FAQ 7

FAQ 7 Part D: Advanced Questions

Topics:
Newsgroups

Privacy

Q: How private is reading from news?
Each news server may have a slightly different policy, but the following are usually true. As always, please draw your own conclusions. All of the following can be easily verified by contacting the news servers yourself.

Most major news servers respect user privacy and do not keep relevant logs on people who read from their server.
However, most major news servers log posts made by users. This is mainly done to deter spammers.
Other logs are kept for statistical and maintenance purposes. This way the news server knows if they need to upgrade, fix a problem, or change their configuration.
In most countries, relevant log information on individuals cannot be legally obtained without a court order.

With that being said, some news servers are more "private" than others. For specifics, see the end of FAQ 2I. In general, major news servers do not monitor any newsgroups or anyone who reads from them. One particular server pointed out that monitoring users who read from their server would be illegal in their country.
Q: How is news compared to websites in this area?
I've been asked this quesiton a lot. Here are the theoretical reasons why:

Detailed logging for websites is feasable for most applications. However, detailed logging for news is impractical due to fundamental differences.
In general, anyone can make a rogue website. However if you want to make a reliable news server you must commit massive amounts of bandwidth and server space even if no one ever uses your server. For that reason news servers are usually controlled by responsible administrators who know the law and do not log information about users.
Reading from a website reveals significantly more information that reading from news.

There are more practical reasons why as well. For example, the incident concerning the Church of Scientology several years ago shows how difficult, expensive, and time consuming it is to trace a poster on usenet. The person in question illegally posted damaging documents against the Church to newsgroups - in particular to the newsgroup alt.religeon.scientology. Despite the CoS efforts including hundreds of man hours and a near fortune in legal fees, the situation eventually backfired and now hundreds of damaging documents are posted and reposted every day to alt.religeon.scientology by the Church's critics.
Note that the person in question did not use many of the precautions that are now readily available when posting the documents to newsgroups. Also note that nowadays people who post damaging material to the a.r.s. newsgroup with impunity, and countless more read from the newsgroup anonymously. This is the practical explanation.
Payment

Q: I'm still very concerned despite what you've presented. How would I pay anonymously?
There are various ways if you want that...some people suggest doing a one-way mail payment and some use a 900 number to pay for it.