Support

A TweakNews account is issued to an individual user and may not be shared between users. In case of improper use of an account, Tweak has the right to close that account without prior notice.

First, try to search your e­mail as that is the method we use to notify you upon ordering a TweakNews product. If you are unable to locate the e­mail we have sent you, you can do a password reset. Your new password will be sent to your e­mail address. Request a password reset here. Request a password reset »

When you purchase your first account, or sign up for a free trial, you receive your username and password by e-mail. These details are for your Usenet connection and also to log in to the members area on our website. If you need help setting up your Usenet client for downloading, basic details are under the section 'Newsgroup Software' or refer to the publishers website.

If you need to know your account expiration date, or want to know what the usage of your block account is, please go to the account usage page . This page also gives information about the trial account usage.

You will need a news client; there are free clients available, as well as commercial packages. Rules of behavior for the use of Usenet are provided in the 'Netiquette' section.

In Usenet the username and password data is sent without encryption (unsafe); when using public networks such as WiFi, or even your own network, you can configure Secure Socket Layer (SSL) from within your news client to encrypt your traffic (safe). SSL requires connection via the following ports: 563 or 443 on server news.tweaknews.eu. SSL is available for all of our subscriptions and block accounts, including the trial account.

We offer support in Dutch and English, and all e­mail messages are handled within five business days.

All recurring plans come with a 7 day risk-free trial, unlimited data, and unlimited downloads. Get unparalleled search capabilities and a full feed of 4,200 days of binary retention across all newsgroups.

You can reach our servers on: news.tweaknews.eu

A news client is a piece of software that will allow you to retrieve articles from a newsgroup. The news client communicates directly with our servers.

You should be able to use all standard settings that come with your Usenet client. We use the standard ports for Usenet connections (119) and the standard port for SSL traffic as well (563). Though some clients are more extensive in their configuration, using the standards should make you good to go. Oh, don't forget our server address is: news.tweaknews.eu

We can't support all Usenet clients, but we want to help you choose the best ones. That's why we support three of the most user friendly and most widely used clients.

• GrabIt
• NewsBin Pro
• SABnzbd+

We are aware that there are a lot more clients out there and they might just work as well. Good support on those clients might just be a search-query away. You should have no trouble setting up your client to use our Usenet services.

The most modern way to download from Usenet is by means of nzb-files. But if you want to participate in discussions, or search for a binary manually, you need headers. Our platform supports downloading of header files.
With your news client, you can retrieve the headers for newsgroups. Be sure to set the maximum number of headers you want to retrieve. Some newsgroups, such as alt.boneless, contain millions of headers and are a real challenge for your computer's memory.

Because of restrictions amongst Usenet servers, articles containing a file can often be a maximum of 50 Megabytes. Binary articles bigger than 50 Meg are therefore broken onto a lot of different pieces, so they can be distributed on Usenet while obeying the limits. What your client does then, is download al the different pieces and 'glue' them together, if you will. But sometimes, your client can't find all the different pieces it needs because they got corrupted or are lost.
This is what parity files are for. They are bits and pieces of data that enable your client to fill in the blanks of another missing piece of data it needs to successfully rebuild your download. Most modern clients will download, repair, rebuild and extract your download without a hassle. But sometimes you need an extra software package to do the rebuilding for you.

As explained in the previous section, the one about PAR2 files, the huge files you download are broken off to smaller pieces across Usenet. To get the whole picture, you have to hunt down each and every one of the files that are used to compose the bigger file you're downloading. To make life a bit easier, some smart people came up with NZB files. These files contain the location of every part of your download, so your client knows where to find the different pieces.

If for any reason the speed on TweakNews (Usenet) suddenly slows down, it might be resolved by taking a number of simple steps:

1. Set the maximum number of threads permitted depending on your subscription.
2. If the connection goes by port 119, try port 563.
3. Turn off all firewalls or set them up so that they do not filter or block Usenet traffic.
4. Try a different news client. Grabit, for example, can run more slowly than NewsLeecher from time to time.
5. If none of these things helps, contact your Internet provider and ask whether Usenet traffic is restricted on port 119 and 563. Otherwise try port 443.

To test the speeds your internet connection allows you to achieve we have a speedtest where you can download files of 1GB, 100MB and so on. The link is: http://speedtest.tweak.nl

TweakNews has no download limits, however, your provider might set limits. Bear this in mind when you are planning to download large quantities. TweakNews is not responsible for additional charges from your provider.

For more information, go to: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1855.

TweakNews is a Dutch company and operates under Dutch law.