News Account Profile

Tools/News accounts/new

Name

The Name field will normally be a descriptive name for the account. It can be the same as the NNTP Server field. There is one circumstance when they'll differ. It's the Name field that is displayed in the drop-down lists used for selecting the active account.

NNTP Server

This field requires the server name that the news service has given you for NNTP access. An example NNTP server is news.aeoi.org. What is most important is that you get it exactly right. Leave off the news (in the example) , and you won't have the right server. This is a major pitfall for new users. They swear up and down, stamp their feet and shout that they are positive they have the correct server. Yet they are wrong and cannot see the flaw.

Port

The standard port for NNTP is 119. The service will provide this info for you. Also important, is the port 563 that news servers offer encrypted connection via TLS. Not all news services offer encrypted connections. If it is offered, that is the port you want to use.

TLS/SSL

If the service requires a port number 563 the connection will require TLS encryption. Put in one of that port and QSA will select TLS. If the service provides some other odd port number and won't connect, give TLS and SSL a try.

Authentication

Your service will tell you if authentication is required. Most news services will require you actually have an account with them and generally authentication is required. If you are completely without a news service, there are a few free services open to the public.

User ID

This is usually your account login ID. It is provided by the news service.

Password

This is your account password. Take great care in entering this data.

I don't have a news account anywhere!

Without access to the USENET news, you won't be able to use QSA at all. Fortunately, there are some free services. Here are a couple:

They are text-only services and require no authentication.

The pay service I use is:

This service is also text-only and based in Germany. They charge 10 Euro a year.

When I refer to text-only, I mean the service does not carry any binary newsgroups. That means if you're looking for the dirty pictures you've heard so much about, the 3 mentioned here won't have that. It isn't that the service cares to censor what you get from them, it's that the binary newsgroups require a massive amount of disk space for the binary files. Text-only is a much easier service to provide, requiring far less resources for the company.