Frequently Asked Questions
Introduction
On this page, you find answers to the most frequently asked questions we receive by email. You can also find more information how to use the search form and the results. If any of this still doesn't answer your question or if you would like to share something with us, please use the contact form.
Questions and answers
I downloaded something that looks like SPAM or malware, how is that possible?
We have no control over what is posted on Usenet, and unfortunately the amount of spam on newsgroups has increased rapidly. We already use automated tools to filter some degree of spam, but not all spam is detected correctly. Always be careful what you download. If you don't trust the data, don't open it.
What to do with downloads that are protected by a password?
Some content you find on Usenet is protected with a password. It is possible that people upload stuff that they only wish to share with a specific audience. We use automated tools that try to identify protected archives, to be able to show you in the search results, but this solution is not perfect. We don't know any of these passwords, so if you downloaded something that is protected with a password, contact the poster or find the source to retrieve the password, but we cannot help you!
Some of the results are linking to content for which I hold the copyright. Can these be removed?
Please contact us using the notice & takedown instructions. We will process your request as soon as possible, usually within one working day.
Where can I find answers to other Usenet related questions?
The binaries4all site has a lot of tutorials and answers to many of your questions.
Search options
Search for results
When searching, you can enter all the terms you would like to search for. After searching the results shown will match ALL search terms entered. The example below will return results that contain both 'apple' AND 'banana'.
apple banana
Combine search results
Instead of using ALL terms you can also search for only one (or a few) of the terms. To do this you need to use the | (pipe) symbol.
The example below will return results that contain 'apple' OR 'banana' or both.
apple | banana
Exclude search results
Sometimes, you might want to exclude results that contain certain words from the results. If you want the word 'apple', but not 'banana' in your search results you can enter the following query:
apple -banana
Exact terms
You can search for terms that appear in the EXACT order. Because if you search for 'apple banana', the terms will not have to appear in the exact order. If you put quotes (") around the terms, results will be shown that match the exact order:
"apple banana"
Advanced options
Below the search bar, more search options are available to find exactly what you want. Below, these options are explained.
Age
All newsproviders have a certain retention (the maximum amount of days that files will be kept on the server before they are deleted). To prevent the search to return results that are too old (for example because the results will be older than your newsprovider can provide you with) you can specify a maximum amount of days to search for.
Size
You can also specify the minimum and maximum size to narrow down your search. When you know that your results should be larger than 10MB for example, you can specify a minimum size of 10. All search results smaller than 10MB will then be omitted. The same principle goes for the maximum size field, which will leave results larger than the supplied maximum size out of the results.
SPAM
Because of the recent increase in SPAM on Usenet we are trying (as good as we possibly can) to detect posts that very likely will be SPAM. By default this option is turned on so collections we have marked as SPAM will not be shown. If you think we incorrectly marked collections as SPAM you can turn the option off.
Passwords
Some results are protected with a password. If you want to hide the passworded collections from your results, make sure the 'Hide passworded' option is checked.
Complete results
Some collections are incomplete either because some of our news provider sources did not have parts of the post, because the poster did not upload all parts correctly, or simply because the collection is not finished yet. To leave this incomplete collections out of the results you can check the 'Complete releases' option.
Crossposts
If you are only interested in results that are posted in one single Usenet group, check the 'Hide crossposts' box.
Poster name
When you are looking for a specific name of a poster you can enter this name (or email address for example) in the poster field. Results will then
only contain collections posted by posters matching that name. The options for this field are the same as the main search term field, so OR (|) and NOT (-)
can be used too. For more information see the information above about Search for results.
NFO files
It is also possible to search for collections with NFO files. To do so, check the 'Has NFO file' box.
Group list
To search in one or more you can check the exact groups in which you would like to search. Use the filter field above the groups list to find the groups you want to search. The groups that match your text filter are shown below. When you clear the filter field, all groups are shown again. Note that if no groups are selected in the list, in fact all groups will be searched. Selected groups will be placed on top of the list, so they can easily be located in the long list of groups. You can't select more than 50 groups when searching.
Save your settings
Your personal search settings can be saved so you don't need to re-apply them every time you visit. To save your settings enter your settings in the form and press the 'Save current settings' button.
Search results
Download
To download a file or collection you can click on the 'Download' link below the name of the result. In case you would like to download multiple collections at once you can select the checkboxes in front of the results and press the 'Download selected' button above the results. Selecting multiple consecutive results can be done by using the SHIFT button on your keyboard: first, select the top result, then hold the SHIFT key and select the bottom result. All results in between will also be selected.
View collection
If you want to see the individual files in a collection, click the 'View collection' button below the name of the result. On this page, you see the files, their completeness and there is also a download button available.
Completeness
Every collection contains 1 or more files and every file is build up from 1 or more parts. Sometimes, these parts are missing on a usenet server. Below the results, the number of missing parts are displayed. When the age of the result is not that old, the parts might appear later on the site. If the result stays 'incomplete', the PAR2 files can repair the result. Read more about PAR2 at binaries4all.
Groups
A collection might appear in one or multiple groups. These groups are shown on the result page.
Age
All newsproviders have a certain retention (the maximum amount of days that files will be kept on the server before they are deleted). Please check the retention of your usenet provider to make sure results are still available to you when downloading.
Notice and takedown
We cannot prevent that you might find obscene or objectionable material. If you do come across obscene, incorrect or objectionable results, let us know by following the next steps and these results will be removed. Notice, the results will only be removed from the site, not from usenet!
- Step 1: Select the results you want to be removed and click the button above the results.
- Step 2: Fill out the form and press submit.
- Step 3: You will receive a copy of the email that was send to us.
- Step 4: When your information has ben verified, the results will be removed.
RSS feed
If you want to subscribe to the results of your search query, you can easily do this by clicking the 'RSS feed' button above the results to load this URL into your favourite RSS client.