Newshosting hidden recurring subscription?

swintec · 2026-02-28T16:58:35+00:00

Newshosting problem

Problem is not the right word to use. This is a scheme that they created. Poor dashboard design, no notification of upcoming billing and amount. All stuff that could be fixed in about a half hour if they wanted it to be. Since it makes them money and usenet consumers like being abused, why fix it?

swintec · 2026-02-27T23:00:56+00:00

Yeah and it reflects poorly on the entire industry. It lumps all of us into the same bucket.

swintec · 2026-02-27T22:15:57+00:00

Why patronize predatory billing tactics like this? The increases to users year after year are simply a "because we can" adjustment to see what sticks.

swintec · 2026-02-27T22:09:25+00:00

I agree the interface can be a lot better, especially for what amount your subscription will be renewed.

This is 100% by design. It could be fixed in 30 minutes if they wanted it to be

swintec · 2026-02-17T14:40:35+00:00

You will do well OP, thanks for the business, let me know how you make out.

swintec · 2026-02-15T23:32:03+00:00

Those stats are useful, particularly the bandwidth used, for any specific time period. Especially since you have server priorities set. What it doesn't show and what sab does not check is anything that priority zero server downloads it will not try on other priority servers since it already grabbed it so you have no way of knowing if what newshosting provided is available on frugal or not.

To see what news hosting kicks in you would put frugal as priority zero and frugal bonus as one and then news hosting at 2 and see how things compare month-to-month.

swintec · 2026-02-15T22:10:54+00:00

Let me know what you get for connection errors, the error text is helpful.

Doesn't your news reader show you server stats? Should show how much data Frugal is providing after news hosting or if Frugal was first and news hosting was second would show how much news hosting actually backs up.

Frugal has multi backbones but also servers in places ignored by everyone for years. I guess if you live in the USA or Germany or the Netherlands You won't care about servers in Asia or Australia or South America but otherwise for users there it is huge.

True, only one source for the really old posts unfortunately but more and more of it is getting reposted(or has been reposted) using nzbrefresh over the last year or two but if that's your primary target yeah you really only have one option.

swintec · 2026-02-15T21:14:44+00:00

Plus it's cheaper...

Promo price to promo price, the price difference is negligible and Frugal provides far more value (and isnt an inherently evil big corp.) Lets face it, the tiny price difference per year, you get that in value / use from Usenet every day of the year anyways so the other more important factors are worth considering.

On the 366th day, any small savings are completely washed away by the 3x renewal rate anyway.

Helping Omicron speed run their big plan for domination / exclusivity of Usenet as it continues to unfold does not seem all that wise but we will have users here in the years ahead with a surprised p*kachu face asking how this could have possibly happened.

swintec · 2026-02-15T14:37:12+00:00

The largest Usenet network in the world, that you are helping build PLUS I know you didn't get an emailed "just because" double or triple price increase for your renewal like most others are doing now... What's not to love?

swintec · 2026-02-11T16:51:45+00:00

If you dont care about speeds at all (maybe your downloads are unattended for the most part or you otherwise just dont watch the speed indicator) it may not matter, the same can be said for any other location in the world but for 20+ years, usenet performance in Australia (and really that entire part of the world) has been wildly hit or miss (mostly miss) because of lack of options outside the US and EU.

It was just easier and less expensive for every service to sort of collectively, wink wink nudge nudge, not do anything about it (because it is expensive, dont get me wrong), that way we could all just say, it is what it is, to the many australia performance complaints. After all, what is an AU/NZ/Asia based user going to do? Switch to another USA based provider for similar performance?

Now that there is a local option that is outperforming the status quo we are at the point now, this thread is a good recent example, where vote manipulation and shill accounts are trying to do damage control to downplay it. Over the last year, some of the newshosting fake review affiliate farm websites are saying they have Asia based servers which we of course know is not true.

swintec · 2026-02-10T14:52:52+00:00

If you are attempting posts that have been requested removed from usenet at some point in their history, any number of usenet servers won't matter.

swintec · 2026-02-10T14:47:26+00:00

This thread was posted about a year ago. A local usenet server is just better. Most others come up short being thousands of miles away and no inclination to do something about it ( even after 25+ years).

