khijol (formerly khijol.yggdrasil.com) is a 486/25 running the Linux operating system. Until March 1 of this year, khijol was used almost exclusively as a place where subscribers to the newsgroup alt.sexual.abuse.recovery could meet electronically and discuss abuse issues. Anonymous accounts were freely given, and site names, etc. were not tracked, allowing the users complete anonymity. Several UNIX utilities were modified so as to obfuscate site names and user names (in the case of rlogin), so that people could have a sense that their privacy was ensured. Many of the people who used khijol were survivors of sexual abuse, often from within their own families. Many were still being abused, and were frightened for their safety, and their lives. It was not uncommon to join a group of survivors and discover that one of the group was actively suicidal and the rest of the group was trying to help get them "over the hump". In the 5 months of its operation, khijol had over 500 anonymous users. The system was available (and used) 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. As it was directly on the Internet, survivors from all over the world used khijol, and it was not uncommon to find 20 or 30 users on the system at any one time. Anonymity and security were a primary concern for most users, and I tried to make khijol as secure as possible. Many custom utilities were written for khijol, including an interactive multi- user "talk" facility that is similar to IRC, but did not allow for non-local connections. To facilitate the completely anonymous exchange of email, and to ensure the privacy of the users, PGP was pressed into service. Users could, from an easy-to-use full screen curses-driven menu, generate a key (their public key was automatically added to a public list) and select user(s) to send encrypted email to. "pgp -m" was added to ELM's configuration, so that decryption would be automatic - one only had to type their password. It was emphasized to the users that no one could read their encrypted email except the person for whom it was intended. ASs it turned out, PGP was a very welcome addition - many felt that their communications were being monitored and their email read (by curious system administrators), and so most users welcomed the addition. At the moment, khijol is connected to the net via UUCP only - I am looking for a new home for it. When it comes back, it will be announced on alt.sexual.abuse.recovery. -- Ed Carp, N7EKG/VE3 ecarp@netcom.com 519/824-3307 an88744@anon.penet.fi If you want magic, let go of your armor. Magic is so much stronger than steel! -- Richard Bach, "The Bridge Across Forever"