The Third Monthly Lupine Awards
for MMF - March 1997

(I should probably wait until April 2 to post this, but...)

The following table lists the number of "Make Money Fast" (MMF) chain
letter articles I have canceled at my site, news.msfc.nasa.gov, by
article header From address, for the month of March, 1997, ranked by
number of articles, and only listing the top 40.  The numbers could vary
significantly from site to site; other people cancel these things as
well, and some sites do not honor cancels at all.

Please note that forged and/or mangled addresses are common.

The Golden Lupine Award goes to 00000,0000@compuserve.com (Stat).

The Silver Lupine goes to klundgren@megabux.com.

The Bronze Lupine goes to "Sarah MILLER" .

  rank   arts From addresses
  ----   ---- --------------
     1   2027 00000,0000@compuserve.com (Stat)
     2   1274 klundgren@megabux.com
     3   1194 "Sarah MILLER" 
     4    971 "I made over $1400.00 in a few weeks" 
              "Serious $ for hard work." 
              Hard Work 
              Hard work 
              This really works 
              asalter@total.net
     5    571 nop33935@mail.telepac.pt (Gustavo Fialho)
     6    544 "LOOOK$5.00ea." 
              "Please help!" 
              "SEND $5.00ea." 
              "SEND$5.00ea." 
              wow@usa.net (Please Help!)
              wow@usa.net (Send $5.00ea)
     7    510 "Dr. Jake Nickels" 
              Larry Dupont 
              Victor Mezheritsky 
     8    442 guess@whoever.com (Guess Who)
     9    410 "Hans & Ingela Gustafson" 
              "Swede" 
    10    409 belive_it@r-not.com ( It's WORKING ! )
    11    403 fkreutz@stud.uni-hannover.de (Florian Kreutz)
    12    395 "Ralph" 
    13    348 "Martin" 
    14    344 Zac Brown 
    15    335 Alexandre 
    16    334 SE 
    17    330 tommy
              tommy q
              tommy quick
    18    327 cosmo_cosmic@geocities.com (Damir)
    19    323 "@Look$1.00ea" 
              "money@look.com" 
              cash@hotmail.com
    20    318 uzsaed@ibm.rhrz.uni-bonn.de (Elminster)
    21    314 
    22    311 diego_ch@hotmail.com
    23    303 David Robertson 
    24    278 curious692@aol.com (Curious692)
    25    269 csmith@igateway.com (Smitty)
    26    267 aesbest@fys.ruu.nl ( A-Eskwadraat Bestuurskamer)
    27    266 BMC Physics Student 
    28    255 "!CASH4U!" 
              Dominique Megran 
    29    250 Johannes Westendorf 
    29    250 Cari 
    30    246 friend@hand.com
    31    245 "J Rush" 
    32    243 iamlost@cris.com (J. BENEDUCE)
    33    241 Jim Hawkins 
    34    239 my.pc@my.desk
    35    228 julieuama@sisna.com (Julie)
    36    224 knovosel@jagor.srce.hr ()
    36    224 "Reid" 
    37    223 @concentric.net
    38    220 Geno Gomez 
    39    217 ptaulbor@class.esu3.k12.ne.us (Paul Taulborg)
    40    214 zebs@centuryinter.net (Steve Chamberlin)
--------------------------------------
Total articles canceled:   55476
Total unique Froms:         1998

There are 44640 minutes in March, so the Barnum Rate was a sucker every
22.3 minutes, and there were approximately 1.24 cancels issued per
minute.  Note that the cancel rate for both of the previous months was
1.06 cancels per minute, reflecting a 17% increase in March.

Some other notes:

  1. There are more foreign-language variants that I can't handle.

  2. I have had a lot more hostile responses to my MMF notifications than
  before.  I'm sending them the same thing that Chris Lewis sends them,
  and he claims that it stops 99% of them, but I'm not having the same
  luck.  Some of the hostile responses seem to be triggered by other
  people flaming them to a crisp at about the same time that I offer my
  "soft answer."  The most frequent hostile reply is along the lines of
  "If they're illegal, why do I see so many of them?"  I usually see the
  really hot replies on Sunday morning.  One really nasty one turned out
  to be from (supposedly) a 12-year-old girl.  

  3. There are more MMF cancelers active than last month.  Which is
  fine.  One unfortunate side effect is that if one MMF canceler cancels
  a variant of MMF that my cancelbot misses and that I never see, I will
  never be able to update my cancelbot to handle it.

I have compiled a list of the most MMF-ridden newsgroups in March 1997.
Please note that this list is affected by many factors, such as:

  1. I don't get (or want) a full feed here, and a lot of the newsgroups
  listed are mostly leakage or crossposts.

  2. I don't cancel articles in moderated newsgroups and certain others
  (such as news.admin.*).

  3. Crossposts are listed as if they were multiple posts, unlike the
  Lupine Awards list above.

  4. The activities of other third-party cancelers are not compensated
  for.

With that in mind, here are the top 40 "MMF magnets":

rank   arts newsgroup
----   ---- ---------
   1    277 alt.business
   2    274 alt.2600
   3    198 alt.activism
   4    195 alt.0d
   5    192 alt.1d
   6    190 alt.business.home.pc
   7    187 alt.beer
   8    185 alt.business.misc
   9    181 alt.3d
  10    179 alt.business.multi-level
  11    178 alt.sex
  12    168 alt.astrology
  13    164 alt.america.online
  14    163 alt.amazon-women.admirers
  15    153 alt.anything
  16    152 alt.alcohol
  17    147 alt.bbs
  17    147 alt.alien.visitors
  17    147 alt.abortion.inequity
  18    145 alt.2600.crackz
  19    142 alt.asian-movies
  20    140 alt.bbs.ads
  21    139 alt.adoption
  22    138 alt.bbs.internet
  22    138 ab.jobs
  23    130 alt.autos.camaro.firebird
  24    129 alt.architecture
  25    126 alt.jobs
  25    126 alt.alt
  26    124 alt.atheism
  27    121 alt.aol-sucks
  28    120 alt.acting
  28    120 alt.3d.studio
  29    119 alt.2600.hackerz
  30    118 alt.anonymous.messages
  31    114 alt.angst.xibo.sex
  32    113 alt.amateur-comp
  33    112 alt.angst
  33    112 alt.2600.codez
  34    110 alt.baldspot
  34    110 alt.backrubs
  34    110 alt.anonymous
  34    110 alt.alien.research
  34    110 alt.activism.death-penalty
  34    110 alt.2600.hope.announce
  35    109 alt.autos.antique
  35    109 alt.anybody
  35    109 alt.acme.exploding.newsgroup
  36    108 alt.algebra.help
  37    107 alt.business.home
  37    107 alt.autos.rod-n-custom
  37    107 alt.ascii-art
  38    106 misc.entrepreneurs
  38    106 alt.best.of.internet
  39    105 news.newusers.questions
  39    105 alt.cult-movies
  39    105 alt.artcom
  39    105 alt.3d.misc
  40    104 alt.animals.felines

-- 
J. Porter Clark, d/b/a
+--+
|oo| The Unknown News Administrator
|  | news@news.msfc.nasa.gov
`^^'