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View Full Version : New to Usenet. Tips on security?



m i k e
February 18th, 2008, 05:19 AM
I'm new to Usenet. Due to how public it is I was wondering if people had tips on security. Is there a way with Google Groups that I don't have to display my email? How about with other clients? I know not to download suspicious files I just don't want my email made so public for anyone to email me? What do you guys do to keep yourself sufficiently private and secure when posting and using newsgroups?

oldos2er
February 18th, 2008, 05:40 AM
Google Groups is terrible for Usenet if you're doing a lot of reading and posting (besides, they don't have alt.os.linux.ubuntu). Get a dedicated client like Pan or slrn.

Also, get a throwaway email account e.g. Hotmail, Yahoo, or any one of a million others, and use that in place of your "real" email address.

You might want to visit http://www.anta.net/misc/nnq/

andrew.46
February 20th, 2008, 12:22 PM
Hi,

Welcome to usenet :-)


I'm new to Usenet. Due to how public it is I was wondering if people had tips on security. Is there a way with Google Groups that I don't have to display my email? How about with other clients? I know not to download suspicious files I just don't want my email made so public for anyone to email me? What do you guys do to keep yourself sufficiently private and secure when posting and using newsgroups?

I can give you a few pieces of advice:


Avoid using Googlegroups for usenet if you can help it. There are plenty of decent usenet clients out there, Pan and Thunderbird are decent gui newsreaders.
Get yourself a throw-away email account from gmail or hotmail if you intend to use an email address on usenet.
Leave you 'From' address as yourname.invalid and then use your gmail address in 'Reply-To'.


If you want to jump straight into the deep end as has already been suggested there is slrn:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=475246

but gui might be better to start with.

Andrew