We’ve upgraded the encryption on all of our NNTP servers to include post-quantum key exchange. It’s a new layer of protection designed to keep your connection secure not just today, but well into the future.

You may have heard that quantum computers, once mature, could potentially break the encryption methods that secure most internet traffic today. Post-quantum cryptography is the industry’s answer to that. It’s a new mathematical approach that remains secure even against quantum attacks. We’re now using a hybrid method called X25519MLKEM768, which combines the proven encryption you’re already relying on with this new quantum-resistant layer. You get both: the trust of battle-tested security and the protection of what comes next.

What does this mean for you?

Nothing changes on your end. Your NNTP client will continue to work exactly as it always has. If your system is running OpenSSL 3.5.0 or newer, you’ll automatically benefit from the enhanced security without any configuration changes.

We’re committed to staying ahead of emerging threats so you don’t have to think about it. Your privacy is protected today, and it’ll stay that way tomorrow.

We’re excited to announce that NNTP pipelining support is currently in testing at Usenet Express.

For those unfamiliar, traditional NNTP connections operate in a strict request-response pattern. Your client sends a command, waits for the server to respond, then sends the next. That round-trip wait adds up fast, especially over higher-latency connections. Pipelining changes this by allowing clients to send multiple commands without waiting for each individual response, keeping the connection busy and the data flowing.

Early Results

In our internal testing, we’ve seen significant speed increases on connections with notable latency. The further you are from our servers, the more you stand to gain. Users on high bandwidth connections that previously couldn’t saturate their link due to latency should see a real difference.

Want to Try It?

We’re currently looking for customers interested in helping us test pipelining support. If you’d like early access or have questions, reach out to us at [email protected].

We’ll share more details as testing progresses. Stay tuned.

We’re happy to share that we now accept Litecoin (LTC) and Monero (XMR) as payment options. These new methods give you more flexibility at checkout, with Litecoin offering fast confirmations and low fees, and Monero providing enhanced privacy by design. You can select either option when purchasing or renewing your service, and your account will activate as soon as the payment confirms.

We’ve got another round of deals this year for Black Friday!

Thank you to all of our existing customers that made UsenetExpress possible and welcome to all of you new customers. We hope you are having a great holiday!

Coupon code BF12FOR35

1 year unlimited access $35

Block account deal as well!

Coupon code BFBLOCKS

500G block for $5

If you purchase 3 of the blocks, shoot support an email and we’ll add a 4th for free.

Soon after starting UsenetExpress we were asked if we could implement the ability for end users to post old(er) articles that were not on our new spools. The original poster of the articles wanted to “repost” them using the same message-ids so that they didn’t take up twice the space on providers that already had the articles from the original post. Since the POST NNTP command limits how old the Date: header can be it wouldn’t allow them to post with the original headers. After mulling over possible solutions we decided to implement IHAVE at the end user level.

IHAVE has historically been used by usenet backbones to exchange articles. As the usenet feed volume grew over the years it has mostly been replaced with CHECK/TAKETHIS. Repurposing IHAVE seemed like an elegant solution that has been working well for a few years. It was recently brought to our attention that we never publicly announced the feature. A news reader/client developer noticed it listed in our NNTP ‘HELP’ output while debugging their application. After we explained it’s use case they were pretty excited about the possibilities and mentioned we should consider making it more well known. We’ll release some example code over the next few weeks to give a better technical example. If you’re a developer and would like more information sooner, feel free to shoot support a quick email.