It was designed to follow the standard message header protocol used in existing newsgroups. In addition to the standard message header lines used in all newsgroup messages (including Path:, From:, Subject:, and Date:), news reader software includes the option for a user to add additional, optional headers to messages. These additional headers are prefixed with the label X- so that they will be ignored by news servers and newsreaders. Thus, the phrase "No Archive" was coined as a way to state "Do not archive this message," and the X- header was added to complete the term X-No-Archive.

The proper header for X-No-Archive is to insert the header into a message as follows:

X-No-Archive: Yes

Use of X-No-Archive began when DejaNews debuted in early 1995. DejaNews was the first large-scale, commercial attempt to archive the entire Usenet news feed (or at least a large part of it), and a number of regular newsgroup participants were concerned about privacy rights, as well as the possibility that their messages could be re-posted through DejaNews at some point in the future. DejaNews addressed by these concerns by acknowleding that it would not archive any Usenet messages containing the X-No-Archive header.

When DejaNews was purchased by Google, Google continued to honor the X-No-Archive protocol. Other newsgroup archiving services have also followed in DejaNews' footsteps, though the refusal to archive X-No-Archive messages has been entirely voluntary.