News Services
Introduction
The Bananasplit News server is a standard INN server with some customised filters to defeat the regular trolling and flooding that occurs within alt.privacy.anon-server. It also provides an NNTPS interface which enables users to access the server over an encrypted link. Further details of this feature and how to take advantage of it are described later on this page.
Postings made to the server will not include identifying headers such as NNTP-Posting-Host or X-Trace. This isn't the ultimate in anonymity, but it does provide you with basic privacy. It certainly is not a license to abuse Usenet!
NNTP Access
As outlined above, there are two methods for users to access this news service. The first and most commonly used method is the standard NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol) which is supported by all news readers. To use this method to access the server, simply point your reader at news.bananasplit.info using the default IP port of 119.
NNTPS Access
NNTPS provides a secure means to access the server. Secure in this instance means the traffic between the server and the reader is encrypted. This prevents third parties for being able to tell what articles and groups you choose to read.
NNTPS is currently only supported by a small number of news readers, most of which are only available to the Linux and Unix community. For those who want secure access via their regular news reader, there is a simple solution in the form of Stunnel which is very easily configured to support NNTPS. For details on how to do this, please read
this article.
Hosted groups
The news service provides read and post access to the following groups:
alt.anonymous*
alt.computer.security
alt.cotse
alt.hacker
alt.privacy*
alt.security*
alt.testing.testing
comp.security.pgp.discuss
sci.crypt
talk.politics.crypto
Also, local.feedback is a non-propagated group for comments and suggestions about the service. If you would like me to host additional newsgroups, please feel free to ask. For low-volume text groups related to privacy or anonymity, I will be happy to oblige. For binary porn and warez groups, please don't bother to ask.
Please note: Posting of binaries through this service will not be tolerated. This especially applies to messages sent through the remailer network and even more especially if the content is erotica. Firstly, I don't have the bandwidth to handle it. Secondly, I don't want it. Accounts will be deleted without any notification or explanation if I feel this is being ignored.
Filters
For some years alt.privacy.anon-server has been abused by a persistent troll who attempts to disrupt the regular agenda of the group. Due to the nature of anonymous services, filtering this troll by the usual means is difficult without sacrificing many of the well-intentioned postings of other people. This was the primary reason for my introducing this service, and later making it publicly available. On the advice of various people within the community, I decided to make my filters available for public scrutiny and hence, they can be viewed here. These are hard-coded filters based on the content of the message and the newsgroups it is posted to. There are also EMP (excessive multi-posting) filters which ensure that the same message isn't posted repeatedly. In fact, a message can only be posted once to a group within a period of a week. The EMP filter strips headers and PGP signatures prior to generating a hash. This protects against the troll tactic of signing repeated postings.
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