You can continue using that website, but what they are doing is just
repackaging a common service and hiding that fact. A bit sleazy, if you
ask me. Google does the same, you will find this group there under
"alt.support.hepatitis-c", but Google at least mentions that it's just
providing an interface.

What you are reading here is a newsgroup in what's called "Usenet". You
can directly access this group through your ISP's news server (most have
one) and a news reader, the most common of which is Microsoft's Outlook
Express, which does most people's e-mail. It isn't e-mail, though, and
it isn't a real-time chat. The big advantage of using a news reader is
that you can create filters for threads and people you don't want to
read, and that you can follow threads more easily than through the slow
and tedious web-interface. WebTV, which "C F" uses, has its own
interface to Usenet.

Thomas