From: anon-admin@twwells.com
Subject: Using the anonymous message service at twwells.com
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 16:43:54 GMT
Organization: Anonymous Posting Service at twwells.com

This message contains information about the anonymous message service that is
supposed to help you understand and use this service. The first thing you
need to know is that there is a person in back of this service. The service
itself operates automatically and is just a computer program, so it can't
help you with any problems. However, if something goes wrong or if this
message does not answer all your questions or if you have suggestions or
comments to make about the service, I would very much appreciate it if you
would send me e-mail.

I am Bill Wells, bill@twwells.com. You can send me e-mail at this address if
you want to.  However, if you send your e-mail to anon-admin@twwells.com,
I will know that it is in reference to the anonymous message service.
You may wish to send me e-mail anonymously. You can do that by sending
your message to anon-0@twwells.com.

There are lots of ifs, ands, and buts relating to this service, and I will
get to them in a while, but let me first give you the information you are
probably wanting most: how to post anonymously and how to send and receive
anonymous e-mail.

Before you try to do anything anonymous, you may want to make sure that the
service won't accidentally give away your identity.  The way to do that is to
send a message to anon-ping@twwells.com. Besides sending a lot of words
your way, it will return to you what it would have posted or forwarded, had
you e-mailed to one of the posting or forwarding addresses.  You can check
over that to make sure that all identifying information has been removed.

To post anonymously, you just send e-mail to the posting address.  The
posting address for alt.sexual.abuse.recovery is anon-asar@twwells.com.

You can only send anonymous e-mail to an anonymous id. If someone has not
obtained an anonymous id from the posting service, you will not be able to
send them e-mail through this service. When you have their anonymous id, say
anon-1000, you send your e-mail to anon-1000@twwells.com.

You are in control of whether you will receive e-mail through the anonymous
service. When you first receive an anonymous id no one can send you e-mail
through the service. You can change that by sending e-mail to any of the
anon- addresses (except anon-admin, which doesn't go through the posting
service) with the following line in it:

ANON-Mail: yes

Be sure that the command is all the way to the left and is capitalized
exactly as you see it. You will receive an acknowledgement of the change in
the form of a ping message.

You get an anonymous id the first time you send a message to anon-ping, you
send a message to be posted anonymously, or you send to an anonymous id.

--------

One frequent question that gets asked is: "I've sent out an anonymous posting
but I haven't seen it yet, has it been lost?" Unfortunately, the host for
this service is on the end of a long phone line, one that is very busy. This
can result in significant delays in posting. While under optimal conditions,
a posting might appear within an hour of when you sent it, you should expect
at least four hours, not be surprised at ten, and not begin to worry until at
least a day has passed. If you think that a message has been lost, though,
feel free to drop me a line.

--------

There are a number of addresses that might be of use to you. I've mentioned
some of them, but here are all of them:

bill@twwells.com

	This is my personal account. I'd prefer it if you sent messages
	relating to the anonymous message service to anon-admin but I will
	accept them on this address as well.

anon-admin@twwells.com

	This is for e-mail about the anonymous message service. Note that
	this is not an address that goes to the service but to me.

anon-0@twwells.com

	This is an anonymous id for anon-admin, for use if you wish to remain
	anonymous. You will be assigned an anonymous id if you don't already
	have one.

anon-ping@twwells.com

	This one does a bunch of things for you. When you send a message here,
	you will get a message in reply if all goes well. If you didn't
	already have an anonymous id, you will be given one. The message that
	is returned to you will tell you some things about your anonymous id
	and will return the message you sent it as it would have been posted
	had you sent it to the posting address.

anon-help@twwells.com

	This returns to you a copy of the latest version of this help message.
	If you don't already have an anonymous id, you will be assigned one.

anon-asar@twwells.com

	This is the posting address for alt.sexual.abuse.recovery. If you
	didn't have an anonymous id, you will be assigned one. Your message
	will be edited to remove identifying information and then posted.

anon-xxxx@twwells.com

	These are addresses, like anon-1000, that are anonymous ids for the
	users of this service. You will be given an anonymous id of this form
	whenever you send to an anon- address, except for anon-admin.

