With the entire world going more paranoid, not to mention ISP's jumping on anything that can seem like file sharing and many/most premium usenet providers now offering SSL encrypted connections I tought it was time to write a simple guide as to how to enable SSL encyrption when using Yenc PowerPost A&A wich I assume most people use to post to newsgroups.

This guide is unfortunately only for Windows users, I have no idea about how to do the same thing on a Mac, under Linux, BSD or other operating systems.

Step 1:
Download the actual SSL tunnel software called Stunnel from the Stunnel webpage and install it.

Step 2:
Go to the Stunnel install directory (usualy c:\Program Files\stunnel\) and open the stunnel.conf file in notepad or whatever other favorite text editor you might use.

In that file look for a line that says:
;client = yes

Remove the ; from the start of that line so it now reads
client = yes

Then add the following lines to the bottom of the file:
[nntp]
accept = 119
connect = address.for.your.ssl.enabled.newsservers:port.number

The accept line indicates what port the Stunnel software should listen for traffic on and this should be 119 as that is the standard usenet port. Don't worry if you have changed that to something else for whatever reason since this is going on inside your firewall, just keep it as 119.

The address is exactly what it sounds like, the address you usually connect to when downloading using your download client and the port number is the port number used for the ssl connection, usualy 563.

So, just for the example, my lines, when using Usenetserver as my provider lookes like this:

[nntp]
accept = 119
connect = secure.usenetserver.com:563

Save the file and close notepad.

Step 3:
Now open PowerPost and under View/Program Settings set the NNTP News server to:
127.0.0.1
This is your own computer, meaning you will basicly connect to yourself (remember the funny t-shirts witht he text "There is nowhere like 127.0.0.1"?)

Set the port to
119

User Name and Password is the same as you normaly use.

Step 4:
Now, just run Stunnel, it will open with a small icon in the notification area on the bottom right of your screen. It will try to make internet connections so your firewall might complain, just allow it whatever it wants. If it was blocked by a firewall when you launched it it will sit and say something about not beeing able to connect to any servers. Just right click the icon, hit exit and start it again after you have enabled it in your firewall.

Step 5:
Start PowerPost and post as normal.
You are now making a secure encrypted connection to your usenet provider using a SSL tunnel.