When the Pax remailer was shut down, I stopped keeping any logs of my remailer operation. I felt that I did not want to provide information that would be helpful to those forces which oppose information privacy. So, I don't know the history of it, but today I received this message: To: hal@alumni.cco.caltech.edu Subject: Re: what you said you wanted I am shocked that you would send such trash to innocent young girls, whom you don't even know (Not that it is better if you know them) Well, I am appalled!!! Why me?? Is someone using my remailer to send trash to innocent young girls? I am uncomfortable to be facilitating this kind of activity. Can anyone offer suggestions for the ethical thing to do in this situation? Hal 74076.1041@compuserve.com
When the Pax remailer was shut down, I stopped keeping any logs of my remailer operation. I felt that I did not want to provide information that would be helpful to those forces which oppose information privacy.
Is someone using my remailer to send trash to innocent young girls? I am uncomfortable to be facilitating this kind of activity. Can anyone offer suggestions for the ethical thing to do in this situation?
Well, you can't have your cake and eat it. I do know the dilemma you are facing, as I have to face the issue pretty regularily. Either you just provide the service without any regard for the contents, or keep logs and play police every now and then. With anon.penet.fi the choice is simple because the way the server works - there has to be a database mapping anon id's to real addresses, and anyway it is possible to flame orginators of abusive stuff without even knowing their true identity. But in the general case it is a pretty complicated ethical issue... Julf
# From cypherpunks-request@toad.com Fri Jan 29 10:57:37 1993 # From: hal@alumni.cco.caltech.edu (Hal Finney) # Date: Fri, 29 Jan 93 10:07:37 PST # Message-Id: <9301291807.AA08440@alumni.cco.caltech.edu> # To: cypherpunks@toad.com # Subject: Remailer abuse? # # Is someone using my remailer to send trash to innocent young girls? My guess: no. Just a guess, but based on the way it was worded and what troublesome forgeries frequently look like and say, I would bet that the message to you about the alleged trash was forged, and is not responding to any such event. strick strick@osc.versant.com henry strickland
Set up your remailer under an account named remailer so that you don't get such responses. Also, perhaps prepend to outgoing messages a note to the effect that they have been forwarded by you and that you know nothing of the contents. dean
Dean writes:
Set up your remailer under an account named remailer so that you don't get such responses. Also, perhaps prepend to outgoing messages a note to the effect that they have been forwarded by you and that you know nothing of the contents.
I would append the note, because prepended text could screw up chaining of remailers. Chael Hall -- Chael Hall nowhere@bsu-cs.bsu.edu, 00CCHALL@LEO.BSUVC.BSU.EDU, CHALL@CLSV.Charon.BSU.Edu (317) 285-3648 after 5 pm EST
Re: adding notes indicating remailing. There is a standard RFC-822 field, Comment, which would be perfect for just such an application. The original remailer I wrote added the header field Remailed-By to indicate this. You could also use another standard 822 field, Sender, as follows: Sender: anonymous remailing service <remailer@host> Either way, the note goes in the header, where it can be seen or stripped, but in any case handled without munging the message body. Eric
The original remailer I wrote added the header field Remailed-By to indicate this.
Custom headers in RFC822 messages must begin with "X-". Making up new headers that dont begin with "X-" is unnessary and violates the standard.
You could also use another standard 822 field, Sender, as follows:
Sender: anonymous remailing service <remailer@host>
Unfortunatly, some broken mail user agents reply to "Sender" instead of "From" or "Reply-To" (which also violates the standard). brad
You could also use another standard 822 field, Sender, as follows:
Sender: anonymous remailing service <remailer@host>
Unfortunatly, some broken mail user agents reply to "Sender" instead of "From" or "Reply-To" (which also violates the standard).
Right. I am using this method on anon.penet.fi, and get *lots* of incorrectly addressed stuff sent to the administrator because of this. The worst culprits seem to be the BITNET LISTSERV (oh no, not again!), VMS Mail-32 or DECMail or whatever, and elm/pine... There was actually a case of a interaction of VMS mail and CC:mail that caused the final recipient to *only* get the "Sender:" field, not the "From:" field... Julf
participants (7)
-
Brad Huntting -
Eric Hughes -
hal＠alumni.cco.caltech.edu -
henry strickland -
Johan Helsingius -
nowhere＠bsu-cs.bsu.edu -
tribble＠xanadu.com