Anonymous Post Control

It's hard to filter anonymous posters.  I want to see what a few
of them have to say so I can't filter on the remailers.

If anonymous posters PGP sign their posts, it is still hard to filter
using a lame filter software such as that which comes to Eudora.

It would be nice if toad.com would verify signatures and insert a
header into the messages with the PGP User Id of every poster.
Then it would be very easy for many people to filter the messages
using widely available off-the-shelf mail software.

(I volunteer to adapt majordomo for this task if it seems like
a good idea.)

Peter Hendrickson
ph@netcom.com

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

In list.cypherpunks, ph@netcom.com writes:

> It would be nice if toad.com would verify signatures and insert a
> header into the messages with the PGP User Id of every poster.
> Then it would be very easy for many people to filter the messages
> using widely available off-the-shelf mail software.

I can see the utility, but it means a lot more CPU cycles burned on
toad.  It also brings up the age-old clearsign verification spectre.
(does anyone have that figure for the percentage of clearsigned posts
that verify as good?)

> (I volunteer to adapt majordomo for this task if it seems like
> a good idea.)

In general, I think it's a good extension for majordomo.  It may not get
used on this list, but it makes new tools available for future lists.

Has anyone looked at using Cryptix-extended perl and their PGP lib?  I
haven't got the Cryptix extensions to build on my linux box yet.
- -- 
           Roy M. Silvernail     [ ]      roy@scytale.com
"There are two major products that came out of Berkeley:
LSD and UNIX.  This is no coincidence."
            -- glen.turner@itd.adelaide.edu.au (Glen Turner)

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ph@netcom.com (Peter Hendrickson) writes:

> It's hard to filter anonymous posters.  I want to see what a few
> of them have to say so I can't filter on the remailers.
> 
> If anonymous posters PGP sign their posts, it is still hard to filter
> using a lame filter software such as that which comes to Eudora.

Anonymous users willing to PGP sign their posts could just use a
service like nym.alias.net (mailto:help@nym.alias.net), which even
allows pseudonyms to advertise their PGP keys via finger (slightly
better than the PGP key servers).

When people post anonymously rather than pseudonymously, it is
generally because they don't want a blatant link between all of their
posts (though obviously analysis of writing style is still possible).

Peter Hendrickson wrote:
> 
> It's hard to filter anonymous posters.  I want to see what a few
> of them have to say so I can't filter on the remailers.
> 
> If anonymous posters PGP sign their posts, it is still hard to filter
> using a lame filter software such as that which comes to Eudora.
> 
> It would be nice if toad.com would verify signatures and insert a
> header into the messages with the PGP User Id of every poster.
> Then it would be very easy for many people to filter the messages
> using widely available off-the-shelf mail software.
> 
> (I volunteer to adapt majordomo for this task if it seems like
> a good idea.)

That's what my moderation bot, STUMP, does.

The purpose of that was not so much to help readers work with their 
killfiles, but rather to protect pseudonymous posters from forgeries
involving their names, and let them build reputations.

	- Igor.