How to find alt.support.cancer.breast
"alt.support.cancer.breast" is a newsgroup on the Usenet news service, dedicated to breast cancer patients, their carers, relatives, and anyone who's life is affected by breast cancer.
You can access this either directly through a Usenet or news account, or indirectly through a public news server on the Web. Usenet servers usually only carry posts from the last few weeks,
Google, on the Web, has the complete history.
Usenet
If you are accessing from a computer by a dial-up or cable connection then it is likely that your Internet Service Provider (ISP) will include a news service with your account. Its name will have been in the set-up details as News Server or NNTP Server or something like that.
If you use a generic email program (e.g. Netscape Communicator or Microsoft Outlook Express) you will find a Newsgroups item on the menus. When you click this, the program will invite you to download a list of newsgroups. This will take a few minutes, but you only have to do it the first time you access Usenet, the list will be kept on your hard disk thereafter. Once the download is finished type in the name "alt.support.cancer.breast" and click on the 'subscribe' button.
When you look at your email, you will find you now have a new folder "alt.support.cancer.breast" under the name of your news server.
If your browser is included as part of the service, eg AOL or WebTV, then you will need to follow the provider's instructions for access. For example on AOL go to keyword "newsgroups".
Web server
If you have access to the World Wide Web but not to a News service, there are a number of companies who provide a connection to Usenet from the web. They copy all published messages to a website, and allow you to post messages to newsgroups. The service is paid for either by advertising or by subscription.
The most popular service is Google (formerly Deja News).
Spam
If you post a message on a newsgroup, then you should bear in mind that you are publishing your email address and may receive some unwanted mail, known as spam. There exist companies who 'harvest' addresses from Usenet to use as mailing lists. It is not difficult to delete these from your mail, personally I receive an average of about 10 per day, but if you want to avoid this, you can alter your 'reply' address before you start posting. Some people make a clearly visible alteration such as including NOSPAM in the name, so that humans can correct it before replying but robotic address harvesters generally will not, although some are clever enough to recognise such a simple change.
A popular solution is to insert some spurious characters in your address and include humerous instructions for removal in the message, eg "tim@timknickers-jackson.co.uk" with, in the message "remove knickers to reply".