MAIL: Using "nobody"

[Karl Lui Barrus]

Vincent.Cate at FURMINT.NECTAR.CS.CMU.EDU wrote:

Using "nobody" as a remailer is pretty interesting ;) the only problem
being you have to be root or be allowed to choose your own username.

> Imagine remailers also had addresses like "nobody at vox.hacktic.nl",
> and "nobody at jpunix.com".  Now if someone doing an internet wire-tap
> sees mail to "nobody at furmint.nectar.cs.cmu.edu" it is hard for him to
> tell if this means:
>  a) It will just end up in /dev/null like it does on 99% of the machines
>  b) furmint is another remailer
>  c) someone on furmint gets mail as "nobody"

I don't understand: why can't the somebody do a telnet to port 25 and
"vrfy nobody" to see if it points to /dev/null?  Or find out if mail
is piped to a script? 

> So it would be nice if sites with remailers would set the "nobody"
> alias to point to their remailer to start this convention.  Assuming

Again, a pretty good suggestion, but I don't think most remailer
operators can do this even if they wanted to.  I know I couldn't have
with remailers I've run in the past.

-- 
Karl L. Barrus: klbarrus at owlnet.rice.edu         
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"One man's mnemonic is another man's cryptography" - K. Cooper