Deja News and Privacy
Sara Freeman
In <4mtvtk$i...@news3.realtime.net> de...@dejanews.com (George Demosthenes
Nickas) writes:
>
>x-no-archive: yes
>
> Be Careful What You Say About Others.
>
> Please remember -- you read netnews; so do as many as 3,000,000 other
> people. This group quite possibly includes your boss, your friend's
> boss, your girl friend's brother's best friend and one of your
> father's beer buddies. Information posted on the net can come back
> to haunt you or the person you are talking about.
>
> Think twice before you post personal information about yourself or
> others. This applies especially strongly to groups like soc.singles
> and alt.sex but even postings in groups like talk.politics.misc have
> included information about the personal life of third parties that
> could get them into serious trouble if it got into the wrong hands.
>
> _A Primer on Working with the Usenet Community_
>
(http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/usenet/primer/
> part1/faq.html)
>
>----------------
>
>There's been some recent controversy about Deja News archiving the
>alt.support* hierarchy and I just wanted to comment a bit on this issue
>and hopefully offer some viable methods of protecting your privacy.
>
>Deja News doesn't make anything available to Internet users that they
>couldn't already get some other way. This is much easier to do with
Deja
>News, but if you believe that we eliminate your privacy, it's good to
>remember that your privacy was compromised immediately upon your posting
>to Usenet. It's very dangerous to believe that posting information that
>can be damaging to others or yourself is a safe act just because of the
>perceived obscurity of where it's being posted.
>
>Posting to Usenet is not at all private and never has been: no privacy
is
>possible on Usenet because it is an almost entirely open system and
there
>is absolutely no mechanism for determining the identity of who has read
>and/or saved what you have written. Usenet archives for specific groups
>are widely available via anonymous FTP from repositories like UUNet, but
>they are only the tip of the iceberg: a typical Usenet article is
>propagated to literally thousands of machines worldwide, with no easy
>mechanism for user traces of exact routing.
>
>Posting to Usenet is, for many, the *antithesis* of privacy. Usenet
news
>is distributed so as to assure a wide, unrestricted audience. Whether
or
>not you desire this wide audience, it is certainly true that you're
>getting it whether you want it or not. The appearance of Usenet search
>engines like Deja News may remind you that privacy does not exist on
>Usenet, but they are not the *cause* of this lack of privacy.
>
>What Deja News does do is to allow people to find useful, publicly
>available information quickly and efficiently, without having the
>resources of a government or big corporation. They were already
searching
>Usenet without Deja News: with it, the average user is also so
empowered.
>
>All that being said, we do care about the issue and want to do what we
can
>to help those with concerns about their privacy. We understand that
>sensitive issues are discussed in alt.support*, and we have absolutely
no
>desire to cause embarrassment or pain to those who post here (or
anywhere
>else, for that matter). Here are a few options you can use to help
>protect your privacy:
>
>
>Anonymous remailers and accounts
>--------------------------------
>
>Aside from the advice from the Primer quoted at the beginning of this
>article, one method is to achieve privacy through anonymity. Anonymous
>remailers and accounts can both help. Using an anonymous remailer
>involves routing mail or newsgroup postings through a system that
>"anonymizes" return address, message ID, name, and other header fields
>that could be used to identify the actual originator of a posting.
>Doing this greatly reduces the chances of personal information being
>linked to someone's actual identity.
>
>These remailers do not generally charge anything, and they are easy to
>use. Please see the Electronic Frontier Foundation's "Anonymity/
>Pseudoanonymity Archive" at:
>
> http://www.eff.org/pub/Privacy/Anonymity/
>
>for details.
>
>You can also get an email account anonymously, paying an Internet
Service
>Provider in cash or money order if you want, and never giving them any
>personally identifying information. An example of such an ISP,
>Community ConneXion (http://www.c2.org/), also offers members the
>ability to create anonymous web pages.
>
>
>Deja News: x-no-archive
>-----------------------
>
>Leaving articles out of Deja News is likewise quite easy (and is
>generally *not* offered at all the other sites where your posts are
>archived). All you have to do is include the x-header
>
> x-no-archives: yes
>
>in your newsgroup post. If you don't know what x-headers are or don't
>want to use one, you can also use the x-no-archive line given above as
the
>*first* line of the bodytext of your article, with nothing else on that
>line. See the top of this posting for an example.
>
>Please feel free to distribute the info in this post as widely as you
>wish. If you would like to send a comment to us on this issue, we
welcome
>your email! Let us know how we can be of service.
>
>
>
>George D. Nickas
>--
> George Demosthenes Nickas | D E J A N E W S
> User/Media Liaison |
> | The Premier Usenet
> http://www.dejanews.com/ | Search Utility!
>
Long before dejanews or altavista were developed lack of privacy has been
an aspect of the net. Nobody should ever assume that anything they say on
the net will not be read by everybody. But then I am paranoid enough to
think that everything I write or say anywhere will be read or heard.
