Modifying Eudora's Headers

Support: Email: Modifying Eudora Headers Eudora has a couple of "anonymity problems". If you are already using Eudora as your mail client for your ISP and the dominant "personality" is your main account with your ISP, and you then add a Cotse email account as another "personality" in Eudora, the "message-id" placed on all outgoing messages will be set by the "dominant" account. The same holds true if you make Cotse the "dominant" account. To protect your privacy, you do not want your main ISP domain or your main Cotse account showing in any outgoing email headers. On this page, you will learn how to modify your Eudora headers to protect your anonymity. When you're done with these steps, be sure to read "Notes" to find out about additional recommended protections for Eudora users.

Overview

Modifying Headers - Existing Setups

Most email clients, such as Eudora, Outlook Express and many, many others are designed to adhere to accepted standards whereby the client, not the server, places a "message-id" on all outgoing mail.

This can be insecure for our users. If you wish to remain as anonymous as possible, you should change your dominant account to something invalid. We have chosen to use "nowhere.org" as an example of an invalid account. You may use whatever you wish, just remember that in order to protect your anonymity, whatever you choose shouldn't have anything to do with you or your online presence in order to maintain anonymity.

To further explain, it's necessary for you to send an outgoing test message, from your existing "dominant" account. If you don't have Eudora setup already, skip this portion and go to "New Setup," below. For those that are currently using Eudora as their mail client, try this:

Compose a new email, use any "personality" you wish to send the message. Send it to one of your other accounts or to the "dominant" account. It really doesn't matter who you are sending "as" -- just make sure you send it to yourself so you may check the headers.

Send the message, then retrieve your mail. When the message arrives in your inbox, check the message headers. The easiest way of doing this would be to "double-click" the new message, then click the "blah blah" icon above the message. The entire message header should appear. If you look for "message-id" you will note the domain directly reflects the domain of your "dominant" account.

If you want to increase your anonymity with Eudora, it is advisable to change your "dominant" settings to reflect a non-working email address. Eudora uses the "dominant" account when setting up the outgoing message-id. The Message-ID is mandatory and cannot be "left-out". However, it can be set to reflect a non-working, invalid account.

If you want to modify an existing Eudora installation to reflect a more anonymous email setup, follow these instructions.

In Eudora, click on the "Personalities" tab. Right click on the <Dominant> personality and select "properties".

Change your settings for that personality as follows (you may wish to make a note of your existing "dominant" account settings so that you can create another personality with that information afterwards):

Generic PropertiesTab:

• Real Name: "anonymous"
• Return Address: "none@nowhere.org" Login Name: "none"
• SMTP Server: "none.nowhere.org"
• Uncheck "Authentication Allowed"

Incoming Mail Tab:

• Incoming Email Server: "none.nowhere.org"

Click OK

Go to the "Personalities" tab again.

Right-click on the new "dominant" account and click "properties"

Uncheck "check mail" -- we don't want to try and check this mail, as it is false and won't work.

Click "OK".

Start/Stop Eudora.  

Modifying Eudora Headers - New Setups

Notes

The following is for a new setup, not for an existing Eudora setup. If you are currently using Eudora for your email and you are adding a Cotse account, or you would like to secure your existing setup, jump to "Existing Eudora Settings".

In Eudora:

• Click on Tools --> Options
• Highlight the "Getting Started" Icon in the left.
• Enter the following information on the right:

  - Real Name:  "Anonymous"

  - Return Address: " none@nowhere.org"

  - Mail Server (Incoming): "none.nowhere.org"

  - Login Name: " none"

  - SMTP Server (Outgoing): " none.nowhere.org"

  - Leave "Allow authentication" unchecked.

  - Click OK.

• Click on Tools --> Personalities. The Personalities tab will appear to the left of your inbox. Right-click on "Dominant" and click "Properties"
• In the Generic Properties tab, make sure that "check mail" and "authentication allowed" are both unchecked.
• Click OK.

Go to "personalities". Follow the directions for setting up a Cotse standard or SSL email account.

After making the recommended changes to the "dominant" account, when you send mail with any email address, the "message-id" will not reflect a valid domain or account name. Note, however, that the numbers to the left of the message ID are still valid dates. To our knowledge, there's no way to modify this.  

If you modified an existing account, you will need to go back into "personalities" and setup a new personality with the account settings of your previous "dominant" account. The "dominant" account has been virtually disabled, keeping you from publishing unwanted information in your email headers.

If you use "leave messages on server", setting up this new "dominant" account will require your client to re-download all messages left on the server.

Eudora adds a couple other headers to your outgoing email that you may not like, such as the "x-sender" and "x-mailer" header. There's a well written and easy to follow document and utility to change this.

We recommend that when you're done making the modifications to your message-id that are described here that you then go explore the edit-x utility.