Hi Folks,
Many times people question why their Usenet posts never appear when posting via anonymous remailers. I have found through extensive ongoing testing that the #1 cause of this is specifying an incompatible exit remailer/mail2news combination. These tests involve periodically (about every month or so) sending each mail2news a Usenet-bound message from each available exit remailer, individually. It's quite evident from these tests that some exit remailers only work with certain mail2news'. This can be caused by a number of reasons, including an exit remailer blocking a certain mail2news address, vice versa, or simple Internet routing problems.
Since I spend such a lot of time checking to see which exit remailers work with
which mail2news gateways, I figured I'd put that to good use. I
don't know about other people, but I get into a lazy habit of using
the same exits with the same gateways, which is an insignificant risk
to anonymity but a partitioning risk nonetheless.
So I made a little VB6 program which loads a text file containing the
latest data from my tests, deletes the bad routes, and at command
parses it up & copies a *random* good route into the clipboard
formatted for pasting into a Quicksilver header, like this:
Chain: *,*,george; copies=3
To: mail2news@dizum.com
If desired, a route of your choosing can be copied directly to the clipboard by clicking on it in gatepick's listbox.
[Editing results.txt]
Since it relies on the results.txt file, a user can edit it as he
sees fit: to take out those routes which he may not like due to
latency considerations or what have you. For example, if a line such
as
panta > mail2news@bananasplit.info
offends you, simply append BAD after it, like this -
panta > mail2news@bananasplit.info BAD
Or you can delete the entire line (leaving no whitespace).
Conversely, if there's a route which works for you that I mark as
BAD, just take BAD off of it.
Since my published results.txt is rarely up-to-the-minute, users must be vigilant to the status of the various remailers & mail2news' and temporary bad routes taken into account.
[Editing gatepick.cfg]
gatepick.cfg is a little text file containing two variables.
The first is the chain to which the program will append the randomly
picked exit remailer. The default value in gatepick.cfg is "*,*",
which means that when it generates the header in the clipboard the
final result will be Chain: *,*,cyberiad, for example. So if you have
certain preferences as to chain length, entry remailers or whatever,
this is where you fix it. Suppose I typically send to panta's smtp
service and I like a five remailer chain. I would edit the first
line in gatepick.cfg to read "panta,*,*,*" which would result in a
header line of Chain: panta,*,*,*,cyberiad in this example.
The second line in gatepick.cfg contains the "copies" variable. The
default is "copies=3" and you can edit the integer to reflect what
suits you. If you want no copies, edit the line to read "" only.
The third line in gatepick.cfg is just a warning telling you to stop
right there; gatepick.cfg *must* contain these three lines, no more,
no less.
A menu option will minimize it to the systray. At that point a
single left-click on its systray icon will copy a random route to the
clipboard. Right click on the systray icon to get a little menu.
[Downloads]
Download the program & associated files gatepick.zip
Unzip the files into the same directory, where they need to stay together.
Signature: gatepick.zip.sig
A spare gatepick.cfg can be found here
And as always the graphical representation of the data, results.htm
I'll update results.txt periodically if there's meaningful change.
You'll find the latest one here.
Try it out. I made this program for me as a simple companion to
QuickSilver, but if it's useful for you it's all yours.
[News]
Gatepick.exe v 0.9.0.5 is now released. This major enhancement picks a random remailer's smtp host for use with Tor, generates a random From address and random copies. If you're an existing gatepick user you may want to upgrade to this version. (sig). Go to its page for what's new & how to use it.
The source is available. (sig)
Hang on to your old version of gatepick just in case you don't like the new one.
drsnoid
My public PGP Key
