OFF: anon.penet.fi

Niko Makila niko.makila at RESEARCH.NOKIA.COM
Fri May 15 02:26:59 EDT 1998


Marc's message dated: Thu, 14 May 1998 11:22:37 EDT
>
> Actually e-mail shouldn't be public but its not at all secure and anyone
> with the right permissions at a mail gateway can read your mail if its
> not encrypted. Like the Sysadmins at your ISP for instance.

That's true.  When I said e-mail isn't public, I didn't mean it
technically but legally.  At least here in Finland e-mail is protected
by law in the same way as ordinary mail (i.e., very strictly).  Still
it's very easy to read someone's mail if you get into the right
position and most often even harder to prove that you have read that
mail if you're careful.  But listening someone's phone is equally easy
once you get to the right place, although getting there is harder thanks
to poor security on most Internet sites.

An interesting point is that people are often worried about someone
reading their mail, although a much bigger problem would probably be if
someone else *wrote* their mail.

Just for the record, the guy who ran the anon.penet.fi is called Johan
`Julf' Helsingius, not "Jurt" as someone said.

        //niko



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