From: jrochkin@cs.oberlin.edu (Jonathan Rochkind)
Um, there's no reason why your remailer's account needs to be logged into interactively, is there? Seems like remailer ops should disable login to remailer accounts, putting '*' into the password field in /etc/passwd, or however unix lets you disable login (I know it does).
This depends on the setup at the remailer machine. If I'm operating a remailer off of a rented account on a commercial machine, how am I going to maintain the remailer when it crashes if I can't get into that account? This would work to some degree if the machine in question had the remailer program in a publically-accessible account, and all the remailer account was doing was A. acting as a forwarding account and B. containing info like the private key of the remailer. But it could still go wrong in a way such that you'd need to get into the account (or have root access, which is equivalent from what I know of the subject). -Allen