Usenet privacy note

If you are not concerned about where your Usenet posts appear on the WWW
and have never used the X-No-Archive header, this does not apply to you.
In that case, I apologize for the intrusion. Please ignore my post--I
will not be posting here again.

For everyone else:

I recently stumbled across a new(ish) Usenet archiving website that
currently *DOES NOT* honor X-No-Archive headers and your group is one
that is archived there (as is mine).

Am I sure? Try this on for size: http://tinyurl.com/2f3m3 (leads to
Google search results)

Until they have changed this, I would suggest that you think twice before
posting anything that is private enough to warrant an X-No-Archive
header. Do with this information what you will.

***

From the Talk About Network FAQ,
http://www.talkaboutnetwork.com/faq.html:

Can I remove a message after I post it?

Talk About Network will not remove posts by request unless they are
deemed offensive, abusive or advertisements. The Talk About Network
reserves the right to delete messages at will for any reason, anytime
at its sole discretion.

Can I prevent my message from becoming a permanent part of Talk About
Network?s Groups?

No.

***

My e-mail correspondence with the Talk About Network (thus far):

----- Original Message -----
From: Eric Beecher
To: info@[SPAM BLOCK]
Sent: Friday, May 07, 2004 7:35 AM
Subject: Usenet & Privacy

Why do you refuse to honor the "X-No-Archive: Yes"
header?

This is neither an accusation to make a point nor
a rhetorical question. I want an answer.

Thanks in advance.

-Eric

--- Talk About Network Manager info@[SPAM BLOCK] wrote:
Eric,
We are working on X-no archive. I assure you that
not only will past x no archives be deleted but
future ones as well. It is a filtering issue. I
apologize for the inconvenience this may cause you.

***

I will believe that when I see it. It is, as the person says, a filtering
issue, but it is NOT a difficult one, and thus should not take much
"working on" to prevent new X-No-Archive posts from showing up. (I don't
know how long it would take to delete the ones that are already there, as
there are a lot of them.)

Furthermore, it struck me that their stated refusal to remove posts may
be illegal, as a post's copyright belongs to its author. I did some more
digging and found this in their ToS,
http://www.talkaboutnetwork.com/termsofuse.html:

Deleting. You may request removal of a message that you have posted
yourself. In contrast, you agree to resolve directly and exclusively
with third parties any disputes you may have about messages that they
posted. In this regard, you understand that The Talk About Network
does not monitor or control the content of information posted by
others, and instead simply provides a service by allowing users to
access information that has been made publicly available.

I have not yet tested their willingness to follow up on post deletion
requests. Those of you who currently have posts with ignored X-No-Archive
headers archived there may wish to do so immediately. (Easiest way to
find out: follow the tinyurl link to Google at top of this post, add your
posting e-mail address -- everthing before the @ -- to the existing
search terms and search again.)

Please note that the Talk About Network consists of ~50 individual sites.
As my posts only appear on http://www.talkaboutparenting.com/ (via
alt.teens), that is the only one I am interested in. If you post to other
newsgroups and wonder if your messages from those groups are also being
archived by the Talk About people, you'll have to check into it yourself
(I don't know what other groups they archive and I don't have time to
find out.)

And finally, let me apologize one more time for intruding into your
newsgroup. It won't happen again.

This has been a public service announcement. Coffee break's over. Back on
your heads.

-ejb

--

Eric Beecher
(Human netizens: remove extra "e" to e-mail.
SPAM-bots: Go to hell.)