Find open to the public news servers (freeware)

[Tarapia Tapioco]

Many ISP's do not carry all UseNet news groups, or are often missing
articles in the groups they do carry. This can be very frustrating
when trying to follow a discussion or download multi-part files.
This is where having access to open to the public news servers can be
invaluable.

NewsHunter4 (not to be confused with the NewsHunter2 news reader) is
designed specifically for finding free UseNet news servers by
downloading headers from your regular news server & analysing them
for the various servers the messages have travelled through on the
way to your server. It can then test these servers to see if they
are open to the public, if they carry the groups you specify & if
messages can actually be downloaded.

So, you don't just test to see if servers can be accessed, you can
specifically test at the same time to see if they carry the groups
you want, provide article counts for each group, and most
importantly, if articles can actually be downloaded.

You can download the free NewsHunter4, along with other handy
freeware from:

http://www.comcen.com.au/~scottford/_sgt/m2m2_1.htm

 

[Henk de Jong]

Many ISP's do not carry all UseNet news groups, or are often missing
articles in the groups they do carry. This can be very frustrating
when trying to follow a discussion or download multi-part files.
This is where having access to open to the public news servers can be
invaluable.

NewsHunter4 (not to be confused with the NewsHunter2 news reader) is
designed specifically for finding free UseNet news servers by
downloading headers from your regular news server & analysing them
for the various servers the messages have travelled through on the
way to your server. It can then test these servers to see if they
are open to the public, if they carry the groups you specify & if
messages can actually be downloaded.

So, you don't just test to see if servers can be accessed, you can
specifically test at the same time to see if they carry the groups
you want, provide article counts for each group, and most
importantly, if articles can actually be downloaded.

You can download the free NewsHunter4, along with other handy
freeware from:

http://www.comcen.com.au/~scottford/_sgt/m2m2_1.htm

When the results of NewsHunter4 are like this
http://www.comcen.com.au/~scottford/userfiles/Nh4_test_screen.jpg
I'll pass.



With kind regards,

--
Henk de Jong
The Netherlands
(e-mail address removed) (Remove _NO_SPAM_)
'Links to Freeware'
http://www.linkstofreeware.vze.com/
http://home.hccnet.nl/hmdejong/

 

[JoeA]

Or just go here
http://www.newzbot.com/search.php
http://www.newzbot.com/

find what you want without downloading anything.

 

[Lenny Nero]

why do you keep spamming this news group ???

why, if its so good do you post with a re-mailer ???

why, do you keep changing your name but the headers stay the same ???

do you understand what (e-mail address removed) means ???

L.

 

[Ed]

do you understand what (e-mail address removed) means ???

Nothing?

 

[John Fitzsimons]

On Fri, 20 Feb 2004 13:58:17 +0100, Henk de Jong

Hi Henk,

Tarapia Tapioco wrote:

When the results of NewsHunter4 are like this
http://www.comcen.com.au/~scottford/userfiles/Nh4_test_screen.jpg
I'll pass.

Many thanks for your posting. When I got a similar result I assumed
* I * had done something wrong. Maybe not.

I pass too.

Regards, John.

--
****************************************************
,-._|\ (A.C.F FAQ) http://clients.net2000.com.au/~johnf/faq.html
/ Oz \ John Fitzsimons - Melbourne, Australia.
\_,--.x/ http://www.vicnet.net.au/~johnf/welcome.htm
v http://clients.net2000.com.au/~johnf/

 

[Big Dave]

Or just go here

find what you want without downloading anything.

Thanx.
Nice1.

Useful stuff

 

[Nomen Nescio]

why do you keep spamming this news group ???

why, if its so good do you post with a re-mailer ???

why, do you keep changing your name but the headers stay the same ???

do you understand what (e-mail address removed) means ???

L.

First of all, it is not spam to occasionally notify people of a free
product that is completely relevant to the newsgroup it is posted in.
It is not done excessively - just one small post every week or so.
It contains no advertising material or requests for money, and the
entire post is completely relevant to the product. It also does not
contain any files or graphics which may be potentially malicious, or
at least chew up bandwidth. The idea is not to irritate people who
have been using this group for a while, but to help those newbies who
have come in the hope that they might find an alternative free server
to their ISP's.

