What newsgroup service do you guys use?

[PW]

Hi,

I use Forte Agent and their newsgroups. But they won't do anything
about all the spam here.

I mostly just watch this one.

Is everyone here still getting all this junk?

If not, what service do you use. I would like to keep useing Agent.

-pw

[Mike S.]

On Mon, 19 Feb 2024 20:55:43 -0700, PW
<iamnotusing...@notinuse.com> wrote:

>Is everyone here still getting all this junk?

Yes I am getting the spam but Agent puts it all together at least so I
can delete it very quickly.

[Spalls Hurgenson]

On Mon, 19 Feb 2024 20:55:43 -0700, PW
<iamnotusing...@notinuse.com> wrote:

Today I learned that Forte also provides Usenet access. Well, it makes
sense. Although based on the headers, maybe they route through
EasyNews?

(You should be able to to use Forte Agent regardless of your NNTP
provider... unless Forte turned evil and made the software
subscription based too. But I don't see any evidence of that on their
website. Just change the host name in settings to point to the new
news-server. Personally, I like spinning up a new .rc file when I do
that in case of numbering differences, but it may not be necessary).

As for Usenet providers, they're getting thin on the ground... and too
many of them are focused on offering binaries. How well they do with
spam, I don't know; I can't imagine they care very much... especially
the binary-focused ones. From what I can tell, they're mostly
back-ends for NZB search engines so the spam never gets seen

Still, many of the services offer free trials so you could just sign
up and see for yourself. Eweka https://www.eweka.nl/en , TweakNews
https://www.tweaknews.eu/ , Newshost https://www.newshosting.com/ and
Usenet.Farm https://www.newshosting.com/ all let you try for free.
Create an account, configure a free NNTP client with their newsgroup
settings, and refresh daily to see how they compare to one another
regarding spam.

There's also good ol' Eternal September
https://www.eternal-september.org/ which apparently /is/ trying to
fight against the spam (not surprisingly, since its text-oriented) but
given its limited resources its apparently having a bit of an issue
keeping up.

[David Goodwin]

In article <7i88tilc99rsccpc9...@4ax.com>,
iamnotusing...@notinuse.com says...

I'm using AstraWeb (prepaid for something like 10GB many years ago which
is a lot of text newsgroups) and I get the spam.

I've taken to just filtering out everything coming from Google Groups
which does an excellent job of filtering out *all* of the spam, but
unfortunately it also filters out the people who are still using Google
Groups too.

But Google Groups is going away in a day or two which should see
virtually all of the spam disappear too.

[Dimensional Traveler]

I use Eternal September as my Usenet provider. They do a lot of work to
filter out spam.

I use Thunderbird as my Usenet reader. The spam filter/killfile
function on it is easy to use and I have used it copiously.

Between the two I see very, very little spam anymore.

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

[kyonshi]

I used to use Leafnode connecting to Eternal September to filter out
stuff. It was the easiest way for me to use different newsreaders
without getting spam (well, after filtering out Google Groups, that
really cut down on spam and only affected one or two posters)

[candycanearter07]

Ray Banana is very good at spam busting
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

[David Goodwin]

In article <ur4v8j$35tu5$3...@dont-email.me>, gmk...@gmail.com says...

Yeah, I'm currently connecting through leafnode though more because it
makes archiving newsgroups possible should I want to - I've not gone as
far as setting up any filtering there, though if Google Groups wasn't
ending soon I probably would.

For a newsreader I'm using MicroPlanet Gravity right now - its not
perfect (or maintained), but I like it better than ThunderBird. I've
occasionally used WinVN and ancient versions of Forte FreeAgent on
vintage machines as well.

[JAB]

I use ES as well and they seem pretty good on the spam front. It can
play a bit funny with Thunderbird sometimes but I'm not sure where the
real issue lies.