This was discussed on reddit a bit ago. The same company in place now ran IPVanish and they logged and rolled over on the user. No reason to think they wouldnt do the same with privado and if you are ultra worried tin foil hat-ish, would they do the same with their usenet? who knows. https://torrentfreak.com/ipvanish-no-logging-vpn-led-homeland-security-to-comcast-user-180505/
blocks could be a bit restrictive unless you reliably download the same each month so you have predictable usage. if you ever deviate or find yourself having to hold back so you dont burn up your block, an unlimited account may be better and then you dont have to worry. unlimited is cheap enough now.
Frugal Usenet is on the same backbone as Usenet.Farm
the unlimited frugal servers are newshosting / omicron backbone. frugals bonus server is what is usenetfarm so both backbones together when you subscribe. shouldnt be any real need for a usenetexpress block account since you would have the usenetfarm backup already but i guess if you find a great sale you could throw it into your newsreader.
but they are literally the same servers operated the exact same way. a take down happens on newshosting will be reflected at the same exact time on all resellers, astraweb included. astraweb moved over to nh / omicron a few years back where prior they were their own system and i remember when the dmca thing was a big thing for them but that was like a decade+ ago. newshosting or any reseller are all connecting to the same servers, look at the IPs and how close they are, follow the traces to the same location.
that map is a bit out of date but also doesnt show all the sellers. this might show things better, https://whatsmyuse.net/
i can understand that about crypto. Fwiw, this discussion was posted recently about usenet and crypto, https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/2612428 Others take crypto and several of the ones mentioned take it directly without a processor and have better perf. than the newsdemon system.
Usenight is full speeds only at certain times of the day right? Plus the retention isnt as high so that is probably the price difference. Frugalusenet and Blocknews also take crypto the same way (same owners) and price is a bit more reasonable if you dont need the super high retention all the time but yes i agree about crypto. if you have to use a payment processor for it it sort of defeats the purpose.
BTC you would “probably” be okay but if you are going full anon i think Monero is the only true anon. im not really into crypto so i dont know how true that is, I just see that mentioned a lot that Monero / XMR is a privacy coin. Cash is king though. Maybe the most annon? frugal usenet and Blocknews actually have a cash payment option on the website at checkout, if you are worried maybe ask them the track record for receiving it. If you are doing VPN to, Mullvad takes cash but you do not need vpn for usenet.
there are plenty of usenet services out there that are cheap in cost. frugal usenet is well regarded since it is, well, cheap and you get access to two usenet backbones with one sub. once you start down this rabbit hole most will have one main server and a backup for missing posts at times which is why frugal is a good value.
yes seems silly they would do it for usenet but i would have said the same thing a few years ago about vpn. i guess things are fine until they arent… my main surprise in the vpn case was their willingness to work with the feds. they told them once we dont have anything and then THEY contacted the feds and said hey, ask again why dont you.