I think there are a lot more things to worry about in this newsgroup
than somebody letting people know of an alternative way to find free
news servers. Lately I've been seeing very little on-topic stuff in
this group, and a lot of the posts are childish, insulting and often
abusive, especially towards Mike. This group really needs to start
moving back to basics and stick to it's description of "talk about
free (open) news servers" (group as described in 40Tude Dialog). I'm
sure a lot of visitors to this group would prefer to see a post
advising of a way to find free news servers rather than the vitriol
that has been passing for discussion the past few weeks.

Having access to other free news servers is vital to me, as I've now
removed Biggulp from my newsreader after there were too many problems
with it. That's why I still monitor this newsgroup - the faint hope
that someone may actually post an on-topic comment.

The reason I post with a remailer is to prevent return spam. For
some reason my ISP won't forward messages if they are posted with a
dummy email address, and like anyone I want to keep the levels of
spam I receive as low as possible. I made the mistake recently of
posting to a very quiet newsgroup just one message using my email
address - now I'm getting over a hundred spams a day to that same
address (thank God for Mailwasher to wipe them off the server - I'd
have a 10 foot penis by now if I actually used all the different
products advertised). I do know what abuse means, but that's why I
try to keep my post as relevant as possible to the group - so I can't
be accused of spamming.

The reason that my headers don't change, but the "from" name does is
that I use QuickSilver to post. It encrypts, splits the message &
forwards it via several remailers to be recombined at the end &
posted. The "from" address is the final remailer in the chain
randomly selected by QuickSilver. It provides complete anonymity -
not even the posting news server can find out who sent the original
message. If you're interested, you can get more info from:
http://www.quicksilvermail.net/ (it's freeware - a bit fiddly to set
up, but once done it's a dream to use for posting text messages).

Anyway, I hope you appreciate my explanations - I honestly don't send
the message for any other reason than to pass on my knowledge to
others who might find NH4 useful, & get the satisfaction that people
have actually decided it's worth downloading & giving a try.

 

[Rob Morley]

On Fri, 20 Feb 2004 13:58:17 +0100, Henk de Jong

Hi Henk,




Many thanks for your posting. When I got a similar result I assumed
* I * had done something wrong. Maybe not.

I pass too.

I ran it for ten minutes and found a posting server with lots of text
groups, so it works fine if that's what you're looking for.

 

[Anonymous Sender]

When the results of NewsHunter4 are like this
http://www.comcen.com.au/~scottford/userfiles/Nh4_test_screen.jpg
I'll pass.



With kind regards,

--
Henk de Jong
The Netherlands
(e-mail address removed) (Remove _NO_SPAM_)
'Links to Freeware'
http://www.linkstofreeware.vze.com/
http://home.hccnet.nl/hmdejong/

You should probably expect only 1 in 500 or so servers tested to be
successful. After all, most messages will have been posted from
ISP's requiring authentication, and then travelled via other servers
also requiring authentication. The thing about NH4 is that it stores
all of these server names, so there's a chance that some of the
messages may have been posted via open servers, or travelled through
some.

I suppose the best way I can explain it is for you to have a look at
the complete headers of this message, and other ones in the group.
You will see a whole bunch of servers in the message path - this is
what NH4 reads & tests. Some will be invalid for testing as they may
have characters such as * or @ or whatever, so they will appear on
the excluded list. The reason you will see a heap of duplicates is
that NH4 reads the header of every message, so naturally there are
going to be a lot of servers which have had more than one message
pass through them. It will add the first instance as a new server,
and then record the rest as duplicates.

I hope that clear things up a little.

 

[Gabriele Neukam]

On that special day, Nomen Nescio, ([email protected]) said...

I think there are a lot more things to worry about in this newsgroup
than somebody letting people know of an alternative way to find free
news servers. Lately I've been seeing very little on-topic stuff in
this group, and a lot of the posts are childish, insulting and often
abusive, especially towards Mike. This group really needs to start
moving back to basics and stick to it's description of "talk about
free (open) news servers"

Sorry Mike, but you are posting into alt.comp.freeware too, where all
this above does make no sense and is quite off-topic. Please keep to
your own group, where your posting might be of some relevance; over here
in acf, it isn't.

