Re: e-mail forwarding, for-pay remailers

>E. Allen Smith writes:
>>         There's one problem with this in regards to the "no necessary
>>  connection," and that 's the governmental requirement for mail
>>  forwarding. MBE and any legal other one will want to see at least
>>  two forms of ID including one photo, and have a form that they fill
>>  out using that and send to the local post office. Anyone have a
>>  way around this problem?

There are two different sets of relevant rules in the US - Post Office and
state.
The PO's primary interest is making sure you don't mind if they don't
forward your mail once you stop using the Commercial Mail Receiving Agent
(CMRA) and secondarily that you aren't committing fraud by using the mailbox,
sending people change-of-address notices, ripping off your creditors, and
skipping town.  California has a hopelessly dishonest law that just went
into effect in 1995, which pretends to be designed to protect consumers from
fraud by the 7 million small businesses in CA that uses mailboxes,
and actually requires that _anybody_, business or not, who wants to rent
a mailbox must fill out the Post Office form and also appoint the PO or CMRA
as their agent for service of process and give them up-to-date True Addresses.
The PO, meanwhile, "usually wants" a California Driver's License plus another ID
to rent a box from them.  (I didn't have such a thing when I last rented a box,
and the PO hassled my mailbox company into asking for one when the new law
came out.)  After many attempts at calling the PO to get anybody
who knows the _official_ rules for what ID is required, I found a PO lawyer 
who told me the rules are in the "Domestic Mail Manual", which any
Postmaster has,
so my next step is to look up one of those before I next get a mailbox.

So maybe a random photo ID will work, such as your FooBar Consulting
Employee ID,
and maybe it won't, depending on what state you live in and how clueless
your local Post Office bureaucrats are.

At 05:29 PM 12/13/95 -0600, Andrew Loewenstern 
<andrew_loewenstern@il.us.swissbank.com> wrote:

> I believe C2.org already offers non-dialup access accounts, paid for  
>with ECash, that do not require a valid snail-address or phone-number.  
>I am sure that there will be many more to come.

I suspect Sameer would be happy to open an account paid in advance in
small unmarked bills.  AOL probably wouldn't.  Fortunately, the government
hasn't really caught on to the importance of email, so they aren't requiring
that email providers know where you really live.  I predict 1997 for that.
#--
#				Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# Phone +1-510-247-0663 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281

On Wed, 13 Dec 1995, Bill Stewart wrote:

> <andrew_loewenstern@il.us.swissbank.com> wrote:
> 
> >I believe C2.org already offers non-dialup access accounts, paid for  
> >with ECash, that do not require a valid snail-address or phone-number.  
> >I am sure that there will be many more to come.
> 
> I suspect Sameer would be happy to open an account paid in advance in
> small unmarked bills.  AOL probably wouldn't.

AOL will, however, accept a bogus name, address, and credit card number
(as long as the checksum is correct) for the initial ten free hours plus
however long it takes for the first bill to bounce. 

America "On Line" will also accept direct debits from an untraceable bank
account (for this they charge a little extra). 

This is not to say that I have tried any of this (though I have), nor is
it to say that anything on AOL is worth your time anyway. 

> Fortunately, the government
> hasn't really caught on to the importance of email, so they aren't requiring
> that email providers know where you really live.  I predict 1997 for that.

This promises to be an interesting legal fight.

-rich

On Thu, 14 Dec 1995, Rich Graves wrote:

> > I suspect Sameer would be happy to open an account paid in advance in
> > small unmarked bills.  AOL probably wouldn't.
> 
> AOL will, however, accept a bogus name, address, and credit card number
> (as long as the checksum is correct) for the initial ten free hours plus
> however long it takes for the first bill to bounce. 

Nope.  Not anymore.  Due to excessive fraud, they now check the credit 
card information when you first provide it.

(This made it impossible for a client to subscribe on the day 
after Thanksgiving, because AOL couldn't get through to the credit 
verification through all the shoppers...)

For any nontrivial denomination, this leads me to believe that ecash will 
be verified when online, not offline later.

Jon
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jon Lasser                <jlasser@rwd.goucher.edu>            (410)494-3072 
          Visit my home page at http://www.goucher.edu/~jlasser/
  You have a friend at the NSA: Big Brother is watching. Finger for PGP key.

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On Thu, 14 Dec 1995, Jon Lasser wrote:

> On Thu, 14 Dec 1995, Rich Graves wrote:
> 
> > > I suspect Sameer would be happy to open an account paid in advance in
> > > small unmarked bills.  AOL probably wouldn't.
> > 
> > AOL will, however, accept a bogus name, address, and credit card number
> > (as long as the checksum is correct) for the initial ten free hours plus
> > however long it takes for the first bill to bounce. 
> 
> Nope.  Not anymore.  Due to excessive fraud, they now check the credit 
> card information when you first provide it.

They didn't check it very thoroughly last week. I think they just do some
kind of checksum or maybe an assigned-numbers list lookup; it's too fast
to be anything else. 

I signed up using an unsolicited credit card that was canceled before it
was ever activated. If any paper trail remains (I'd be curious to know
whether there is any, but please don't dig too deep), it should lead to a
nonexistent entity living at my work address (a general mail drop that 
is used by 50 different people). 

Of course I fully intend to terminate the AOL account, or less likely
correct the billing information, before the ten free hours runs out. If
they ever care to investigate, they'll find an email message from me to
myself explaining what happened. 

My AOL account names and the credit card number I used are on the Web.

- -rich
 owner-win95netbugs@lists.stanford.edu
 ftp://ftp.stanford.edu/pub/mailing-lists/win95netbugs/
 gopher://quixote.stanford.edu/1m/win95netbugs
 http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~llurch/win95netbugs/faq.html

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> I suspect Sameer would be happy to open an account paid in advance in
> small unmarked bills.  AOL probably wouldn't.

	I do this all the time..

-- 
sameer						Voice:   510-601-9777
Community ConneXion				FAX:     510-601-9734
The Internet Privacy Provider			Dialin:  510-658-6376
http://www.c2.org/ (or login as "guest")		sameer@c2.org

Rich Graves <llurch@networking.stanford.edu> writes:
> AOL will, however, accept a bogus name, address, and credit card number
> (as long as the checksum is correct) for the initial ten free hours plus
> however long it takes for the first bill to bounce.
>
> America "On Line" will also accept direct debits from an untraceable bank
> account (for this they charge a little extra).

This used to be the case.  However they've fixed this, and won't let you
use your 10 free hours until they have a valid number.

I've been told that Compuserve still accepts any credit card number as long
as the checksum is valid.  I haven't tried it. (Note that as long as you're
only using the "free hours", you're not stealing any services.)

---

Dr. Dimitri Vulis
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps