From: sagerd@columbia.dsu.edu (DOUG SAGER)
Subject: Re: Using the alt.personals.bondage Anonymous Contact Service
Organization: Dakota State University
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 15:21:53 GMT

In article <4595@n7kbt.rain.com> apb.admin@n7kbt.rain.com writes:
>From: apb.admin@n7kbt.rain.com
>Subject: Using the alt.personals.bondage Anonymous Contact Service
>Date: 1 Oct 92 09:20:03 GMT

>INTRODUCTION TO THE ALT.PERSONALS.BONDAGE ANONYMOUS POSTING AND CONTACT SERVICE

>Last update: September 21, 1992

>Alt.personals.bondage 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.bondage. 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.

>There are essentially no restrictions on what can be posted via the
>anonymous posting service, except that I'll cancel any articles that
>are criminal in nature (offers to sell or buy drugs or sexual services,
>soliciting sex with minors, stolen credit card numbers, etc.) I just
>don't feel like getting busted for aiding and abetting this week.

>NOTE: Throughout this article, I provide e-mail addresses in Internet
>form - someone@n7kbt.rain.com. If your mailer can't handle this type
>of address, you can use uucp "bang-path" addresses:
>...!uunet!n7kbt.rain.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:
>** ----------------------------------------------------------
>** apb.post@n7kbt.rain.com                      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 "apb.123@n7kbt.rain.com". 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 ACS, be it a posting
>or a reply to a posting, you are assigned an alias of the form
>apb.[1-9999]@n7kbt.rain.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 but happened to go through a different path to get to
>n7kbt.rain.com. Both aliases will work. This may be a bug or a feature,
>depending on your point of view.

>You can give yourself a nickname by including a line like:

>ACS-Name: My nickname

>in the first message (ping, post or reply) you send to the ACS service.
>This is intended to make it easier for people who read your messages
>to remember who you are.  ACS-Name: must be at the beginning of the
>line.  Anything after the ':' and one space will be your nickname.

>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're in, or interested in hearing from people from.
>(Interesting syntax, there.) This allows people who aren't in that
>area to bypass the article without wasting a lot of time. 

>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.

>3) PLEASE don't post anonymous test messages to alt.personals.bondage just
>to find out what your alias would be if you posted a "real" personal.
>Send a message to apb.ping (see below) instead.

>These are suggestions. Not guidelines, not rules, not laws. You
>can put anything you want in an article. It's your life.

>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 n7kbt.rain.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.

>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 n7kbt.rain.com, and the system will do the rest.

>WHAT IF MY SITE DOESN'T CARRY ALT.PERSONALS.BONDAGE?

>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.bondage. 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 Anonymous 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 ACS. To make sure that you have a clean mail path,
>you can send e-mail to "apb.ping@n7kbt.rain.com". 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 ACS system and the header of your message as it
>arrived here. If you don't get a reply with a Subject: line of
>"ACS 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 ACS system, send e-mail to "apb.admin@n7kbt.rain.com". 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 apb.admin.
>Eventually, these capabilities will be automated, once I figure out how
>to do it securely.

>If, for some reason, you want to cancel an article you've posted,
>the only way to do it (unless you're a superuser) is to send e-mail
>to apb.admin@n7kbt.rain.com and ask for it to be cancelled. This is
>another item that may be automated someday.  In almost all cases
>however, cancel requests cannot be honored.  Your article will probably
>have gotten to hundreds of sites before I ever see your e-mail request.

>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 ACS administrator, send EMAIL to:
>apb.admin@n7kbt.rain.com                (non anonymous mail)
>apb.0@n7kbt.rain.com                    (anonymous mail with no replies)
>uunet!n7kbt.rain.com!{apb.admin,apb.0}
>--
>To use this service, send EMAIL to:
>Anonymous posting:              apb.post@n7kbt.rain.com
>Anonymous reply:                <user's alias>@n7kbt.rain.com
>Test path/get alias:            apb.ping@n7kbt.rain.com
>ACS administrator:              apb.admin@n7kbt.rain.com