Newsgroups

[priceyclause]

Ive never used news groups before but recently started using newsgroups provided my NTL.

When scrolling though the list provided by NTL, ive noticed newsgroup names such as "school girl sex" etc.

I havent accessed these news groups for obvious reasons, but are these news groups monitored? If not is there anyway to report such goings on? Ive been on the NTL website but I havent noticed any way of reporting such news groups.

Can anyone suggest anything so that I can bring this to the attention of NTL?

[Buenchico]

(2-part post):

I assume that NTL is providing you with access to Usenet groups, rather than hosting its own groups.

Even if you went into those groups, the chances of you finding anything illegal would be very low. Anyone can set up a newsgroup within the 'alt' category. (For example, it would only take you a few minutes to set up 'alt.priceyclause'). Over the years many thousand of groups have been set up by people hoping that someone will post to them. (This includes both legal and illegal types of posts). The majority of these groups remain either empty or are just full of spam.

In the early days of Usenet there were a few newsgroups which were used for the distribution of child pornography but its unlikely that many, if any, are still operating. This is because Usenet posts can, with the help of ISPs, often be traced back to the people posting them. If there are any Usenet groups still being used for these purposes, they will almost certainly have names which don't make their purpose obvious. It's far more likely, however, that the people who wish to post this type of material have moved on to more secure peer-to-peer systems.

[Buenchico]

I use Usenet groups occasionally. The last time I checked there were nearly 200,000 groups listed. I would guess that well over 150,000 of these had titles which suggested that they carried some form of sexual content. In reality, however, there are probably only a few thousand active Usenet groups. Many of these will carry legal sexual material with probably fewer than a thousand being active groups with non-sexual content. (Most people who used to participate within Usenet's non-sexual groups have moved to places like Yahoo groups because of excessive spam on Usenet). If there are any Usenet groups which still carry illegal sexual content they will be well-hidden by using obscure group names but, as I've stated, it's far more likely that Usenet is now free of such posts. Unfortunately, Usenet is never likely to escape from spam so, in the face of competition from Yahoo groups, etc, Usenet is gradually dying.

Chris

[stefos]

I subscribe to half a dozen newsgroups that I access daily and find informative and invaluable.Although you get the occasional weird poster it only takes 'right click' on message then-'Mark as Read' to avoid whatever you don't wish to read!

[LeMarchand]

I've always found it odd that NTL carry all sorts of sexually-orientated newsgroups, but not any of the alt.binaries.multimedia groups that would be worth having.