Do you post to netnews groups on the web?

If so, try the following in your favorite web browser...

Go to URL:
http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search
In the line:
"Return only messages where the author is"
Type in your From: address (as it appears in articles you post, which may differ from your official email address). See what happens.

I've found this to be a useful resource, but it has risks as well...

I've been a net user since the early 1980s. It has always been the case that whatever we post might come back around years later. In the early days, it was infrequent. Until 1996, I was accustomed to getting just a few email requests per year on long-expired articles I had posted months or years prior.

This phenomenon was rare because prior to that time, lingering old stuff was usually limited to my own periodically-reposted FAQs, quotes in other people's FAQs, files that readers had saved, or articles from rare private nntp sites with long expiration periods. In the "good ´ol days", NetNews was an emphemeral chat in an electronic coffee house; here today, gone tommorrow.

DejaNews (now Google) changed all that in 1995.
Since 1995, virtually
   everything is available to
      everyone, essentially
         forever

The implications of this hit me in 1996 when an east coast print newspaper reporter asked to interview me, for publication, on something I'd casually posted months before, and which had long since expired on the nntp sites that serve my accounts. I managed to decline the honor of being mis-quoted in a sensationalist tabloid, although, as the reporter pointed out, she could have used my netnews quotes without my permission.

Google keeps back articles from May 1981, and with the precipitous decline of disk prices, there's no reason they (and other sites) can't keep net traffic permanently. Several of the web search sites are also archiving links to NetNews articles as well. There's little in the unstated informal agreement about what NetNews is that prevents or even discourages this.

Even if you don't use NetNews, but do participate in other on-line forums (including chat rooms), you need to investigate just how persistent your contributions might be. Meanwhile, back at NetNews...

Even if you insert the
   X-No-Archive: Yes
header in your articles, there's no assurance that all sites will honor it, and any responses containing your quoted material may well omit the no-archive. Yes, you can usually generate a "cancel" from your newsreader, and Google may allow you to delete your own locally-expired old stuff, but that won't delete responses with quotes, your originals from their backup tapes, nor the tapes in hundreds of vaults world-wide.

There probably are sites (FBI and other 3-letter agencies) that have been permanently archiving for some time prior to Deja. It's easy to speculate that some private detective agencies who specialize in background checks have also been archiving. Many corporations have permanent archives of their internal newsgroups (and two had their archives subpoenaed in civil suits in 1998). There are also "best of the net" CD-ROMs, that are essentially permanent records.

• If you apply for a job, or come up for promotion, the HR dept will trawl the net to see what kind of netizen you have been. I've already had people report that comments were made about their net traffic in job interviews, and the issue was raised in a Wall Street Journal article in November 1998.
  
  
• If you apply for a government job, licensed or regulated job, or a security clearance, the FBI will check all your back traffic and update the net profile they've already been keeping on you.
  
  
• If you run for elected office, or are a nominee for a public position, you can absolutely count on the opposition doing intensive dirt-digging on the net.
  
  
• If you apply for a loan/mortgage, the bank or credit reporting agency might check your net presence for known financial risk factors. (This will take a while to come about. Most banks are still operating in the 19th century.)
  
  
• If you apply for college admission, or membership in a wide variety of organizations, they'll check your net credentials.
  
  
• If you even ask someone on a date, they'll browse to see if you are a net bozo. Yes, this happens. There's even a trendy phrase for it: "I googled him/her".
  

Everything you post (read "publish") needs to be something you won't be embarassed about decades from now. I had already been writing with that objective in mind, but for different reasons. I suspect most news users simply aren't aware of the issue, and thus this article.

I doubt that today's typical net-flamers, ranters, ravers, pranksters, foamers, loons, spammers, cranks, kooks, trollers and boors are even dimly aware of what has been quietly happening, and what it could mean to them down the road.

Also, do you have children using NetNews? Be sure to teach them the facts of net life. Have them poke Google and type in their ID. Ask them "would you be embarrassed if I looked at any of those articles?" They'll get the message. Conversely, if you don't have children, but plan to, they will probably be able to read everything you've ever posted; and if it's still out there, they will.

Awareness of this is slowly growing. The on-line magazine Salon had an article, entitled "The Net Never Forgets", by J.D. Lasica, in November 1998 (link removed because Salon is close to dot.gone). The point of it was that yes, your old (deleted) web pages are forever, too.

Even a single ill-considered netnews reply by a responsible net user (like you) could cause trouble tommorrow that far outweighs any momentary satisfaction today.

Will any of the above scenarios actually affect you? Perhaps not, but at least you now know about them, and can assess the risks for yourself.

• Why are you here?
• What results do you want from your article?
• Is it likely, in fact, to produce those results?
• Is it likely to produce some side effects?
  Are those acceptable?