[8548] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: This is what happens to you if you send a message to com-priv I guess
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mark R. Ludwig)
Mon Nov 22 13:06:58 1993
From: "Mark R. Ludwig" <Mark-Ludwig@uai.com>
To: Craig Partridge <craig@aland.bbn.com>
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <9311221739.AA09467@aland.bbn.com>
Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1993 10:06:10 -0800
Craig> The anonymous system is not so benign as it seems. My
Craig> understanding of the system (and I'm still learning) is that
Craig> now that I have an anonymous ID (which I don't want), e-mail
Craig> from me through the system will be rewritten with my anonymous
Craig> ID as the sender. However, it doesn't rewrite the text -- my
Craig> signature line is retained. Thus, if by some chance (and such
Craig> chances have happened to me more than once in my many years on
Craig> the net), a piece of e-mail from me goes via penet.fi, it will
Craig> pop into someone's mailbox with an anonymous ID as the source
Craig> address and my name at the bottom, thus advertising to everyone
Craig> that I have an (unwanted) anonymous account.
Your understanding is incorrect, at least in the intent. The
anonymous system (which as a responsible Postmaster I was forced to
learn about against my will) deletes the end of a message following a
line which begins with "--" or perhaps "-- " or something like that.
Remember that the system was designed for USENET, not mailing lists,
and it uses that dash-rule because that's what the popular USENET
software does.
In your particular case, your signature is not separated from the text
at all, so yes, your signature probably goes right through.
In any case, I'm not sure I understand how having an anonymous ID
assigned to you, which you do not use, and which will not filter your
signature injures you in any way. If you do use it unintentionally
(such as posting to com-priv at the moment?), it won't really be
anonymous anyway. Sounds like you fear guilt by association, or some
variant thereof -- that someone will assume you do bad things just
because you have this ID assigned.$$
--
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"Anything worth doing in Japan is worth doing in a crowd." -- T. R. Reid
