XSUsenet, Free Lifetime Usenet Access
I'm very cautious when I see sites making claims that they offer a service for free for a lifetime. There is usually a catch, just like there is when you see hosting providers offer unlimited bandwidth, but that's another story.
The Dutch Usenet provider XSUsenet is currently offering free lifetime accounts to access the Usenet. Usenet in this regard includes access to binary groups which usually are not offered for free Usenet users.
You get free life time access, a solid 600 day retention, no IP retention, no personal details on file. All you need to do to sign up is to enter information into the registration form on the provider homepage.
Here you need to enter a valid email address and a country (only Netherlands, Germany and Belgium are selectable). Once done you get the login and server details send to the email address that you have entered in the form.
You can then use the information to connect to the Usenet. The speed is capped at 1Mbit per second at two connection tops. Users who need more speed or connections can upgrade their account to premium access starting at $6.99 for a 100 Mbit connection per month.
Free Usenet clients that you can use are the web based SABnzbd or Grabit. Please note that Usenet or newsgroups are not only about downloading binary files. You find many discussion groups there, Mozilla is for instance using the Usenet for some of their development discussions.
It is likely that the company will eventually close down the creation of new free accounts. I'd suggest you grab a free account as soon as possible.
I have tested the service and it worked just fine. I received the confirmation email with the Usenet server information in my email. Setup was a breeze and connection speed was as advertised.
Users who are just starting with the Usenet, or want to try it without giving away personal information can use the service to do just that. It is not anonymous though, considering that the service still sees the IP that you signed up with and that you connect with.
You can check out the service's homepage here. The sign up form is at the right side. (via)
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Hi Dwight,
For logging in on our website, you will need to use your email address used for signing up. Your Usenet username will be a number of digits, not the email address. To troubleshoot your connection settings, please check http://www.xsusenet.com/client/faq.php?showArticle=11
Thanks for signing up!
XS Usenet
I signed up for their service. They sent me my username and password. I pasted them into the form on their client page. The server gave me an error saying unknown user or incorrect password. :(
Yes I allowed cookies for that site.
DO NOT USE THEM – Used a paysafe card, lost my money, have submitted tickets, no response from emails or messages. Nothing!
Hi,
I’ve just personally addressed your ticket and apologize for any inconvenience caused.
We’ve recently launched a fully revised payment system and we’re still sorting out a few minor operational bugs. We apologize for any inconvenience caused and invite anyone who has an issue to do contact us, we will correct it and we will compensate you for any time spent waiting!
Kind Regards,
XS Usenet Team
XSUsenet will steal your money with paysafecard. the transaction will proceed far enough to have your $$ deducted but you WILL NOT receive the service you paid for.
I filed a complaint with Paysafecard as well and still my money is stolen!
AVOID IF YOU PLAN ON USING PAYSAFECARD
This crap doesn’t work. No email, no recovery email either. Fack this “free” shit.
It works, but it seems to be 30 days only. After that it ceases working.
Also only 1 account per user. So only good for a trial.
work great… more 600Ko/s with free accounts
excellent
when I sign up there comes a notification saying the account is not valid or expired please give me the solution at my email- islamasif42@yahoo.com
I think the site is not working anymore!.. am looking for a mediashout 4.5 with license! pls email me pingpong_jinx@yahoo.com
Trying from the US, no luck. Tried my VPN to come in from UK. Tried the various alternate ports as well as SSL. All gave me the same response: Access denied to your node. I presume this means no US and no UK. Perhaps this will stop someone else from wasting time from these locations.
Hi,
Please send your email again with your username and I will make sure somebody looks into that.
XSU
thank for the reply guys, but i checked both spam folder and inbox. but its still not there. if the volumes are high as you say, I guess I just have to wait it out, Even tried the email to support desk option. nada. Will update once I get any email from XSusenet.
thanks.
Eddie
Hi,
We’re very sorry about the email communication, due to the high volumes of signups, some recipient spam filters may move your welcome email to your spam box.
We’re working on getting this resolved.
Thanks,
Eddie, did you check your spam inbox?
That was where mine was, got it almost instantly.
It’s been almost 4 days, there is no email with the login details. No update on the site either. Like they say -> If it’s too good to be true….
I get a:
502 reader3.xsusenet.com: Access denied to your node
Free vs Premium
Free Premium
Speed 10mbit 100mbit
Connections 2 12
SSL
Valid 30 Days Unlimited
As low as Free €2.99
The 10Mbit being shown for 30 days was a mistake. Signups for the 1Mbit lifetime are still available!
Wow got in, thank Xsusenet
It’s working for me now. I signed up and I’m using Newsbin. It’s really slow (150kbps) but it’s free and SSL even works. Yes, it’s not as fast the $6/month Altopia news server that I used to use, but it’s free. It’s hard to complain about that.
