From: anon-admin@twwells.com
Newsgroups: alt.sexual.abuse.recovery
Subject: Using the anonymous message service at twwells.com
Date: 13 Nov 92 00:19:01 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.

Most anonymous posting services discourage the posting of test messages.
This is not true of this service. If you feel the urge to post a test
message, please do so.

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 from
the server.

You get an anonymous id any time you send e-mail to any of the anon-
addresses except anon-admin or anon-delete.

--------

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. This is
	also the address from which automatically generated messages appear
	to come.

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 automatically 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. Messages sent to this address are not read by
	me. If you want help from a person, me, send your message to
	anon-admin@twwells.com.

anon-delete@twwells.com

	This causes the anonymous id assigned to the address you sent e-mail
	from to be deleted from the server's database. Once you've received
	the server's reply, the old anonymous id will no longer work and if
	you then send a message to one of the anon- addresses, you will get a
	new anonymous id.

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 or
	anon-delete. When you send e-mail to one of these addresses, your
	message will be forwarded (provided that e-mail forwarding for that
	address is turned on) but the message will appear to come from your
	anonymous id instead of from your e-mail address.

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 returned to the sender.

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 returned to the
	sender.

ANON-Name: nickname

	This tells the anonymous service to include a "nickname" by which you
	will 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 and if you leave off the
	nickname, your messages will no longer have a nickname in them.

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 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.

ANON-Notify: no

	When your anonymous id is initially set up, people can't send you
	e-mail through the anonymous message service. However, when a message
	for you is received by the anonymous message service, you will be
	notified that the message was received. If you do not wish to get
	this notification, this command will stop them.

ANON-Notify: yes

	When your anonymous id is set to not forward e-mail to you, you can
	have it that the anonymous message service will notify you of e-mail
	received at that anonymous id by giving it this command.

ANON-Sigkeep: yes

	Some systems automatically add a file of information to every message
	you send, your "signature". Since this signature typically contains
	your name and e-mail address, the anonymous message service attempts
	to remove what it thinks is a signature from any message it posts or
	forwards. Most automatically added signatures start with a line
	beginning with at least two hyphens and so the server program will
	remove everything from the two hyphens that start such a line.
	However, you may not have an automatically added signature, or one
	that the server can't catch, or you may not want your signature
	removed.  If so, this command will tell the server to not attempt to
	remove a signature.

ANON-Sigkeep: no

	This turns signature stripping back on.

--------

You may find yourself getting messages from the server that you didn't
expect.  You will get a message every time you ask for one by sending to
anon-ping. You will also get a message for every message the server receives
from you if you've asked for it via ANON-Ping:.

You will get a message every time you give an ANON- command that changes
something about your anonymous id.  This is sent in order let you know what
effect your command has had.  Note that if no change happens, no reply will
be sent. You will also get a reply if you ask for your anonymous id to be
deleted through anon-delete.

--------

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 rutgers!twwells!anon-whatever or decwrl!twwells!anon-whatever.
The former is likely to be much faster than the latter.

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@rutgers.edu. 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                            { rutgers | decwrl | telesci }!twwells!bill
bill@twwells.com
Newsgroups: alt.sexual.abuse.recovery