Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: ALICE'S ADDRESS REVEALED.

[anonymous-remailer@shell.portal.com]

On Mon, 4 Dec 1995, Don M. Kitchen wrote:

> Someone posing as Alice said:

It wasn't anyone "posing" as Alice.  It was the real banana.

> > As I promised, I've now opened a channel so that anyone who wants to
> > can send Alice de 'nonymous email.  I can now be reached via
> > an455120@anon.penet.fi.  Mail sent to Alice de 'nonymous at that
> > address will get to me, and I will do my best to reply to you as well,
> > but I can't guarantee, anything.
> 
> Laszlo Vecsey <master@internexus.net> said:
> 
> > I don't think that was a smart thing to do. Your real email is now 
> > registered in some database in Finland - how difficult would it be to 
> > retrieve it? From what I remember organizations like Scientology had no 

Soory ... beg to differ ... my real email is not registered in some 
database in Finland.  No offence, but you have no idea what I have 
registered in Finland.  Whatever lies behind the anon address is simply
something which is "reasonably" reliable.  It could be a dummy account, 
or it could even be a chain of remailers and processes.  

Who knows??  Do you?

How difficult would it be to retrieve it from Finland?  I don't really
know.  It really hadn't crossed my mind.  I thought that Julf might run a
good outpost in Finland.  And that he'd take reasonable efforts (i.e. not
go down with the ship) to protect my privacy. 

He strikes me as reasonably reliable that way.  

> Not _nearly_ as hard as breaking/finding an appropriately encrypted key.

Maybe, maybe not.  It depends on a lot of things, now doesn't it?  And
breaking or finding an appropriately encrypted key, doesn't *quite*
address the problem of people sending email to me without any hassle,
does it?? 

I think that the ISP who hosts my remailer has already had to deal with
a slew of mail over the "Alice" antics, and the spoofed posts.  This way, 
if someone wants to take issue with something which they've read, the 
ISP can simply ask them to write the author.

> I for one am not going to even bother with the penet address unless the
> posts come from there. After all, it's a forgery anyway. The real Alice
> already posted a PGP key. I wouldn't be reading this list if I were
> going to fall over for a simple impersonation.

Great that's your choice and your perogative.  I don't see what on earth
you'd have to say to me in any event.  And before you go patting yourself
on the back about impersonations, have a look at my last post to this list. 
The one under the subject of "Do the Right Thing." 

Right at the bottom of the post is my signature, and ... ta dah ... my
penet address.  What does that *logically* tell you??  

Maybe that the author of that post, the long-winded one that criticizes 
Jim Clark for his stand on GAK and his short-sighted views will accept 
email via penet.fi at an455120@anon.penet.fi?? 
 
> Of course, if our impersonating, trusts-penet-not-PGP-coworkers-think-
> of-everything-but-a-packet-sniffer Alice were to post from penet,
> then everyone (including procmail ;) would have to believe his claims
> of pseudo-identity.

I trust penet to do one thing for me.  I trust penet not to send me email
that is larger than 1 Megabyte.  And the reason I trust penet not to do 
that is that Julf's mailer won't handle it.  His mailer will choke on it.

That's it.

If you think that I'm relying on Julf to protect me, then you are sadly
mistaken.  Many, many people already share in the secret of who Alice is. 
That's a fact.  I'm not looking for anyone to keep my identity a "secret". 
I'm simply looking for some peace so that I can do some reading, some
writing, and some "thinken".  And Julf protects me from huge emails.

That's it.  And now, if anyone wants to establish a dialogue with me, 
they can.  Or if they don't want to (like you) then that's not a 
problem for me either.  

My previous way of getting contacted (via postmaster@att.com or
postmaster@netscape.com) didn't seem to be working well.  The two
companies weren't forwarding email to me.  Never got anything from 
them forwarded.

Now, not only AT&T and Netscape can talk with me, so can anyone else.
And if they want to have some "secure" super-secret dialogue with me, then
we can do that also.  I've posted a partial protocol on how to do that
already.  Not one that's for super-dee-dooper secret stuff, but one that's
Pretty OK.  And it uses PGP for one part.

> I must say, L.D. is really falling all over himself this time. Maybe
> he's just trying to make people *think* he's a cryptobungler, so that he
> can keep his other tentacles with whom he converses out of suspicion.

Good Grief.  Is it something they put in the water down wherever 
you're at??  I am not L.D ... oh, what is the point ...

> Don
> 
> Wishing Emacs had IMAP support cuz here comes mailcrypt

Mailcrypt??  Emacs??  *Shudder* ... is it compatible with PGP 2.3?



Alice de 'nonymous ...               <an455120@anon.penet.fi>


                                  ...just another one of those...


P.S.  This post is in the public domain.
                  C.  S.  U.  M.  O.  C.  L.  U.  N.  E.