Remailer abuse?

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