| OmniMix • Tutorial • Remailing • The 'From' Header |
  
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As the declaration in the 'From' field is your individual address, for true anonymity it's necessary to replace that value by
a meaningless term. But unfortunately, though a well-defined value used by all senders would prevent from being separated,
there currently is no agreement how this idiom should look like. Since all URLs with 'invalid' as their top level domain are
expected to be invalid, OmniMix suggests 'Anon <anon@anon.invalid>' for that purpose. Be sure, that you activate the
option to replace the header, which can be done separately for mails and news postings. Then, to be on the safe side, go
offline or switch to simulation mode, try to send a test message and regard the 'From' header of the converted message at the
bottom of the 'Raw Data' list to make sure, that your true identity isn't unveiled. By the way, the address, that appears in
the delivered message, isn't sufficient to prove an orderly processing, as it may have been replaced by the exit remailer,
which means at the distant end of the anonymization cascade!
Nevertheless under some circumstances it may be advantageous to have a message delivered with an alias. E.g. a discussion in a
newsgroup can be followed much easier, if the contributions can be assigned to individual sources. Therefore some remailers
either stick with the original 'From' header or replace only the address part thereof. At the OmniMix website you find links to
sources, which provide more information about how the single remailers behave in this respect.
There's a controversal discussion going on about the necessity of user definable 'From' headers and the problems they imply. The
operators of exit remailers fear to be sued for unlawful acts that base on forged mail addresses. Therefore some of them add a
'Comments' header to the message, which explicitly expresses, that there's no evidence for the authenticity of the sender's
address. But as the recipient not always reads the small print, namely the header of a message, and often not even is aware of its
existence, mostly the more drastic strategy of replacing the 'From' header by an unequivocal hint takes place, either as a whole,
its address part, or only the domain name. But that modification brings on another problem. As long as remailers aren't of common
use, senders with addresses like 'Anonyma <anon-bounces@deuxpi.ca>' or 'Anonymous <nobody@remailer.paranoici.org>' are
stigmatized as potential villains and risk to become disparaged. In consequence the remailer network will have a hard time to
attract normal, resp. low security correspondence, though those messages are urgently needed to get enough cover traffic for an
efficient anonymization process. In this situation a nym account with an unsuspicious mail address might be an alternative. But
let's hope, some time, when remailers are accepted by everyone, such considerations will no longer be necessary.
With OmniMix you're not only able to define an invariable address within the program itself, but even allowed to override this setting
deliberately with the individual message. By adding a 'From Switch' header like 'O-Anon-From: Ori' the 'From' header replacement is
canceled and the original address passes untouched. But be attentive with this feature!
If you intend to use more than one alias, e.g. for discussions in different newsgroups, you should move towards as much automation as
you can get to keep all of your messages conclusive. An accidental signature with one alias combined with the 'From' header of another
one, and you may have lost confidence forever. Besides, it may be possible to suppose connections based on similar exit remailers,
mail2news gateways and other even less obvious peculiarities of your messages like line width or your writing style. So use definable
header presets, if offered by your client software, to parametrize as much items as possible on an individual alias related basis.
Forté Agent e.g. gives you the opportunity to integrate a signature as well as all header parameters necessary to remote
control OmniMix within a 'Persona'. So you only have to write your text, maybe even without any personal references, which then
gets equipped with the identity you wish in one go.