F'up set to afn, as I don't think it should be continued in acf


Gabriele Neukam

(e-mail address removed)

 

[Thomas Mueller]

Excerpt from an anonymous poster:

Message-ID: <[email protected]>

The reason I post with a remailer is to prevent return spam. For
some reason my ISP won't forward messages if they are posted with a
dummy email address, and like anyone I want to keep the levels of
spam I receive as low as possible. I made the mistake recently of
posting to a very quiet newsgroup just one message using my email
address - now I'm getting over a hundred spams a day to that same
address (thank God for Mailwasher to wipe them off the server - I'd
have a 10 foot penis by now if I actually used all the different
products advertised). I do know what abuse means, but that's why I
try to keep my post as relevant as possible to the group - so I can't
be accused of spamming.

If you used all the different products advertised, you might die of an overdose
from all those prescription drugs! Not to mention incurring a Washington-sized
debt.

Do you have to use the email address with your ISP, or can you also use a
Hotmail, Yahoo, etc, address as long as it's valid? What about (e-mail address removed)?
Or perhaps a mailinator.com or spamgourmet.com address? See
http://www.mailinator.com/
http://spamgourmet.com/

Beginning Sep 19, 2003, I suddenly was bombarded with virus messages at the rate
of 400 per day, nearly equally divided between Swen and Exploit-MIME.gen.b, and
it was a couple months before the bombardment began to gradually decline. I
learned from this newsgroup (alt.free.newsservers) that Swen harvested
addresses from some newsgroups, but that doesn't explain why I got so many
Exploit-MIME.gen.b messages. Fortunately these virus messages were filtered
into a quarantine area by Postini, which Bluegrass Net subscribes to, so I
didn't have to download all those megabytes at dialup (56 Kbps) speed, but it
was still a nuisance to have to check each message one by one and delete ten at
a time. So it's not just spam. Now I get more spams than virus messages, but
still the spam and virus messages far outnumber legit email messages.

I too notice in alt.free.newsservers that only a small minority of messages are
on-topic.

 

[edo]

Excerpt from an anonymous poster:

SNIP

Do you have to use the email address with your ISP, or can you also use a
Hotmail, Yahoo, etc, address as long as it's valid? What about (e-mail address removed)?
Or perhaps a mailinator.com or spamgourmet.com address? See
http://www.mailinator.com/
http://spamgourmet.com/

Beginning Sep 19, 2003, I suddenly was bombarded with virus messages at the rate
of 400 per day, nearly equally divided between Swen and Exploit-MIME.gen.b, and
it was a couple months before the bombardment began to gradually decline. I
learned from this newsgroup (alt.free.newsservers) that Swen harvested
addresses from some newsgroups, but that doesn't explain why I got so many
Exploit-MIME.gen.b messages. Fortunately these virus messages were filtered
into a quarantine area by Postini, which Bluegrass Net subscribes to, so I
didn't have to download all those megabytes at dialup (56 Kbps) speed, but it
was still a nuisance to have to check each message one by one and delete ten at
a time. So it's not just spam. Now I get more spams than virus messages, but
still the spam and virus messages far outnumber legit email messages.

I too notice in alt.free.newsservers that only a small minority of messages are
on-topic.

You can find a lot of anonymous remailing sites on the web to post
directly from - you just need to make sure they offer a mail2news
service if you want to post newsgroup articles. Just do a search for
remailers, mail2news gateways to find some.

I actually use freeware that I downloaded called QuickSilver. It
keeps an updated list of all the remailers, encodes your messages and
sends them through whatever number of remailers you want before the
final one posts the message to the newsgroup via a mail2news gateway.
For this message I sent copies to 4 mail2news gateways via a path of
3 remailers. It can take a bit of setting up (30 minutes - 1 hour
depending on what services you want to use, but it is definitely
worthwhile). You will need to follow the instructions until
comfortable with it, but it then works like a dream & is very
simple. You can write templates, so sending messages requires just
the text to be entered. It also has an update wizard for downloading
various modules you may also want to use.

You can download QuickSilver from http://www.quicksilvermail.net/ .

BTW, you do need a valid email SMTP address from which to send your
messages to the first of the remailers, just like any other email you
send, but as they are encrypted your ISP cannot read the details.
Sender details then are removed by the remailers on the way to the
mail2news gateway. Just have a look at this message's headers to get
an idea.

Good Luck