Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2016 January 8

Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

January 8

How to check Linux mailbox with Windows software

Dear Wikipedians:

The Linux mailx program seems to be able to directly check the

/var/spool/mail/[username]

mailbox. However, Thunderbird for Windows requires either a POP3 or an IMAP server to work (only the SMTP server is setup on my Linux box).

I am wondering if there is any Windows equivalent of mailx that can check Linux mailboxes directly remotely, using just the IP address of the remote Linux box and its SMTP port (port 25)?

Thanks,

69.158.78.39 (talk) 02:36, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

SMTP is not used to retrieve messages like POP3 or IMAP are. It is used to send and receive them. So, if you had to use SMTP on both ends, you would need to set up a mail server on the Windows computer that would listen for messages sent to it from the Linux machine. You seem to think that the Windows machine would connect remotely to the Linux machine using port 25 and then request the messages, but the process happens in the opposite direction.

So, you could install an SMTP server on the Windows machine like xmailserve or hMailServer, to receive the messages.

However, you should instead install a POP3 or IMAP server on the Linux box, like Dovecot. The Windows client could then use a normal e-mail client like Thunderbird or Outlook to download the messages using POP3 or IMAP and display them in an easy-to-read format. I can't think of any reason you would use SMTP to receive messages other than some weird firewall rules that block POP3 but not SMTP.—Best Dog Ever (talk) 06:11, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Even from Linux to Linux, it is not common to open the /var/mail/username file remotely. It is done locally using programs like mutt and alpine. For remote access, either IMAP or POP3 service is installed. Use IMAP if you want the mail to stay on the server and show up on the client as well (great if you use more than one client). Use POP3 if you want to remove the mails from the server.

Another issue is why you are storing emails in the /var/mail/username file. Is it cron? You can tell the programs to send email to a remote address (the one you actually use) instead of storing them locally. 209.149.114.138 (talk) 15:13, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Thank you all for your help! This is the OP. 45.56.154.62 (talk) 23:21, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Resolved

Reporting digital piracy anonymously

A while ago, an article about a fake artist was deleted. She sold music on iTunes, Spotify, Tidal, Microsoft music, Google Music and Amazon. However, the music was actually performed by Katharine McPhee (easily confirmed with Shazam). I wanted to report it, because I am a regular customer of two of these sellers, and I don't like doing my shopping in places where stolen goods is being sold. So I reported it to Spotify, who actually has a button for flagging tracks that are problematic for any reason (including piracy), and I filled in a form at IFPI's web site, www.ifpi.com/contacts. The latter appeared to be broken, as I got no on-screen confirmation that the message had been received (just a blank page), and no email confirmation. Spotify responded swiftly, and the music is now gone from Spotify, but available on the other platforms. IFPI has not responded so far.

I don't want to spend an exessive amount of time on this, but I still would like to see the music removed from the other platforms. So I have been thinking about how to get the message through, and be done with it, without using public forums where I use my personal name. This idea occurred: write the story in some blog where I am reasonably anonymous, and use a reasonably anonymous twitter account to link to the post. I actually do have a suitable twitter account. My questions:

1. I would like advice about sites where one can write such a blog post reasonably anonymously, without too much hassle.
2. I am not an experienced twitter user, with very few followers. I would like advice on how such a tweet should be written (hashtags etc) to direct the appropriate attention to the blog post.

--NorwegianBlue ^talk 10:00, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Your best bet would likely be to tweet this to Katherine McPhee's official twitter account with a message like "someone is selling your music as their own on iTunes, Tidal..." [1]. You could try include a hashtag associated like #katherinemcphee in addition. But your aim should be that the blog post is largely superflorous, you're going to need to fit the twitter post, your link and any hashtags within the character limit. Even then it could still be missed.

While it's theoretically possible for your message to go viral and for the companies to take action themselves; it's also very likely this won't happen. Even with a regular twitter account with a few real followers. A middle ground would be if the right fans, supporters or whatever notice and they complain to the sites but despite her popularity there's still a fair chance this won't happen either. Ultimately McPhee and her agents or the representatives for whoever publishes her music are the people who have the most interest and who will also find it easiest getting all the sites to take down the content since they are the copyright holder.

So it would be better to concentrate on getting this to someone who will hopefully direct it to such people. Beyond Twitter, perhaps her official site [2]. Her Facebook page doesn't allow you to PM or post anything on her wall, but you can do what other people may do and post it in response to one of her posts. But Facebook doesn't really allow anonymity. Note that as with Twitter, it's important that you get the key points across preferably early, rather than relying on someone reading the blog.

