NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #16/NN_1992_16.iso/spool/alt/personal/16564

Internet Message Format | 1992-07-23 | 8.2 KB

Xref: sparky alt.personals:16564 alt.personals.ads:742 soc.singles:21001
Newsgroups: alt.personals,alt.personals.ads,soc.singles
Path: sparky!uunet!noc.near.net!mv!lemuria!root
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Using the alt.personals.ads EZ-Intro Contact Service (ECS)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Followup-To: alt.personals
Sender: [e-mail] (0000-Admin(0000))
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: EZ-Intro Contact Service @ cupid.sai.com
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 92 05:30:12 GMT
Lines: 185

INTRODUCTION TO THE ALT.PERSONALS EZ-Intro Contract Service (ECS)

Last update: 12 June 1992

What is this EZ-Intro?

It is a service to provide a safe and confidential method to contact other
"singles" for the purpose of forming a long term personal relationship.
Postings and replies are anonymous.


        ******    Do's  ******

1.  Give a lot of details about yourself.

2.  Specify exactly the type of person you are looking for.  It works better
than saying "Hi, I am a 26 year guy looking for SWF."

3.  Post only personals.

4.  Do let [e-mail] know of any problems.


            ****** Don't  ******

1.  No solicitations for SEX.  Any references to sex acts ISO
    will be rejected.

2.  No posting from marrieds.  (Married == someone living with someone else
                with the intent to stay in the relationship)

3.  Don't post test messages.  They will be rejected.  Use ping instead.

4.  DON'T USE THIS SYSTEM for anything unlawful.

5.  No Flaming. This isn't a system for you to flame, bash,
    etc. someone anonymously.

6.  Don't use your or anyone else's email address in your postings.

7.  Don't bother flaming if you don't like the policy.  It will just
    waste your time and net bandwidth.


Alt.personals.ads is a newsgroup for posting personal messages, somewhat
like the personals sections of newspapers and magazines. It is not
moderated. In order to provide anonymity for those who wish it, an
automated anonymous contact service has been provided to allow
anonymous posting to alt.personals.ads. This system consists of an
anonymous posting service and a double-blind e-mail forwarding service,
so that replies to anonymous posts will also be anonymous.

This service is for the sole purpose of making social contact with
others.  I will not be making moral judgements, but I WILL NOT POST
any article that is outside of the scope of ECS.

I will also cancel any posting which I deem to be not in the spirit
of making socal contact.  The type of posting I am talking about
is one which goes along the lines of Hey B*???,  you want to F*&$.

You get the idea.


NOTE: Throughout this article, I provide e-mail addresses in Internet
form - [e-mail]. If your mailer can't handle this type
of address, you can use uucp "bang-path" addresses:
...!uunet!cupid.sai.com!someone. You'll have to figure out how to get
e-mail to uunet on your own, but it's reachable from most places in the
Solar System. Ask your local e-mail guru.

HOW TO POST AN ARTICLE ANONYMOUSLY

** Send e-mail message to            To post to:
** ----------------------------------------------------------
** [e-mail]                    All the World

The Subject: line of this message will become the Subject: line of the
article. A new header will be created for the article, with From: and
Reply-To:  lines of the form "[e-mail]". Nothing in the
header of the article will tell anything about who or where you are. If
your message has a signature in the standard form (beginning with a line
containing "--"), it will be deleted.

NOTE: The first time you send something to the ECS, be it a posting
or a reply to a posting, you are assigned an alias the in form of
ap.[1-9999]@cupid.sai.com. As long as your From: line contains the same
information when it gets here, anything you post or e-mail will appear
to come from this alias. If you send something that has a different line
in From:, you will be assigned a new alias. This includes mail sent from
the same person that happens to go through a different path to get to
cupid.sai.com. Both aliases will work. This may be a bug or a feature,
depending on your point of view.

Suggestions For Anonymous Posting

1) The Subject: line of your article, in addition to giving
some hint about why you posted it, should give information about the
geographic area you are in, or the geographic area from which
you'd like to receive replies.  This allows people who aren't in that
area to bypass the article without wasting a lot of time.  Please
note that the Subject: line is *required* if you want your message
to be posted.

2) Don't include phone numbers, street addresses, or e-mail addresses
in the body of the article. It sort of defeats the point of anonymous
posting, doesn't it? If your mailer automatically inserts such
information about you anywhere but in a properly formatted signature,
get it fixed.

REPLYING TO ANONYMOUS ARTICLES

Just reply to an anonymous article as you would to any other posting
or send e-mail to the alias listed in the From: line of the article.
The message will be e-mailed to the poster's alias at cupid.sai.com.
When it gets here, the software will intercept the message, substitute
your e-mail address with an alias, replace the poster's alias with
their real e-mail address, and send it on with a completely rebuilt
header, no signature. There is no enforced limit to the length of
replies either.

At this point, it's possible for any two people whose aliases are
registered in the database here to carry on an e-mail conversation
without ever knowing each other's e-mail address. Just send your
message to the alias at cupid.sai.com, and the system will do the rest.

WHAT IF MY SITE DOESN'T CARRY ALT.PERSONALS

You can still post your personal article as outlined above and receive
anonymous replies, but you can't read anyone else's postings. I have
no intention of creating a mailing list or a server to provide the
articles to those who don't get alt.personals.ads. If someone else wants
to set up such a system, they're welcome to.

PRIVACY AND SECURITY

I've done what I can to ensure that the identities of the users of
the EZ-Intro Contact Service will be kept private, but I can't make
any guarantees. I will not divulge the name of anyone using the service
without a court order, but there is always the possibility that someone
will successfully crack my system, or that someone will examine your
article before it gets here. Usenet is not totally private, and you
use this service at your own risk.

One of the things that happens fairly frequently on the net is
bounced e-mail. It could be unpleasant if this happened to a message
destined for the ECS. To make sure that you have a clean mail path,
you can send e-mail to "[e-mail]". This is a mail echo
system. When your message gets here (if it gets here), the system
will grab your return address and send you an e-mail message containing
your alias in the ECS system and the header of your message as it
arrived here. If you don't get a reply with a Subject: line of
"ECS ping reply", assume that either your message never got here,
or the reply went astray. In either case, you shouldn't try to use
the anonymous posting service. Try to find another e-mail path that
works first.

ADMINISTRIVIA

If you need to get in touch with a human being about problems with
the ECS system, send e-mail to "[e-mail]". In particular,
if you need to have your alias removed from the database or your
e-mail address has changed, you need to send e-mail to
[e-mail].  Eventually, these capabilities will be
automated, once I figure out
he best way to do it securely.

Generally, it is not feasible to cancel an article once it has been
posted.  However, if you wish to try, send e-mail to
[e-mail] and request that your article be cancelled.
Bear in mind that the article will have already been posted to
hundred of sites before your cancel request is received.

There is no way for me to cancel e-mail you've sent to an alias, so
don't even bother asking.

--
To correspond with the ECS administrator, send EMAIL to:
[e-mail]            (non anonymous mail)

--
To use this service, send EMAIL to:
Anonymous posting:        [e-mail]
Anonymous reply:        <user's alias>@cupid.sai.com
Test path/get alias:        [e-mail]
ECS administrator:        [e-mail]