My mail system will also recognize upper case versions of these addresses as
in ANON-PING@twwells.com. Note that the case to the left of the @ must be
either all lower case or all upper case, though the case to the right can be
mixed any way at all.

--------

The anonymous message service checks the body of your message for various
commands that you can use to control what it does for you. You've already
seen one, the ANON-Mail: command. There are others. Every command begins with
the letters ANON- and those letters must be all the way to the left. The word
after the - has the first letter capitalized and the others lower case.  The
word ends in a colon. These are the commands that this service recognizes:

ANON-Mail: yes

	This tells the anonymous service that you wish to have e-mail
	forwarded through your anonymous id.  Until it gets this command, all
	e-mail to your anonymous id will be bounced.

ANON-Mail: no

	This tells the anonymous service that you no longer wish to have
	e-mail forwarded through your anonymous id.  After this command is
	received, all e-mail to your anonymous id will be bounced.

ANON-Name: nickname

	This tells the anonymous service to include a "nickname" by which you
	can be identified in your outgoing messages.  You really should do
	this because it is a lot easier to remember people by name than by
	id. You can change your nickname at any time; however, you will be
	assigned a new anonymous id if you do and your old one will no longer
	be usable. (If you really want to keep your old id, drop me a note
	and I'll change your nickname for you.)

ANON-Ping: yes

	If you wish reassurance that your e-mail is getting through, this may
	help. It tells the anonymous service to send you back a ping response
	every time it receives a message from you. You will know which message
	it is acknowledging because that message will be included in the
	reply.

ANON-Ping: no

	Once you've become tired of all those ping messages and have become
	confident that your mail is getting through, you can stop them with
	this command.

ANON-Announce: yes

	Other people do not have any way to know whether you are accepting
	e-mail or not through your anonymous id.  This can be very
	frustrating to them if they compose a reply to you and then have it
	bounce. You can save them some frustration by letting everyone know
	whether or not you are accepting e-mail. If you include this command
	in a message, a header line, X-Email-Accepted: yes or
	X-Email-Accepted: no, will be added to all outgoing messages from
	your anonymous id.

ANON-Announce: no

	If for some reason, you no longer wish to have the X-Email-Accepted:
	header added to your outgoing anonymous messages, you can turn it off
	with this command.

--------

You may find yourself getting ping messages that you didn't expect.  You will
get a ping message every time you ask for one (by sending to anon-ping or if
you've asked for it via ANON-Ping:) and you will also get a ping message
every time you give an ANON- command that changes something about your
anonymous id.  That latter is sent in order let you know what effect your
command has had.  Note that if no change happens, no ping reply will be sent.
You will also get a ping when you are assigned an anonymous id.

--------

Not everyone can use @ style addresses. Also, some people may be able to use
@ style addresses but still be unable to get through to my system.

If your system uses ! style addresses, as in foo!bar!user, you can send
e-mail to either decwrl!twwells!anon-whatever or uunet!twwells!anon-whatever.
The former is likely to be much faster than the latter but you may already
know how to get to uunet but not to decwrl. Both, however, are well known
sites, so you should have no problem getting to either.

If your system uses @ style addresses but gives you back an error like
"unknown host twwells.com", that means that your system has not been
configured to deal with so called MX records. Sites on milnet are notorious
for this. If you are on such a site, you have every reason to complain to
your system administrator but in the mean time, you can send to
anon-whatever%twwells.com@decwrl.dec.com. If you need to have the problem,
and solution, explained to your system administrator, feel free to drop me a
line.

If your system does not understand either ! or @ style addresses, you are on
your own. But if you figure out how to communicate regardless, please let me
know so that I can add more information to this file.

If you can use the anon-whatever@twwells.com form, you really should.  The
reason is that this lets the mail system figure out the way to send the mail
and the chances are that it will do the job as well if not better than you
can. Furthermore, if I do something that improves my e-mail connectivity (and
I'm working on it), using the standard form will let you take advantage of it
when I do without your having to do anything at all.  Worse, while I will
always have some e-mail connections, the exact way that I get to the networks
can change with time.  If I were to drop the connection that you specify, you
may lose contact with my system.

---
Bill                            { uunet | decwrl | telesci }!twwells!bill
bill@twwells.com