passing of the Communications Decency
- Act, an anonymous user on Netcom decided to cancel everything in
- alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.* and alt.sex.* as "indecent filth".
- The account was shut down within hours; however, Ellisd continued
- to forge cancels from other machines, forging them to appear to
- come from his (now non-existant) Netcom account. Ellisd was
- entirely stopped within another couple of days; his only real
- effect had been to show that the cancellation of "morally
- questionable" material would not be tolerated.
-
- o The Pseudosite Incident: September of 1996 was a hard month for
- Usenet. Having endured many varied newsgroup and mail bombs, the
- next assault came in the form of tens of thousands of cancel
- messages. Possibly modeled after the ellisd incident of several
- months before, several parties unknown began issuing cancels using
- several new pseudosites such as "geekcancel" (in comp.*) and
- "kikecancel" (in soc.culture.israel). Needless to say, this
- resulted in a whole pile of ticked off people. The cancels
- stopped a few days later, and Chris Lewis reposted virtually all
- of the cancelled messages, but the damage was done.
-
- The pseudosite attack has started up several more times since its
- initial run, most prominently in the "Michael Franowski" continuing
- forgeries and the cancel/voter fraud attack upon news.lists.nocem.
- This latter attack eventually forced UUNet to close down its open
- news port.
-
- o The CancelBunny: the Church of Scientology, a remarkably
- paranoid organization, has several "secret scriptures" that have
- long been distributed over Usenet. To stop this, the evidence
- shows that they have called in someone with computer knowledge
- to cancel posts that contain any of their scriptures -- or
- anything that they didn't like. This brought the entire religion
- to the attention of Usenet, and alt.religion.scientology is a
- very well-read (and high traffic) group as a result.
-
- The cancels, however, were generally accepted to be Bad Things.
- Therefore, a group of people decided that they were going to hunt
- down the (anonymous) CancelBunny, as it had been named, by checking
- from bunches of sites. Several CancelBunnies have been tracked
- down and lost their accounts; more keep popping up, only to be
- bashed back down just as quickly.
-
- The cancels by the CancelBunny are generally on comp.org.eff.talk
- and alt.religion.scientology. Cancels to a.r.s are reported by
- Lazarus (VIII.C).
-
- o NewsAgent: HipCrime, an anonymous programmer with fairly
- anarchist views, one day decided to write a publicly available
- Usenet cancellation engine. His stated reason was the standard
- "if one may cancel, all may cancel" excuse; however, when he
- first unleashed his 'bot, he targeted moderated groups, anything
- administration-related, and everything else that he personally
- disliked. It quickly became apparent that his work was merely
- intended to destroy Usenet; as such, some of Usenet's more
- prominent anti-administration kooks joined him in what they
- saw as the final anti-Usenet war.
-
- It surprised them to no end when they soon found that their
- cancels had stopped being effective, because too many sites
- knew how to fight the attack.
-
- Since then, NewsAgent has morphed and become more public-domain.
- The software no longer issues cancel messages; instead, it issues
- long randomly-generated messages with Supersedes: headers, which
- destroy posts in a less-tracable and more-destructive manner
- (and which are almost immediately themselves cancelled, and
- the original messages reposted). Hipcrime has also written
- other variants of NewsAgent which send out other Control
- messages, creating thousands of bogus newsgroups on unwatched
- servers or causing a few individuals to be mailbombed but
- otherwise doing little damage. More worrisome is that older
- versions are in the hands of many people who wish to use the
- software maliciously, who are now using it to attack individual
- newsgroups. Even this is generally stopped after a couple of
- days, however.
-
- Overall, NewsAgent has merely made life a bit more difficult
- for news administrators and a bit more chaotic for standard
- Usenet users. Too bad.
-
-
- E. What, are there only bad guys?
-
- No, of course not; they're just the most prominent. There are
- plenty of important good guys, too -- the ones that perform the thankless
- job of cancelling spam, spew, MMF, and all the rest, basically keeping
- Usenet usable.
-
- Among the most famous spam cancellers include the CancelMoose
- (moose@cm.org) [the first major spam canceller, author of NoCeM, now
- retired from cancelling], Chris Lewis (clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca) [the
- most prominent spam canceller of all time], and Jonathan Kamens
- (jik@mit.edu) [writer of the best spam detection software to date]. Most
- of the other cancellers can be found on news.admin.net-abuse.*.
-
-
- F. Is there anything I can do on my own?
-
- Of course.
-
- 1. Notify the postmaster at the offending site, or upstream site.
-
- If you can determine where the cancels are coming form, mail
- the postmaster at that site (or abuse@site, if present) with your complaints,
- If this doesn't work, you may want to try notifying the people that give
- the site its newsfeed; for details on how to determine this, read the Spam
- Tracking FAQ.
-
- 2. Alias out the offending site.
-
- Your news administrator may be capable of making your machine not
- accept posts from a certain other machine. If necessary, this can be
- used to ignore the cancel messages on your own site.
-
- 3. Ignore the cancels.
-
- Most major cancel attacks are fairly easy to categorize, based on
- a common header or message body. It is possible to run software, such as
- Cleanfeed (<URL:http://www.exit109.com/~jeremy/news/antispam.html>), to
- ignore those cancels based on the common pattern; if you've got the time
- to update your filters fairly often, you may even be able to head off
- further attacks.
-
- 4. Write and run a Resurrection 'bot.
-
- It is possible to run a 'bot that reposts everything that is
- cancelled; the most famous example of this is Dave the Resurrector, which
- protects the news.admin.* hierarchy and is detailed in Appendix A. If you
- want to do something similar, you can be a great help at stopping rogue
- cancel attacks.
-
- 5. Call in the official authorities.
-
- As was previously said, forged cancels are in a legal grey area.
- If you want to call in the legal authorities, you probably can, and
- something may be done.
-
- The general recommendation of this, though, is "don't do it".
- Any kind of legal judgment on this matter sets a precedent; at this point,
- we're almost happier without one.
-
-
-
- VI. What moral issues are involved with cancel messages?
- ========================================================
-
- I'll answer this question succinctly:
-
- Lots.
-
- The moral issues related to cancel messages are among the most
- interesting, and distressing, part of the issue. Third-party cancels,
- spam and binary cancels, retromoderation, moderators in general, the
- full "slippery slope" argument, the "Usenet is an anarchy" argument, "you're
- violating my first amendment rights!" and "without cancels, Usenet would
- have died under the weight of the spam long ago"...
-
- This FAQ, though, isn't really the best place to get into it.
-
- For lack of space and time, I cannot get into these issues in
- detail here, however important they may be. If you want a start on this
- matter, read the news.admin.net-abuse FAQ, along with the newsgroups.
- It's at least a start.
-
- --
- Copyright 1999, Tim Skirvin. All rights reserved.
- <URL:http://www.killfile.org/faqs/cancel.html>
-