Re: Sending mail on OS X

[George Shaffer <George.Shaffer@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 2006-10-26 at 19:07, Tim McCormack wrote:

> Many Tor exit nodes block port 25 because spammers sometimes try to use
> Tor.  For anonymous mailing you could try Mixminion instead of Tor.

I understand the need for controlling spam. If you don't control it, the
recipients will often block you. Even if you're not blocked no
legitimate organization or tool wants to be identified as supporting or
enabling spam.

The Mixminion project seems to be stalled, as they have not released any
new software in almost 11 months, even though it is described as alpha
software.

In the Overview of Tor, http://tor.eff.org/overview.html.en, the "Why we
need Tor" section states "It can even threaten your job and physical
safety by revealing who and where you are. For example, if you're
traveling abroad and you connect to your employer's computers to check
or send mail, you can inadvertently reveal your national origin and
professional affiliation to anyone observing the network, even if the
connection is encrypted." The same logic would apply to any military or
government employees, dependent on local communications.

The "Tor: The Second-Generation Onion Router" design document
http://tor.eff.org/svn/trunk/doc/design-paper/tor-design.html mentions
using SpamAssassin in section "6.2 Exit policies and abuse" on Tor exit
nodes.

I'm curious if the current default on exit nodes to block port 25 is a
temporary expedient due to the very limited resources available to the
Tor project? Do the developers hope at some point to be in a position to
enable anonymous email through the Tor network, either by blocking
individual spam messages at the exit, or blocking spam sources by IP
address from the entry nodes? The latter should involve a much lower
overhead, but at the risk of blocking legitimate users. Perhaps blocking
only the better known, high volume spam sites would substantially reduce
the load on the Tor network while minimizing the impact on legitimate
users.

George Shaffer