Why do I nkeep seeing users like honeysbunny here?

[Dauphin de Viennois]

Only in the Vista groups do I keep seeing usernames like "=?Utf-8?B?
aG9uZXlzYnVubnk=?=" all over the place. I kept thinking it was the same
person who was a troll or something but now I realize it must be my Xnews
newsreader and the default lauguage coding it is using. These people must
be using some non standard unicode or something.

 

[Andy [YaYa]]

Only in the Vista groups do I keep seeing usernames like "=?Utf-8?B?
aG9uZXlzYnVubnk=?=" all over the place. I kept thinking it was the
same person who was a troll or something but now I realize it must be
my Xnews newsreader and the default lauguage coding it is using. These
people must be using some non standard unicode or something.

They are 2-bit characters, usually Japanese characters, and since this is a
Usenet newsgroup, the servers filter them out. You're not really posting to
a web forum, that forum is leeching feeds off another server. Kind of like
a mini-intranet.

Think FidoNet, but more "Internet" based. God I'm old...

 

[Dauphin de Viennois]

They are 2-bit characters, usually Japanese characters, and since this
is a Usenet newsgroup, the servers filter them out. You're not really
posting to a web forum, that forum is leeching feeds off another
server. Kind of like a mini-intranet.

Think FidoNet, but more "Internet" based. God I'm old...

I've been using Usenet since 1993 so know how it works, thanks. Never saw
this when I used Thunderbird for reading news so it must be Xnews that is
causing it.