BTW, since you're posting this here in a public place, I'm going to assume you're okay with people linking to it if you don't say something to the contrary. If my request to join her official site forum is ever accepted I may post a link to this thread along with an explaination of the problem. Possibly to Facebook as well. @NorwegianBlue:

Nil Einne (talk) 12:10, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. I've (edit: already, 2 weeks ago) done exactly the things you suggest, except trying the contact form on her official site, and requesting membership in the forum. I don't need anonymity in contact with McPhee's agent or IFPI. In addition to McPhee, major targets for the message is IFPI, as well as iTunes etc, and journalists that might want to write about digital piracy using this story as an example. I need the blog post to provide the direct links to the pirated music, as well as giving some background. If possible, I would like to raise the awareness of digital piracy commited by iTunes, Amazon et al, when promoting fake artists. This is not the first case. See "Can you have an album on itunes if you don't exist?". I find the negligence of Spotify, iTunes, etc when it comes to verifying that their digital music is authentic quite amazing. It takes less than 15 seconds to identify the creator of the music with Shazam. They apparently rely on so called "artist aggregators", and obviously do no checking themselves.

I understand you have requested membership in Katharine McPhee's forum, and will try to get the message through there if accepted. That's excellent, please let me know if you succeed. I'll try the contact form you linked to. Regarding my wish for semi-anonymity: I don't expect this thing to "go viral", but if it did raise enough interest that Norwegian media might want to discuss digital piracy commited by fake artists, I don't want to be part of the public discussion. Norway is a small country, and the path is short from writing a Facebook post that catches interest, to being interviewed on Dagsnytt Atten. @Nil Einne:

--NorwegianBlue ^talk 14:03, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

• Can a Blogger (service) account (based on my Google account) be configured as a "reasonably anonymous" blog? I notice it is possible to choose between using a Google+ profile and a Blogger profile. How easy is it to identify my Google account if I use a Blogger profile? --NorwegianBlue ^talk 14:14, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

The problem with broadcasting this information widely is that you may unintentionally be telling people where to go to get McPhee's music for cheap. The law of unintended consequences at work! So I think the idea of setting off a viral message (even if this were possible) might be a bad idea. SteveBaker (talk) 18:52, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, good point. Ms McPhee does offer some of this music on Spotify herself, though, in addition to other tracks that have not been pirated (yet?). But some of the tracks that were pirated are not on Spotify (by McPhee, and the pirated versions have been deleted). Anyway, I've successfully sent the information to McPhee's website using the contact form as Nil suggested, so we'll see if something happens. I would still like to know if a Blogger (service) account can be configured as a "reasonably anonymous" blog though (and how), for the sake of interest. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 19:50, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Update

• One of the tracks (Scammer: My Lips, Katharine McPhee: Lick My Lips) is now reported by Shazam as scammer, not Katharine McPhee). This has changed since two days ago.
• I asked a question at apple support which could serve as the "anonymous blog post", before knowing that the scammer now is on Shazam, too.
• Many new songs released by the scammer today (11 January 2016). Some are correctly identified by Shazam as Katharine McPhee, others are reported as scammer. These guys are professional.

---NorwegianBlue ^talk 14:19, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

I was accepted on the Katharine McPhee fan website forum within a few hours of applying but haven't said anything yet. I'll wait a few more days until this thread is archived, so I can get a consistently link. Alternatively I could post a link to the iTunes forum question (I managed to find it). I can't really be bothered research it in depth myself, so I'll just provide the basics and provide a link for more details if anyone is interested. The possible advantage of the fan website is it seems a way an easy way to reach fans and others who may be interested in researching and pushing the matter themselves.

Also, while one could achieve the other, I think getting the tracks taken down and publicising the issue of scammers selling the works of others to unwitting customers should largely be approached as seperate goals. For the later, it'll be best to push your blog/message to journalists involved in the field. I think it is a message which will resonate with many, since even those who torrent etc and don't generally care about copyright aren't likely to support scammers who make money by selling the work of others to unwitting customers.

BTW, I'm not really sure whether there's much risk it will encourage people to get her music for cheap. Firstly, many of the scammer tracks seem to be sold at the same price as originals. Second, while I guess most of these services will keep the tracks for purchasers even after removed from their service so it'll be a minor advantage, I think most who can't be bothered paying will alreaddy have them from torrents, Youtube or whatever.

In terms of anonymity, I don't know much about Blogger but in general I think there are no simple answers as it depends who you are trying to be anonymous from, how much effort you go to, what you've done before etc. For example, you may already realise this, but it's unlikely it would be that hard to find this discussion if someone was researched well enough, even with the removal of the scammers name (which I agree was a good thing). From there, it may be possible for someone to figure out a fair amount about you from what you've done on wikipedia.

And even if you hadn't talked about this anywhere before or after you made a blog post and use a blog service which is supposed to be anonymous, it's possible someone may use social engineering to fool either you or whoever is providing the service. