Family Forum / Parenting / Mothers / November 2003

It depends on what you mean by anonymous.  Do you mean
that you don't want your IP traceable?  Or that you really don't
want anyone on the ng to know it's you?

Several possibilities exist for this, I think.   The premium
newsservers like altopia and easynews allow you to munge
your address to invalid addresses provided that the domain
is not a valid one that someone is actually using.   This gives
you anonymous posting on the groups and some of these
services don't post the NTTP either.   If you have posted
with your name though and connect yourself to the posts,
it won't be so anonymous that people don't know who you
are.  My name is associated with my nym, so if I wanted to
really be anon, I would have to change my nym and change
my signature, etc.   And I would probably have to not tell
anyone who I was under that new nym.  Btw, for those
considering a news service, I can't reccommend altopia
at this time since I am considering whether to dump it.
The retention is short and there is something weird going
on with someone I know that caused him to dump it though
I have not yet heard from him about the reasons.  Easynews
apparently respects privacy more than altopia does, so I
may change to that provider myself.  There are others
around as well.

Another way to post is to use anonymous remailers *and*
a news service.  Anon remailers bounce the post off many
different IPs and depending on how many bounces they take
are pretty much untraceable except possibly by the LEA.  I
have never used one and have been told they are not easy to
set up though.  You can subscribe to an anon remailer service
quite legally but then you have to figure out how to set it up.

The other way to do it, is to hide behind a proxy of some sort.  
I believe though that this is considered theft of service because
you are using IP numbers that have been left open accidentally
or for the newsserver admins to do something (I think).   I am
not very clear on this one.  Only heard about it after being
harrassed by the warez boys.  There is a proxy kit that they
post regularly on one of those groups that tells how to go
about finding open proxies and connecting through them.  It
supposedly makes things easy for newbies to learn how to use
them.

--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

Thanks Aula, Ive got something to think about there. Is it easy to
change headers? The latter idea is a reasonable option.
Sarah

botheration, youre right Kim, Id completely forgot about my IP addy.

I dont need to be *that* anonymous. lol, Im not planning anything I need
to hide from the 'authorities Id just like to be able to go into other
ngs without bringing back any accidental tr*lls. I also dont want my own
'puter or email being attacked.
Sarah