Newsgroups are online discussion areas which allow users to read messages and send messages to other people reading the group. All you need to read news messages is a news reader program and the name of the newsgroup that you wish to browse.
All messages are available to the public.
Unlike mailing lists, news messages are not sent to an e-mail address. In order to read news messages, the user must actively connect to a newsgroup. For many people, the convenience of having messages mailed to them makes mailing lists attractive. On the other hand, newsgroups allow users to choose what and when to read the messages. It is often difficult to find mailing lists on a particular topic.