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A USENET newsreader is a software program used to read USENET newsgroups, with over 100,000 topics available. A good newsreader should allow users to join and organize newsgroups, use different nicknames for each group, and have archiving options for privacy. Standalone newsreaders offer more flexibility and security than multipurpose programs like Outlook. Online and offline newsreaders are available, with offline readers being more popular. Popular newsreaders include Free Agent, Agent, 40tude Dialog, and Xnews.
A user network (USENET) newsreader is a software program designed to read USENET newsgroups. A newsreader is also called a news client.
Although a University of North Carolina student wrote the first USENET newsreader in 1980, USENET originated at Duke University in the 1970s. Today, USENET is a network of over 100,000 newsgroups with topics ranging from support and recovery to classic cars and politics. Whatever your pleasure or passion, there is sure to be a newsgroup dedicated to the topic. Advanced users can also create newsgroups following USENET protocols.
A good USENET newsreader makes it easy to join and organize various newsgroups. It should also allow the user to assign a different nickname or character to each subscribed newsgroup. This protects the user from invasion of privacy. Otherwise, anyone with a vested interest can enter a single name into a news archive like Google Groups and get a return page with links to all the posts that user has submitted since 1981. By configuring the USENET newsreader to use a different nickname for each newsgroup, a search of the archives will only return messages from the single related newsgroup.
The USENET newsreader should also have archiving options to prevent messages from being stored in database archives, if desired. This optional header is known as “X-NoArchive=Yes”. While this doesn’t guarantee that the post won’t be preserved by all archives on the web, Google Groups respects the no-archive option by retaining these posts for a short period of about a week, rather than permanently.
Another hallmark of a good USENET newsreader is that it creates a proprietary environment for maximum security. Newsreaders that also handle other tasks, such as those that serve as the user’s primary email client, scheduler, and personal assistant, have the potential to lose extensive information if compromised. By keeping the USENET newsreader separate, the user has greater protection against viruses, worms, Web bugs, Trojan horses, and other threats that routinely arrive via e-mail and the World Wide Web. It also protects the user’s list of newsgroups subscribed and its local archive of outgoing compromised messages.
An added benefit of a standalone USENET newsreader is that it has more flexibility and configuration choices for news than a multipurpose software program like Microsoft’s Outlook Express or heavier Outlook. These programs are widely used as newsreaders because they come preloaded on many systems, but USENET enthusiasts are more likely to use standalone newsreaders such as Free Agent, 40tude Dialog, or X-News.
A news client can be an online USENET news reader or an offline USENET news reader. An online newsreader does not keep posts when offline. Originally, when hard disk space was limited and expensive, online news readers saved space by deleting everything at the end of each USENET session.
However, some users have preferred to keep the newsgroup postings, even offline. In fact, many subscribers pay by the minute to be online, and to save money, they need to collect new posts, go offline to read and write replies, then reconnect to post replies. Offline news readers allow for that. Today, offline news readers are more popular.
Free Agent, Agent (shareware version), and 40tude Dialog are three of the most popular offline USENET newsreaders. Xnews is an online USENET newsreader. For mobile applications such as Internet-enabled cell phones, online-style mobile newsreaders might be useful for conserving limited memory by allowing USENET access on the go.
