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[0005] tytso@ATHENA.MIT.EDU  Lucy_development  12/11/90 15:26 (42 lines)
Subject: alt.personals software?
My apologies for not attending the Lucy design review; I forgot all
about it until after it was over that day.

I don't know if this is even within the requirements of the problem that
you are setting out to solve, but something which I think would be
really useful is the ability for someone to send a question
anonymously and yet get back a private email message.

A mechanism for doing this can be found in the software used in the
Usenet group alt.personals.  This is how it works:

1) When a user mail a question to the alt.personals server, it checks
the from field to see if the user has ever send mail to the alt.personal
server before.  If the user has not, the server assigns to that user an
alt.personal alias --- "akms@lucy.mit.edu", for example.  The mail is
then stripped of any identifying headers and is sent to the News
software to be posted to alt.personals.  This could easily be adapted
for Lucy by having the mail be sent directly to the list of Lucy
staffers.

2)  Anyone can now send mail to "akms@lucy.mit.edu" and the message will
be sent back to user who originally sent first message.  The lucy
personnel would thus be able to send a response back to the user without
knowing his or her identity.

There are of course, a couple of disadvantages to this method.  First of
all, this system is only as secure as the database on the mail server.
It may be possible to get a ruling from the privacy committee or
whatever that this database must be kept private; otherwise, we may have
a problem when someone from SPODSA(*) shows up at Athena's doorstep and
demands the identity of "akms@lucy.mit.edu".  Secondly, this method is
only as secure as email; all of the problems with dead letters staying
on workstations still apply.

The advantage is that this software is already written and has been
tested quite thoroughly.  I think the added functionality granted by
this software is very valuable --- I can think of several examples,
especially ones involving possible sexual harassment, where the person
asking the question might want to remain anonymous and the question and
responses would best be kept private.

--[0005]--
^L
discuss:

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