What's with all the hostility?

[Daniel Atallah]

On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 08:21, Ryan K <travellintroll at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I am afraid that I do not know much about this type of thing.  That is why I
> ask questions.  It is very important to me however that I ensure my own
> security and the security of those I communicate with.  It is a matter of
> freedom of speech.  I sense some hostility in your reply.  I'm not sure
> why.  I assume it is contempt for anyone who does not understand code.  At
> least I am capable of understanding the complexities of common courtesy.
>
> Ryan

This is a public mailing list, so you may receive a variety of
responses from people who may or may not be affiliated with the Pidgin
project.

People are encouraged to be friendly and respectful, but the list
isn't moderated.

Enough people read the list that someone will eventually correct a
false response.

>
>> Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2012 08:05:43 +0000
>> From: forums at david-woolley.me.uk
>> To: travellintroll at hotmail.com
>> CC: support at pidgin.im
>> Subject: Re: Using Pidgin with TOR
>>
>> Ryan K wrote:
>> >
>> > TOR reports that Pidgin has a bug that results in DNS leaks when using
>>
>> What is TOR?
>>
>> I've never heard of a DNS leak before. Apparently it means that DNS is
>> handled by the normal servers, rather than by those provided by some
>> sort of anonymising proxy service. The presumption is, presumably, that
>> the ISP, possibly at the behest of the government, is doing traffic flow
>> analysis on you by analyzing your DNS requests, to your disadvantage.
>>
>> I'd be surprised if Pidgin uses anything other than standard OS services
>> for DNS, so I'd suggest that this level of distrust of ISPs (and trust
>> of the anonymising service) requires a deeper understanding of the
>> complete system than the OP seems to have. I would suggest you would
>> need to be using a completely open source system, and have a good
>> understanding of how it all works.
>>
>> Maybe all it really means is that Pidgin uses DNS, presumably to
>> validate addresses, or canonicalise them.
>>
>> > XMPP. If I use Pidgin with only other Pidgin users, do I require XMPP.
>> > Can XMPP be disabled?
>>
>> XMPP can be disabled by removing the relevant plugin. You will lose the
>> ability to access Facebook and Google instant messaging services, as
>> well as most corporate ones. Of course, simply not using XMPP based
>> services will mean that the XMPP code is never run, which will also
>> avoid any DNS related code that it contains being run.
>>
>> You should, of course, verify this by inspection of the source code, as
>> you can't trust us!
>>
>> On the other hand, maybe the "troll" in the username is not far from the
>> truth.
>>
>>
>> --
>> David Woolley
>> Emails are not formal business letters, whatever businesses may want.
>> RFC1855 says there should be an address here, but, in a world of spam,
>> that is no longer good advice, as archive address hiding may not work.
>
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