[tor-talk] Best way to anonymize email while still be allowing to receive it?

[Praedor]

I am not an expert on this (I have vmware player running for windows xp and have played around with a tor vm - take a look here: http://www.janusvm.com/tor_vm/).  Otherwise, all you'd really need is an install of linux on your vm and also install tor.  The tor vm simply does the work for you (initially).  You get your vm setup and it can communicate back and forth with your local machine, and allow it access to the internet.  

As for running a mailserver or just setting up a local sendmail system...the people I would send to would never receive the email, not even in their spam folder as the recipient's mail system would reject my locally sent emails out of hand.  It has been a while but the gist of the messages I would get with the "mail delivery failure" was yahoo, gmail, etc, didn't recognize my sendmail server as legit.  It is too easy for a spammer to simply setup on their own system and spam all day - so the big providers now check to see if your sendmail setup is "legit" by seeing if it is officially registered as an mx or the like (or so it appears). It wasn't always like this.  Four or so years back I had no problem sending mail using my own system's sendmail (postfix).  Then settings changed fairly rapidly at most big mail providers and I lost the ability to send mail using my local sendmail.  If you have to register your server, then unless you completely lie, then you are terminating your own privacy/anonymity by using a self-registered system.  You can always setup a mail account anonymously (using tor to set it up) and just make sure you never connect to it without using tor (or a VPN service).  

Gmail is apparently out for doing this now.  I have had no luck lately trying to setup a truly anonymous gmail account.  It has been a while since I did so with yahoo so I don't know if they screw it up for this too now or not.  There are alternatives.

praedor



On Tuesday, June 14, 2011 02:42:02 am 0 wrote:
> > > It would connect like this, evolution --> tor --> local mail server 
> > 
> > It is not possible to use Evolution with Tor, because you can not set
> a
> > SOCKS proxy for Evolution.
> 
> I can use thunderbird then.
> 
> > It is not possible for Tor to connect to your local mail server
> (behind
> > a rouer?).
> 
> I suppose the following was in reply to this:
> 
> >What if you setup a minimal VM for the mailserver?  It would have an
> independent IP and be accessible via tor locally and externally wouldn't
> it (if the routing is setup properly)? 
> 
> Tell me more. How would the routing need to be set up?
> 
> > I used to use my own mailserver to send/receive but ended up having to
> quit simply because most of the recipient email systems would reject my
> sendmail - it wasn't registered so (I assume) the systems (yahoo, gmail,
> etc) probably thought I was a spam house or something and so would
> reject any mail I attempted to send.
> 
> That's helpful to know. Are you saying the recepient wouldn't even see
> mail from me in their spam folder?
> 
> > Is your mailserver registered?  While all you need is a FQDN to do so,
> it may tend to break your anon unless you religiously keep that FQDN on
> tor so that no hostname search will ever pull up your real IP.
> 
> No, because I haven't set up the server yet. I'd like to plan out
> everything first to make it fully anonymised. How do I keep the FQDN on
> tor?
> 
> 
> 
> 
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