Re: Detweiler abuse again

[Hal <hfinney@shell.portal.com>]

I understand Eric's comments about the use of logging to "catch" Detweiler
in the act here.  Frankly, I expected more criticism of that action than I
received.  I should make it clear that I do not routinely log, but that after
receiving the complaints I forwarded to the list I added a line to my
maildelivery file to save all messages with the same subject line as the
offending message to a file.  Within minutes, the message from Detweiler
appeared.

I'm not sure Eric's idea about connecting via sockets would eliminate all
possibilities of logging.  It seems that with telnet, at least, the systems
that you connect to are able to find your host name.  Still, host names
would be more private than full addresses.

Grepping the Blacknet log file for "request-remailing-to" shows the
following messages which have accumulated overnight:

request-remailing-to: comp.sys.ti.explorer@news.cs.indiana.edu
request-remailing-to: rec.mag@news.demon.co.uk
request-remailing-to: rec.sport.football.australian.usenet@decwrl.dec.com
request-remailing-to: alt.fan.addams@news.cs.indiana.edu
request-remailing-to: soc.history@news.demon.co.uk
request-remailing-to: comp.archives.msdos.d@news.cs.indiana.edu
request-remailing-to: rec.pets.dogs.usenet@decwrl.dec.com
request-remailing-to: comp.sys.sgi.graphics.usenet@decwrl.dec.com
request-remailing-to: alt.fan.vejcik@news.demon.co.uk
request-remailing-to: alt.fan.addams@news.cs.indiana.edu
request-remailing-to: rec.pets.dogs.usenet@decwrl.dec.com
request-remailing-to: alt.abortion.inequity@news.cs.indiana.edu
request-remailing-to: alt.security@news.demon.co.uk
request-remailing-to: alt.sports.football.pro.dallas-cowboys.usenet@decwrl.dec.com
request-remailing-to: rec.music.classical.guitar@news.cs.indiana.edu
request-remailing-to: news.announce.important@news.demon.co.uk
request-remailing-to: misc.health.alternative.usenet@decwrl.dec.com
request-remailing-to: alt.beer@news.cs.indiana.edu
request-remailing-to: alt.archery@news.demon.co.uk
request-remailing-to: alt.sports.basketball.nba.wash-bullets.usenet@decwrl.dec.com

One good thing is that he is apparently targetting just a few mail-to-news
gateways.  I was worried because one of the complaints I got came from
a mailing list; it would be completely infeasible to block all mailing list
addresses.  But blocking the mail-to-news gateways would be pretty easy.

(As an aside: how do these gateways take the heat?  Should I suggest to those
complaining to me that my system is intended for email, not usenet, anon-
ymity, and that they should direct their complaints to the mail-to-news
gateways which are the "real" cause of the problem?  Is this tactic likely
to be politically effective?)

Now, I haven't received any complaints from the administration at this
commercial system for which I pay about $30 a month.  In fact, I have never
received any complaints about my remailer from the admins, even though I
assume that at least some complaints have been sent to root or postmaster
here.  I know that the owner of the Portal system was at the hacker's
conference a couple of years ago (according to a report on the cp list),
and that he supposedly pledged his commitment to the concept of anonymous
remailers.  I have never contacted him, but perhaps I am protected to
some extent by his beliefs.

At this point, I will probably take no action and see if this blows over.
If I get more complaints, though, I will probably block the mail-to-news
gateways as outgoing addresses.

Another alternative would be for me to forward outgoing mail which is
directed to the mail-to-news gateways through another remailer, such
as Xenon's at netcom.com.  

Thanks for the suggestions and advice.

Hal