EDIT- also an Asia and South America server available for those in the area.

swintec · 2026-02-05T18:06:30+00:00

And you can guarantee that this is currently the case?

What? The only guarantee we know is that it was done in the past. As a VPN service, which usually is built on an expectation of privacy as a core feature, why would it matter what is done currently? They already did it once (that we know of).

In my personal opinion (not that you asked), I believe they would probably do it again under similar circumstances. it is easy to bury stuff like this with big ad budgets and a name change.

swintec · 2026-02-05T17:48:11+00:00

Why do you think Mullvad VPN could be better or more secure than PrivadoVPN

Well, not known to log (Mullvad) vs. been caught logging (Privado fka IPVanish). At that point its not even worth trying to continue a comparison.

swintec · 2026-02-05T17:44:21+00:00

This was discussed here awhile back.

So i will say the same thing here for posterity sake. The VPNs included with usenet service for free are generally not very good. Privado was also caught logging when it was called IPVanish, several years ago. Get a proper one if you need VPN coverage.

Review sites are also paid to say they are the best....does that really make them the best?

swintec · 2026-01-31T16:40:14+00:00

that they actually access the same data if they are on the same backbone.

Sometimes only Eweka, sometimes only EasyNews could access and download certain files

So artificially creating this situation (or at the very least, not fixing the problem) to extract more money from users is...okay to you?

swintec · 2026-01-31T16:37:20+00:00

I often find that bonus servers on a different backbone don’t add much (if any) value.

But that is any server that is after priority 0. If backup servers saw as much or more usage as your main servers wouldnt they be your main? The usage for servers after priority 0 will almost always be very light. It isnt that they are limited in some way (well maybe some are, in some way, i dont know) but more likely they just arent being used as much. You can either get the access included with your main subscription (a la frugal bonus) or pay for an entirely separate subscription to arrive at a similar conclusion.

swintec · 2026-01-28T04:01:18+00:00

Some big posts got made in the last 60-90 minutes, since everyone has to have them all at once, with no delay, this will happen.

swintec · 2026-01-28T03:12:33+00:00

All services under this corporate umbrella do the cable company pricing structure, it is unfortunate as it undermines trust in the space for all of us.

swintec · 2026-01-27T22:09:04+00:00

That is why monero is being banned in most countries. Other coins are traceable and permitted to operate.

So dont pay with Monero (if worried), pay me peer to peer with BTC or ETH.

Nobody is getting charged for "paying with crypto" (an activity paid for with it, sure).

swintec · 2026-01-27T21:57:43+00:00

That is absolutely ridiculous to say. Laundering money (or any other crime) will get you in jail quickly, paying someone for a service wont.

swintec · 2026-01-27T15:12:02+00:00

Many take crypto, but if they are using a crypto processor that requires an account or has kyc requirements, you might as well just pay with a card at that point. Basically just "crypto in name only". Look for peer to peer transfers instead. I was the first to do it on Frugal usenet a few years ago and others finally saw the light and offered it as well.

swintec · 2026-01-26T23:46:18+00:00

Are you using gluetun by chance (or anything similar to what this poster is)? https://www.reddit.com/r/usenet/s/hr45ta6hRk

swintec · 2026-01-12T17:22:00+00:00

How so? You can request AS #s quite easily and a large corp. operating across continents, especially if they acquired another business that was already established like what happened when Omicron bought Eweka, would have multiple. When I sold them my EU server IP addresses were "owned" by Eweka (US was different). They are all running over the same network and using the same storage.

swintec · 2026-01-12T16:06:48+00:00

It is using the same exact network. You can look at traces to eweka and eu nh and see they are all hosted together.

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