Newsgroups: news.admin.policy
From: hoey@zogwarg.etl.army.mil (Dan Hoey)
Date: 9 Feb 93 14:55:10 GMT
Subject: Re: Anonymous postings to non-personals newsgroups

Having seen several attempts by students in introductory computer
science courses to get their homework done by the readers of
comp.theory, I was somewhat dismayed to see the anonymous posting
service used for the purpose.  So far there has been only one such
use, though that seems to be the only use of the service on
comp.theory so far.

While there has never been any real security against anonymous or
forged postings on Usenet, the process has until now been sufficiently
inconvenient, error-prone, and undocumented to limit its use by
persons who have not learned the culture of the net.

On the other hand, a recent use of the anonymous posting service on
sci.math seemed seemed to be a student asking help on a homework
problem.  It has now been attributed to a teacher, asking for an
explanation of a dubious answer in his teaching guide.  He says his
news posting is broken, so he is using the anonymous service as a
mail-to-news gateway.

Gateways from mail to news have provided a fairly easy method of
forgery and anonymity in the past, though they are somewhat less prone
to abuse for several reasons.  First, their use does not provide
anonymity by default, nor does it promise anonymity.  Such gateways
may in fact keep enough records to trace back to the poster in most
cases.  Second, the gateways do not provide a covert address for
private, anonymous communication with the poster.  Thus the cheating
student must either provide a private address or make do with that
information that gets posted in the newsgroup.  The inherently greater
risk of detection would be likely to reduce such abuse.

For these reasons, I think such gateways are much less harmful than
the anonymous posting service.  It is unfortunate that no well-known
mail-to-news gateways seem to exist outside of the anonymous posting
service.

Dan Hoey
Hoey@AIC.NRL.Navy.Mil