| Sun 97-11-16 randy(_at_)essex(_dot_)ac(_dot_)uk (Banks B J) list.procmail
|
| > Hello. I'm interested in sending anonymous e-mail. Any information is
| > greatly appreciated.
|
| a) anonymous e-mail tends to be used for spamming;
From the remailer operator list: (also in my page)
10.1 Efga remailer's mailserver and header munging
...Our mailserver implements mail blocks on IP addresses of many of
the spam houses. We also reject mail with munged headers, a common
spammer's practice. Since we throw away all envelopes, and even
with munged headers you are still supplying your IP address, there
is no point in munging the headers to the remailer. It is all
automated. Munging headers does not increase security, but instead
flags the message as a reject.
I'm sure this throws away a lot of valid messages, but it also
helps us prevent other problems we might have. And like has been
mentioned before, our entire system is a 486-80 w/24MB RAM. We've
crashed from Spam type abuse a few times already. The system is
almost adequate for the load of remailer activity we have, but we
need a beefier system for the realities the real world has to
offer. We are being hammered by spam, so we reject it at the
envelope level.
| b) a great deal of junk eminates from aol.com;
Sad and true.
| I am very surprised that you have asked your question w/o providing
| any reasons as to why you might be interested in sending anonymous
| e-mail.
|
| I certainly won't, and I very much hope and expect that no other member of
| this list will not, provide any answers to your question.
I don't take a side on this. But here is the statictics where the
anynymous services are used in Usenet. I use the remailers and anon
accounts too. The necessary pointers to all these services can be found from
my home page
ftp://cs.uta.fi/pub/ssjaaa/ssjaaa.html#where_are_the_remailers_used
10.4 Where are the remailers used for
[andy dustman] Okay, let's take a look at what remailers are
actually being used for. Go to dejanews and type in the addresses
of all the remailers you know of, count the number of posts to each
newsgroup and add them up. Here are the top twenty newsgroups that
I got when I did this little experiment:
10471 alt.anonymous.messages
7272 alt.test
6236 alt.hackintosh
4392 alt.binaries.mac.games
1326 misc.test
1253 alt.religion.scientology
1109 alt.sex.stories
1023 soc.culture.singapore
915 alt.amazon-women.admirers
877 soc.culture.iranian
770 alt.anonymous
622 fj.news.usage
573 alt.politics.nationalism.white
571 alt.sex.spanking
557 talk.politics.guns
543 alt.tv.real-world
518 alt.cracks
517 alt.drugs.pot.cultivation
512 alt.privacy.anon-server
498 alt.revisionism
So what are remailers being used for?
. Private communication in the form of anonymous message pools
. Test posts
. Discussion of Macintosh computers
. Discussion of obscure religions
. Sharing erotic fantasy stories
. Avoiding censorship in Singapore
. Avoiding censorship in Iran
. Discussion of remailers themselves
. Discussion of controvertial political topics (racism, guns, drugs)
. Discussion about a TV show
Note that this list does not include harassing Grandma, money
laundering, and all your other delusional terrorist fantasies.
Welcome to the real world.