From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/81207 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: Time to revisit the message id generation algorithm? Date: Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:50:39 +0000 Message-ID: References: <87sjit4k1b.fsf@gnus.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1328205182 26835 80.91.229.3 (2 Feb 2012 17:53:02 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2012 17:53:02 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Gnus Ding Original-X-From: ding-owner+M29488@lists.math.uh.edu Thu Feb 02 18:53:01 2012 Return-path: Envelope-to: ding-account@gmane.org Original-Received: from util0.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.18]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Rt0qD-0005Eg-2p for ding-account@gmane.org; Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:53:01 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.math.uh.edu) by util0.math.uh.edu with smtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1Rt0pX-0007T6-Ql; Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:52:19 -0600 Original-Received: from mx1.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.32]) by util0.math.uh.edu with esmtps (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1Rt0pW-0007Sw-67 for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:52:18 -0600 Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.231.51]) by mx1.math.uh.edu with esmtps (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.76) (envelope-from ) id 1Rt0pR-0001qo-3f for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:52:17 -0600 Original-Received: from mailout-eu.gmx.com ([213.165.64.42]) by quimby.gnus.org with smtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1Rt0pP-0007Lp-5l for ding@gnus.org; Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:52:11 +0100 Original-Received: (qmail invoked by alias); 02 Feb 2012 17:52:05 -0000 Original-Received: from 85-220-60-172.dsl.dynamic.simnet.is (EHLO localhost) [85.220.60.172] by mail.gmx.com (mp-eu002) with SMTP; 02 Feb 2012 18:52:05 +0100 X-Authenticated: #132896649 X-Provags-ID: V01U2FsdGVkX1+2PS4CqPW2ydz/jfk5mpiqZqSjePnA2IzpXq2GEh Qg6BnOpj/9RgKK Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.gnus User-Agent: Gnus/5.130001 (Ma Gnus v0.1) XEmacs/21.4.22 (usg-unix-v) Cancel-Lock: sha1:obaqTB8slUCi4K93WsmjgYOHhTA= In-Reply-To: <87sjit4k1b.fsf@gnus.org> (Lars Ingebrigtsen's message of "Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:16:48 +0100") Posted-To: gnu.emacs.gnus X-Y-GMX-Trusted: 0 X-Spam-Score: -0.9 (/) List-ID: Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:81207 Archived-At: The following message is a courtesy copy of an article that has been posted to gnu.emacs.gnus as well. Lars Ingebrigtsen writes: > "Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson" writes: > >> Depending on the seriousness of said unethical practices, that person >> may have just lost her life to (message-unique-id). > > True, but it's pretty unlikely. If you want anonymous email, you > should go through an email anonymising service. You're right. However, I do have a real life story of the .fsf exposing an author years later - ironically on the very day I posted the articlue on gnu.emacs.gnus. As it is, I can't recommend people to use Gnus with TOR on usenet. > Having the uid in the Message-ID is documented, and is handy when > scoring followups. I'm not disputing the current id generation. It has worked very well so far. >> This is unlikely to be a problem but for people setting the >> mail-host-address to their email provider. Say Google or Yahoo. > Nobody has ever reported a problem like that in Gnus' 25 years, so I > think it's pretty unlikely. It *is* unlikely. I am for example setting the mail-host-address to a unique identifier for my laptop, even though there is no publicly queriable IP address for it, asuka.myrkraverk.com. An the other hand, if I were to set mail-host-address to mail.gmx.com (to reflect my From field) I am running the risk of generating the same message id as someone else (using Gnus) doing just that. There are ways to address these issues without panicking. For example, the .fsf can be made configurable, and the user id as well. Personally I'd like to see more random data in the id, but doing that right means also not doing it in a hurry. I'm likely to come up with some proposals in the near future. For example, I might bring a patch for the following configuration variables: message-unique-id-use-uid, message-unique-id-prefix, message-unique-id-suffix. Where the defaults are t, "" and ".fsf" respectively. Johann