NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #30/NN_1992_30.iso/spool/comp/org/eff/talk/7779

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-20 | 3.3 KB

Xref: sparky comp.org.eff.talk:7779 alt.privacy:2687 alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk:3804 comp.security.misc:2332
Path: sparky!uunet!mcsun!uknet!comlab.ox.ac.uk!pcl
From: [e-mail] (Paul C Leyland)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk,alt.privacy,alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,comp.security.misc
Subject: Re: CERT and the Dept. of Justice on keystroke monitoring
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 18 Dec 92 10:29:28 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
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Organization: Oxford University Computing Services, 13 Banbury Rd Oxford OX2
    6NN
Lines: 57
In-reply-to: [e-mail]'s message of 16 Dec 92 21:11:55 GMT

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Lea Viljanen) writes:
] In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Paul C Leyland) writes:

] >In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (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.


I'm sorry, my comment was not phrased very well.  The message body
only gets omitted from mailer-generated failure messages.


DIRECT MAIL TO POSTMASTER IS DELIVERED TO POSTMASTER IN ITS ENTIRITY.


] 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.


Maybe.  However, it still allows Postmaster to snoop with great ease.
Our solution requires that Postmaster must explicitly seek out mail addressed
and delivered to the originator.

Paul

--
Paul Leyland <[e-mail]>          | Hanging on in quiet desperation is
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