Supernews Support & FAQ

If you are a current user and have questions you can complete our Technical Support or Billing Questions form.

FAQ

When You Signup
Getting Started
How Your Account Works
What is a Connection?
Download Speeds
How Accounts Are Invoiced
How Do I Post To A Newsgroup?
Customer Privacy
Where can I read more about Usenet newsgroups?
I see over 100,000 newsgroups, but don't understand what a lot of them are about, where can I research information about these newsgroups?
Free Trial

When You Signup With Supernews

Supernews will email your username and password within about an hour after you complete the signup form. Please make certain that you do not have any kind of spam filtering that might prevent this email from reaching you.

You can use our password utility to request a copy of your account information at any time. If the password utility form does not recognize your email address, then either the address was mistyped or the signup was not successful. Please contact support for assistance.

Getting Started with Supernews

All news readers will require:

  Server Name:      news.supernews.com
  Authentication:   required
  Username:         (exactly as it appears on startup email)
  Password:         (both username and password are case sensitive)

Nearly all news readers will use the default port 119. Supernews will also allow connections on port 23 and port 80 (NNTP only).

If you have been using a different news server previously, you will need to download a new list of newsgroups from our servers. For any groups you have previously downloaded headers, you should delete all the old headers, and download new ones. Unsubscribing and then subscribing again, will usually accomplish this.

How Supernews Accounts Work

All accounts will renew every month, unless you complete the online Cancellation Form in our Member Center.

Accounts will remain active throughout the month, or until you reach your download limit (unlimited accounts excluded). If you have a download in progress at the time you reach your limit, Supernews will allow you to finish that download. The extra bytes downloaded, beyond your limit, will be applied to the following month.

You can keep track of how much is downloaded, using our Members Area. The amount of download displayed does not include bytes downloaded as headers. Remember that binary attachments are encoded, so the number of bytes you download will not match the size of the files.

When you reach your download limit, you can renew your account right away, if you wish, in our Member Center. You can also select an option for this to occur automatically, whenever you reach your limit.

What is a Connection?

A connection, or concurrent connection or stream, refers to a session that your news client opens with our servers. Having multiple connections open at the same time allows you to browse newsgroups while your client also downloads queued articles. Multiple connections helps you maximize your download speed. For instructions on opening up multiple connections, please refer to the Help section of your news client.

Download Speeds

Download speeds are heavily dependent on the size of your connection and the path between our servers and you. Our servers are capable of filling your broadband pipes, so you should be limited mostly by how fast your connection is. However, if you are far from our servers or have high latency on your links, you may see diminished throughput.

How Accounts Are Invoiced

Accounts renew each month , or when you use our Member Center to renew your account early. At that time, we will issue an invoice against the credit card we have on record. If the transaction does not authorize, the account will be suspended until you instruct us to either retry the credit card, or you provide new payment information, using our Member Center.

You can view your invoices online, in our Member Center.

How Do I Post To A Newsgroup?

Posting is allowed for all Supernews customers. Simply use your news reader's posting functionality and your post will be uploaded to Supernews news servers and distributed to the rest of Usenet. To configure your news client please read 'Getting Started'.

How Supernews Handles Private Customer Information

Supernews will never sell or release any information about our customer. We respect your right to privacy.

Supernews does not monitor or record what newsgroups our customers use, or what articles they download.

The information we do have will only be released if we are ordered to do so by a court, with appropriate jurisdiction.

Where can I read more about Usenet newsgroups?

UsenetPedia is a good resource for general information on Usenet related information and technologies.

I see over 100,000 newsgroups, but don't understand what a lot of them are about, where can I research information about these newsgroups?

By reading a Newsgroup Charter or FAQ, you can easily find the tone of the forum, what topics are discussable and if the forum includes a moderator. To learn more about Usenet/Newsgroup FAQs, visit www.usenetfaqguides.com.

Free Trial Explained

The Free Trial consists of 30 days of free uncensored access with 10GB of usage on our NNTP servers. The free trial is available for new customers only. Headers are not counted against your 10GB trial. The Free Trial is only available to new customers; previous subscribers are not eligible for the Free Trial. You can signup for the Free Trial at: https://www.supernews.com/signup

Your credit card will not be billed during Free Trial

Your card won't be charged during the 30-Day Trial. Once you have completed 30 days of service, your credit card will be billed for the plan you chose during signup. The transition from Trial to Full Membership is automatic with no extra configurations required on your part; although you can activate your full service at any time by logging on to Supernews's website.

Changing your plan during the Free Trial

If you'd like to change to a plan other than the one specified at signup, simply log into your Member Center at https://www.supernews.com and select a different plan.

Canceling your Free Trial

If you don't want to be billed, make sure you cancel your account before you have completed 30 days of service. You can do so by logging into your Member Center at https://www.supernews.com. If you don't cancel your subscription before the trial is over, in accordance with our terms and conditions, your credit card will be billed and your account will switch from a trial subscription to an active membership.