Still cant register, I get a we will be up in 1 minute messege
The site is back up and taking applications.
ups, meant 11am and 12noon
Registered yesterday, all worked fine using SABnzbd.
But since tody, between 11 and 12 pm (GMT +2), there is this error:
502 reader1.xsusenet.com: Access denied to your node
We expect to start accepting new signups again this afternoon. As mentioned before, we have been swarmed with new users and our front-ends simply could not deal with the significant load increase.
We apologize for the inconvenience. For those who have already opened an account with us, we hope it is to your likings! For those waiting to create one, please bear with us a bit longer.
Kind regards,
XS Usenet Team
I think 1 Mbps is very slow speed (comes around 256 k bytes per second). I have 10 Mbps connection and I am able to achieve speed of 1.2 MBps with torrents. Why use usenet then?
It is slow because it is free. If you pay, you get faster speeds. Usenet is more like downloading from file hosts than it is over a P2P network. Only the provider sees your connection, whereas other peers see you when you download or share files via Bittorrent.
argh, I KNEW this was going to happen.
November 26 2011, 11:43 PM CET
Signups have been temporarily suspended due to high demand, we apologize for the inconvenience.
Not sure why it says November though
After trying intermittently all day, it worked for me at 3:30pm mountain time.
I got the email with my username and password however now I can’t get past the login as it times out. You get what you pay for, I guess. FWIW, I’m in the US and not using any proxy.
Website’s down
Submit button is still broken for me. I’ve submitted a support ticket on the site which actually worked fine, but no reply yet.
Not working yet. Maybe it is slow for registered users. But the submit button get the same error.
Confirmed as working now, From NZ, slow but working
Thanks for letting everyone know. As I said, they have probably been swarmed with reviews and new users.
Further to my last,
I registered yesterday when I first spotted this artcle ( thank you)
and got an immediate username and password issued from the site.
I tried logging in with Sasbzdb last night with no result, time-out on the connection. This morning however it worked on a test App download of 3 Meg. That’s when I reported it was working. I’ve since tried with a 600 meg file and that stopped after 30 meg, with a connection refused status, I’ll keep stabbing at it, and as you say its probably the rush and they didn’t expect half the planet to take them up on it. It will come in handy here in NZ since they brought in the skynet law on 1st Sept. I’ve a lot of less tech friends who torrented and are now nervous.
Same thing here. Argh.
I’m facing the same problem as Paul and I’m from Belgium! Me thinks their site is a bit broken… I’m feeling tempted to try the Bobby Tables trick…
Ya facing the same prb as Paul.i’m frm India
Same issue (Duplicate entry ’14251′ for key 1) here in CANADA. Is this only for the countries listed in the drop down?
Can i get subscription in to this iam from india?
Looks like they got SQL injected?
Getting the same error here in the Netherlands
I get the same error as above two. Is this confirmed to work for US?
Same error for me:
.Submit error: SyntaxError: missing ) in parenthetical
Duplicate entry ‘14251’ for key 1
Can’t register. I got the following message instead:
.Submit erroe: SyttaxError: Syntax erroe
Duplicate entry ‘14251’ for key 1
Thanks guys, the missing piece of the puzzle has now been found.
Hi,
I managed to get an account for xsusenet with confirmation email and downloaded sabnzbd but am a total n00b to usenet.
I gather sabnzbd is a downloader like utorrent is for torrents and I was able to input my account details into sabnzbd.
What I dont understand is how you search for the nzb files.
Can someone point me in the right direction please.
thanks in advance
You can use binsearch.info for instance for that, check this out https://www.ghacks.net/2008/03/08/the-best-usenet-search-engines/
try this guide http://www.howtogeek.com/71315/the-how-to-geek-guide-to-getting-started-with-usenet/
Site down?
Yes appears to be down, maybe they have been swarmed by new users.
The page doesn’t even load for me…
I got the access password etc for my account but cant seem to gain a connection, from New Zealand. I wonder if they will lock this down to Europe…. hope not..
Does not work…Dont see where to register
Hoi Martin, Thanks for the tip. I have put this tip from you about the offer (not your article) (with a thanks to you) on main facebook account. I hope that this not a problem?
No problem at all :)
Ben: Because PeerBlock is a crappy program that doesn’t “protect” you.
What’s more interesting, is why the reader.xsusenet.com SSL cert points to reader2.xlned.com (and is issued by news.xlned.com). Does XSUsenet have a ‘connection’ to XLned?
Martin, did you use the Grabit client? It’s not working on SABnzbd…
I used SABnzbd.
why does Peerblock blacklists it as “Netrouting Telecom”?
could it be a honeypot?
Thanks guys
So this won’t work in the US?
I’d say it should works, but have not tried,