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- Xref: sparky comp.org.eff.talk:7734 alt.privacy:2667 alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk:3782 comp.security.misc:2302
- Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk,alt.privacy,alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,comp.security.misc
- Path: sparky!uunet!paladin.american.edu!news.univie.ac.at!hp4at!mcsun!news.funet.fi!hydra!klaava!viljanen
- From: viljanen@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Lea Viljanen)
- Subject: Re: CERT and the Dept. of Justice on keystroke monitoring
- Message-ID: <1992Dec16.211155.19172@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
- Organization: Pussy Galore's Flying Circus
- References: <q50qgdg@dixie.com> <1992Dec11.164849.3491@nic.csu.net> <e6TZ03sdc2.200@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> <1992Dec12.064534.3499@nic.csu.net> <26Cu03elc3du00@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> <PCL.92Dec15173300@rhodium.ox.ac.uk>
- Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 21:11:55 GMT
- Lines: 40
-
- In <PCL.92Dec15173300@rhodium.ox.ac.uk> pcl@ox.ac.uk (Paul C Leyland) writes:
-
- >In article <26Cu03elc3du00@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> grjost@uts.amdahl.com (Garrett Jost) writes:
-
- > I'll leave on this note: On many systems, if you mail a letter to a non-
- > existent user, the message gets sent back, but a copy also goes to
- > "postmaster". So if you mistype a friend's e-mail address and write
- > he/she a very personal message, it isn't very personal anymore, is it?
-
- >For this very reason, I made very strong requests to our mail guru to
- >fix it for Postmaster to get only the mail headers. She did, and now
- >only the originator gets the message body. I, as joint-postmaster
- >still get to see the headers in case they indicate problems with the
- >system. Still not ideal privacy, perhaps, but better than the
- >alternative.
-
- This is a two edged sword here. By enhancing the user's privacy
- you also diminish their chances to get information. Just guess
- how many internet guides tell people to mail postmaster@site
- to get information about e-mail addresses. These mail messages
- get truncated too.
-
- It's not altogether obvious where to cut off the rest of
- the the mail message either.
-
- >I strongly recommend that everyone else either fixes their mailer
- >similarly, or gets their Postmaster to fix it.
-
- I strongly recommend everybody to at least think this carefully over.
-
- I think the best solution would be to encrypt the message body
- (by rot-13 or something) to eliminate the accidental reading
- of the message. But the message in its entirety should be available
- to the Postmaster if he/she needs it.
-
- >Paul
-
- --
- Lea 'LadyBug' Viljanen University of Helsinki "Every real program
- Lea.Viljanen@Helsinki.FI Computing Centre has some input" - H&P
-