[PGP-USERS] *** THE HAYSTACK REMAILER IS GONE ***

[Alec <camcc@abraxis.com>]

>Date: Sun, 23 Mar 1997 15:09:25 -0500 (EST)
>From: "Fred B. Ringel" <fredr@joshua.rivertown.net>
>Reply-To: fredr@joshua.rivertown.net
>To: pgp-users list <pgp-users@rivertown.net>
>Subject: [PGP-USERS] *** THE HAYSTACK REMAILER IS GONE ***
>
>Hi all-
>
>	Here's another one from this week (in addition to jpunix). They are
>dropping like flies, unfortunately.
>
>	Boy, this really, really stinks.
>
>	Fred
>==========================================================================
>
>   *** IMPORTANT NEWS REGARDING HAYSTACK@HOLY.COW.NET ***
>
> The Bovine Remailer, also known as haystack@holy.cow.net, is
> hereby CLOSED. Mail sent to that address will bounce; I don't
> know on a technical basis what putting it in the middle of a
> remailer chain will do. There are no other remailers or anon
> services associated with cow.net.
>
> It has been a fun year, but the simple fact is that running
> a remailer is a thankless, embittering, nasty job. For every
> success story of alternate or persecuted viewpoints seeing
> the light of day, there are another four or five cases of
> legal threats, use of the remailer to spam people who have
> already turned off access to their accounts from other sources,
> and the extremely disturbing trend of posting newsgroups
> with falsified From: Headers, intending to cause endless spam
> bots to mail the forged address. No one carefully put in a
> forged address to endanger or misrepresent another person, 
> but it was only a matter of time.
>
> Haystack was running on a Sun 3/280 at the cow.net loft. At
> the peak, this machine was recieving over one thousand 
> e-mails a day, doing PGP calculations, and sending them out,
> and the 30mhz processor wasn't up to the task. The final
> straw was the use of the remailer to send out several 
> hundred "MAKE MONEY FAST"-style messages to a group of 
> folks who then rebelled or retaliated to the remailer itself;
> everyone associated in this sucks. 
>
> If you think this is a shame, then put up your own remailer;
> no doubt you'll have a thicker skin that the admins of
> haystack, and will somehow flourish under the increasingly
> fascist and overbearing environment of the Internet, but
> the games up here, for now.
>
> Yes, for now. We might return some time in the future,
> should technical and financial issues be solved, but it seems
> rather unlikely at this juncture.
>
> Once again, if you enjoyed using haystack, you might consider
> fighting the good fight and putting up your own. A good,
> solid increase in remailers might save the culture. It is
> nearly a crime that so much perfectly powerful computer
> hardware exists out there, hooked to the net, and a mere
> dozen computers, in our case quite aged, were/are doing the
> remailing work.
>
> So, well, like we said, it's been a blast. See you later.
> Moo.
>
> - The Haystack Administration.
>
>/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
>Fred B. Ringel			--	Rivertown.Net Internet Access
>Systems Administrator		--	http://www.rivertown.net
>and General Fixer Upper		--	Voice/Fax/Support: +1.914.478.2885
>	Although in theory, there's no difference between 
>	theory and practice, in practice, there is.
>
>