What is Usenet?

It’s possible that you’ve never heard of Usenet. Fundamentally, Usenet is a large global bulletin board, much like a forum, where one can post messages or articles and can access posts by others. Each individual post, or news article, is arranged into different sections by topic. These sections are called newsgroups. Newsgroups have all sorts of topics that range from locomotives and astronomy to fishing and science. All together, there are more than 100,000 different newsgroups that combine into the Usenet platform.

How does it work?

Because Usenet traffic uses a different language than your normal internet, you can’t use your internet browser to access Usenet. The language Usenet uses is called “NNTP”, while the standard internet uses “HTTP”. Like web browsers can “read” HTTP, Usenet users use newsreaders to access NNTP.

The structure of Usenet makes for streamlined access of articles. Usenet is built for speed, and newsreaders make these speeds possible. Each newsreader has its own distinct setup. While most of these are fairly simple, if you happen to hit a snag setting up your newsreader, please contact the Pure Usenet support team, and we’ll help walk you through the setup.

Today, Usenet remains an established and global network consisting of hundreds of millions of users, computers, and servers worldwide. Additionally, in the interests of our member’s privacy, we provide SSL encryption at no extra charge. With SSL encryption, your Pure Usenet account is completely secure and private, and we happily provide free SSL encryption on all of our plans to prevent your ISP - and anyone else - from seeing your data and search history.

How To Get Started:

1. To get started with Usenet, activate a plan with Pure Usenet. This will give you Usenet access!
2. Once you’ve signed up for a subscription, you’ll need a newsreader to access Usenet’s newsgroups. These let you search for keywords or newsgroups that interest you, and allow you to post and interact with them. As mentioned above, if you need any assistance setting up your newsreader please contact our support team.
3. That's it! You’re ready to begin browsing Usenet!