ANON: remail abuse

[Karl Barrus]

Earlier, Chris Odner brought up some concerns about abusing anonymous
remailers.  (I deleted the message before saving it, so I can't quote
from it).

He mentioned his friend is getting abusive mail, probably from telnet to
the smtp port, and then mentions the "remailers are perfect for those
who would harrass and abuse others."  Wait a second... here is an
example of harrassment right now, without anything to do with the
remailers!  I mean, if you want to really hassle somebody, you could
just wait patiently until someone leaves their machine for a few seconds
and type

sh (or ksh)
while true 
do
uuencode /vmunix irritate | mail somebody at somewhere
done

followed with a

clear

and then leave quickly.

I guess I'm one of those people who would get upset and blame the person
responsible for the action instead of software and/or technological
advancement for possible providing a means.

As Peter mentioned, payphones are already perfect for harrassment.  So
is junk mail... and the crucial thing here is these services cost money.
I'm sure future remailers will incorporate digital cash and be a
pay-for-each-remail service.

Chris also mentions concers about distributing porn and stuff like that
through remailers.  I guess this could be done, but why give up the
speed and convenience of ftp, fsp, irc (dcc), and usenet posting?  These
services distribute files faster and further than remailing.

/-----------------------------------\
| Karl L. Barrus                    |
| elee9sf at menudo.uh.edu             | <- preferred address
| barrus at tree.egr.uh.edu (NeXTMail) |
\-----------------------------------/