miniRelay FAQ


Can miniRelay relay (send) messages anonymously?
No. miniRelay allows you to send messages with any account, but the person who receives the message can look in the headers and see your IP. For this reason, sending mail is not totally anonymous.

Can I configure miniRelay to not put the IP of my machine in the message?

No, miniRelay adds a "Received:" header with the IP of the machine from where it received the message (see the italics in the example below). This header can easily be erased by configuring miniRelay to erases all the "Received:" headers. However the destination mail server then adds the IP from where the message arrived (see the bold in the example below). Absolutely nothing can be done about this, because the destination mail server takes the IP of the same TCP connection that is used to send the message to it.

 Return-Path: <[email protected]> 
 Received: from mx.server.com ([ 10.13.14.3 ]) by msg.server.com 
       (Netscape Messaging Server 4.15) with ESMTP id HBUVDO08.3GU for
       <[email protected]>;  Sun, 16 Mar 2003 19:58:36 +0100 
 Received: from your_machine_name ([ 10.11.12.2 ]) 
       by mta05.server.com (Netscape Messaging Server 6.1 (built Jul 18 2002)) 
       with ESMTP id <[email protected]> for [email protected] 
       (ORCPT [email protected]);  Sun, 16 Mar 2003 19:58:36 (+0100 MET) 
 Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]) by
       localhost (minirelay v0.9.73) 
       with smtp id XD9XWHDL;  Sun, 16 Mar 2003 20:02:10 -0100  
 Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 20:02:10 +0100 
 From: NetVicious <[email protected]> 
 Subject: Example message
 To: [email protected] 
 Reply-to: [email protected] 
 Message-id: <[email protected]> 
 MIME-version: 1.0  
 Content-type: text/plain;  charset=us-ascii 
 Content-transfer-encoding:  7bit 
 X-Priority:  3 (Normal)

 Text of message
  • Italic Received: line is added my miniRelay, and lists the mail client connection.
  • Bold Received: line is added by the SMTP server miniRelay delevers the message to, and lists the machine miniRelay runs on.
  • The top Received: line is added by the final SMTP server. Each SMTP server adds a Received: line (to the top) listing where the message came from...

Last Modification:

Comments, bugs, etc. to:
[email protected]