From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Tue, 28 May 1996 19:33:06 +0800
To: Black Unicorn <unicorn@schloss.li>
Subject: Re: Remailers - What exists?
Message-ID: <199605280739.AAA07812@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 11:00 PM 5/24/96 -0400, Black Unicorn <unicorn@schloss.li> wrote:
>Question:
>Which remailers can be run without root?
>Which remailers can be run best on the most systems?
>Which remailers are easiest to set up?

Basic remailers can run fine as a mail user on any Unix system
that supports executing user-specified programs on incoming mail.
Almost any modern Unix system will do this, either through sendmail
.forward files or some similar (dangerous :-) mechanism.
Even on systems that don't do it automagically, you can
batch the mail through a remailer command either by hand or
using a cron script if your system lets you.
It helps a lot to have an account that isn't your main email
account, because it's going to get lots of junk in it
that you want to discard most of, so you'd be better
off without your real mail going there, unless you're
a procmail wizard.

Mixmaster-style remailers are more secure than vanilla ones,
but of course you need to use the Mixmaster client software
to use them, which could be a problem if you're a DOS or Mac user.

Being root gets you a couple of things:
- ability to set up multiple names to receive mail on,
  which you need to run a user-friendly 2-way remailer, like
  anon.penet.fi or alpha.c2.org.  Some sendmail flavors
  have extensions on user names ( myname+whatever@machine.edu )
  which would let you do the same thing as a regular user,
  but it doesn't seem to be a widespread feature.
- ability to mess with the sendmail logs
- ability to tell the backup software not to back up your
  spool directory (which would be Really Bad, especially
  if your computer provider keeps backups forever.)
  The alternative is to put it under /tmp somewhere,
  and just make sure it recovers if too much stuff gets 
  deleted by regular daemons.
- Extra Slack for mail-to-news gateways.  You can often
  do them without being root, but not everywhere,
  and it's harder to fake From: addresses if you're not root.

Of course, you can always run Linux at home - there are
even new versions for Mac coming out.
#					Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, stewarts@ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215
# goodtimes signature virus innoculation