NZB posting safety

@nntpjunkie:

We seem to disagree a lot, and it's usually over the same subject -- Highwinds. ;)

My accounts at Usenet-News were inserting 8-digit ID-stamps into my posts 'path' field when the service used Highwinds last year, and (at least as of last month) another Highwinds reseller, Newsgroup Direct, also inserts 8-digit ID-stamp into posts in identical fashion.

I am sure that Highwinds is the party responsible for this, rather than each individual reseller. I assume that posts made through other Highwinds resellers such as NewsDemon also have these ID-stamps in the path field.

I accept that Highwinds-owned labels such as Usenetserver and Newshosting --unlike independent resellers of Highwinds service-- might not insert those ID-stamps in users posts.

But it's not always a bad thing. Did you ever notice newsgroup text posts that start with ---BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE--- ? There's a reason for that....

Although copyright-violators might consider Highwinds' mandatory ID-stamps to be a grave security threat, I'm sure that many people would gladly welcome the idea of having every post "watermarked" with their identity - most notably those embroiled in adversarial discussions against bitter enemies.

I've read that years ago the "Church" of Scientology employed people to forge the identities of prominent critics posting to alt.religion.scientology, prompting many of these 'sporgery' victims to digitally sign all their posts with an encryption key. Had they posted through a Highwinds reseller, there would be no need to do this, as it would be technically impossible for Highwinds' ID-stamp (or anything else in the 'path' field) to be forged by another user.

I didn't mean to start a flame war, only bring up the issue to get some idea of my footing before I take a swing. I guess the old adages YMMV & CYA still hold true even in this.

Thank you for taking the time to post your experiences & thoughts regarding this most important issue. Were it not for people like you guys uploading stuff to begin with, none of us would have any thing to download. Cheers.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by zot

... as for posting safety, it's quite possible any of us could get nailed - big time. But so far usenet posters have been left alone. It's ironic that posting copyrighted files onto usenet has been a much safer activity than downloading copyrighted files from Kazaa, Limewire, and Bittorrent.

---

You are misinformed. No one has ever been prosecuted for downloading copyrighted files from the Gnutella network (Kazaa, Limewire, etc).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by OldIronTits

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by zot

... as for posting safety, it's quite possible any of us could get nailed - big time. But so far usenet posters have been left alone. It's ironic that posting copyrighted files onto usenet has been a much safer activity than downloading copyrighted files from Kazaa, Limewire, and Bittorrent.

---

You are misinformed. No one has ever been prosecuted for downloading copyrighted files from the Gnutella network (Kazaa, Limewire, etc).

---

Not a single person? Fact checking underrated
http://www.nowpublic.com/tech-biz/st...azaa-downloads
http://www.stellarbay.com/news/?p=52

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by zot

@nntpjunkie:

We seem to disagree a lot, and it's usually over the same subject -- Highwinds. ;)

I accept that Highwinds-owned labels such as Usenetserver and Newshosting --unlike independent resellers of Highwinds service-- might not insert those ID-stamps in users posts.

But it's not always a bad thing. Did you ever notice newsgroup text posts that start with ---BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE--- ? There's a reason for that....

Although copyright-violators might consider Highwinds' mandatory ID-stamps to be a grave security threat, I'm sure that many people would gladly welcome the idea of having every post "watermarked" with their identity - most notably those embroiled in adversarial discussions against bitter enemies.

I've read that years ago the "Church" of Scientology employed people to forge the identities of prominent critics posting to alt.religion.scientology, prompting many of these 'sporgery' victims to digitally sign all their posts with an encryption key. Had they posted through a Highwinds reseller, there would be no need to do this, as it would be technically impossible for Highwinds' ID-stamp (or anything else in the 'path' field) to be forged by another user.

---

@zot That is an awesome point and in this case I couldn't agree more :) There is certainly the possibility of a unique post ID at the system level, but there are other possibilities to. The unique ID can be being generated by the user's posting client - for example Camelsystem Powerpost has a unique domain ID field in the headers settings to be attached to every post that you upload. I guess this would be useful for internal organization tracking or for external organization awareness.. That certainly would have been useful in the Scientology fiasco :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by zot

@nntpjunkie:
I've read that years ago the "Church" of Scientology employed people to forge the identities of prominent critics posting to alt.religion.scientology, prompting many of these 'sporgery' victims to digitally sign all their posts with an encryption key. Had they posted through a Highwinds reseller, there would be no need to do this, as it would be technically impossible for Highwinds' ID-stamp (or anything else in the 'path' field) to be forged by another user.

---

I don't think thats how X-Trace works. If 2 people are posting using the same name/email/whatever from Highwinds, how do you know who is who? Also, since X-Trace changes for each post, how are you parsing it so you know who is who?

@cola

The Highwinds ID-stamp I was talking about has nothing to do with x-trace. Different issue entirely. Did you read my post on the first page?

Its highly dependent on the reseller, some ISPs (sometimes usenetserver) use 00000000 and some ISPs won't get one at all. Easynews, newsguy, usenetserver, newshosting, ect won't get one either. Perhaps its the certain tiers.