Nick Carter
: In <4mtvtk$i...@news3.realtime.net> de...@dejanews.com (George Demosthenes
: Nickas) writes:
: >x-no-archive: yes
This strikes me as similar to asking people not to save old newspapers in
case one contains a letter by someone who has subsiquently changed their
mind. Or worse, a politician who has changed positions on some issue.
NC
John Husvar
Sara Freeman wrote:
> Long before dejanews or altavista were developed lack of privacy has been
> an aspect of the net. Nobody should ever assume that anything they say on
> the net will not be read by everybody. But then I am paranoid enough to
> think that everything I write or say anywhere will be read or heard.
Exactly.
The net, in its various incarnations and manifestations, is like the eyes
of the gods; sees all, knows all, shows all, tells all, to anybody who
knows how and where to look.
They ain't _no_ privacy on the net and never was.
That should be engraved at the top of every terminal screen in the world.
:)
This thing was built predominantly by people who believed systems should
be open and information should be freely available and free.
E-mail isn't private. News is _certainly_ not private, and even anonymous
remailers' security can be broken by a determined person.
Sad but true: If you can't accept it could be seen by someone besides
yourself and the intended recipient, don't (repeat DO NOT) send it over
the net in any way or learn to use PGP. (and even that will probably be
broken someday if it hasn't already)
Or--you can take my attitude and send it anyway on the premise you can't
blackmail someone who just doesn't give a rat's anal orifice. :)
--
It's beat and bind and cut and thrust,/ It's eye and arm and breath./
It's brain and nerve and steel and blood,/ The swordsman's dance of
death.
-- M. Longcor: The Swordsman
John Husvar SCA: Johan Wagenfahrer the Cripple Chet vinh hon song
nhuc
Indigo O.
Dear George at Deja News,
What information can people search by? Is it only a search of the author,
subject, newsgroup, and such, or does it also scan for words found within
the body of articles? If I use anonymous remailers but include my name at
the bottom of my posting, can I have anonymity as far as searchers go, but
be known by people who read within the group I post to?
Pat McCotter
On Mon, 13 May 1996 20:08:34 -0700, ind...@noreply.com (Indigo O.)
wrote:
:Dear George at Deja News,
I searches the enire message including body.
Pat McCotter pa...@cnfi.com
These are my views and have not been read by my employer.
Kenetech Facilities Management
O&M Services for Natural Gas, Biomass, and Wind Generated Electricity
Jim Nugent
ind...@noreply.com (Indigo O.) wrote:
>Dear George at Deja News,
>What information can people search by? Is it only a search of the author,
>subject, newsgroup, and such, or does it also scan for words found within
>the body of articles? If I use anonymous remailers but include my name at
>the bottom of my posting, can I have anonymity as far as searchers go, but
>be known by people who read within the group I post to?
You can search on anything. I did some nice research once by searching on
"Toyota Camry." A search on "Dear George at Deja News," came up empty at Deja
News, but at another site, Alta Vista, http://www.altavista.com, it brought up
your post right away!
As long as Usenet had been around, any competent programmer could easily write
a search engine that does what Deja News does.
--
Jim Nugent
nu...@execpc.com
Sara Freeman
In <4nbhbp$8...@daily-planet.execpc.com> nu...@execpc.com (Jim Nugent)
writes:
These search engines are far from perfect. They don't show a lot of the
stuff that is there. You have a perform various permutations of a search
on different engines to get a lot of the stuff.
julie_z.
What you have to do is, like me -- be an oldtimer (alright, I've been
here about a year in this newsgroup -- but for Usenet that's a long
time). Now I can just sign with my first name and last initial,
because the regulars here know me pretty well.
keith
ni...@users.jaxnet.com (Nick Carter) wrote:
>: In <4mtvtk$i...@news3.realtime.net> de...@dejanews.com (George Demosthenes
>: Nickas) writes:
>: >x-no-archive: yes
>This strikes me as similar to asking people not to save old newspapers in
>case one contains a letter by someone who has subsiquently changed their
>mind. Or worse, a politician who has changed positions on some issue.
>NC
it is not always a bad thing if a politician changes positions on some
issue, as long as it is a good change and the change has'nt been
because of by a bribe.
keith
Steve Fullerton
keith wrote:
>
> ni...@users.jaxnet.com (Nick Carter) wrote:
>
> >: In <4mtvtk$i...@news3.realtime.net> de...@dejanews.com (George Demosthenes
> >: Nickas) writes:
> >: >x-no-archive: yes
>
> >case one contains a letter by someone who has subsiquently changed their
> >mind. Or worse, a politician who has changed positions on some issue.
>
> >NC
>
> it is not always a bad thing if a politician changes positions on some
> issue, as long as it is a good change and the change has'nt been
> because of by a bribe.
>
> keith
discussing UC, Crohn's, IBS, and other digestive disorders.