What ARE these files with subject lines that make no sense?

[Wombat101]

In the WAREZ groups, I am seeing like 99% of the posts titles are what appear to be an entirely random sequence of characters, like:

[054/259] - "NYD!#*ED#81eyx10e[9eix19xpI<(#!3i8OPu()jkjoij2u910uiz91.part1.rar" yEnc 245366784

I have NO idea what to make of those, except they are probably encrypted.

Does anyone know?

[Quade]

Some groups a "nzb only" so the only way to download from them it to acquire NZB's for the files from one of the NZB search sites. As you say, many if not most are encrypted.

As long as Newsbin has the password it can unrar these files.

[Wombat101]

So... I am assuming that Usenet groups are used to store the actual encrypted files, while the passwords and actual trading of the files takes place on less public sites?

[Quade]

Both the password and the way to download the files are typically described inside the NZB files.