The Unix User Network is a separate, independent service of the Internet, founded in 1979, which exists alongside the World Wide Web. It was intended as a discussion platform through which users could exchange information quickly and easily. In the beginning, only text files were exchanged. In the meantime, however, other file formats such as music, image or video files are also exchanged via this platform. The sharing of these files takes place in so-called newsgroups. The files are then retrieved via a newsreader, which is provided by a Usenet provider.

The Usenet is decentralized, i.e. there is no central server, but only many independent news servers. The data itself is only ever stored on the news servers participating in the Usenet. Thus, Usenet only serves to distribute the data and is therefore less vulnerable to attack.

There is basically no monitoring on Usenet. Only you know what you download there, since downloads are not logged. Of course, a Usenet provider through which you connect to the Usenet can store header information about your downloads. However, many providers advertise that they do not collect this metadata.

What is a news server?

A news server is a computer that forwards, stores or makes available Usenet messages. The NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol), or UUCP (Unix to Unix Copy Protocol) protocol is used to retrieve/transmit Usenet messages. It is a protocol for transferring data between different Unix computers. The owner of the news server determines how long the messages remain on the server. This is called the retention time. This is rather short with most of the offered news servers of the Usenet providers and also the selection of the newsgroups is rather small. However, there are still the paid newsgroup providers (called payservers). You need these if you want to upload and download something to the Usenet without any problems.

What is a newsgroup?

Newsgroups or discussion forums are areas on the Internet where you can discuss any topic. It doesn't matter if you just want to exchange ideas about cooking recipes or if your guinea pig has a rash: You're sure to find what you're looking for in newsgroups. The newsgroups are global discussion forums in which everyone can express their opinion on a topic, subject to certain rules. Likewise, any user can create a new newsgroup on any topic. However, certain knowledge about the organization of a newsgroup must be available and the newsgroup must be approved by a committee before it can be published.

However, a newsgroup must not be confused with a chat. This is because a chat is always live, which means you write a reply that is read directly online. In a newsgroup discussions take place time-delayed. Because each contribution (question and answers) is sent to a news server. This is something like a public bulletin board. As soon as the sent contribution has arrived on the news server, it is published and everyone can read the contribution and, if necessary, reply publicly or privately to this contribution. This answer also ends up on the news server first, from where it is published. However, the news server does not store the individual posts forever, but deletes the messages after a certain period of time.

further information can be found under this link: Usenet Search by Alyn Smith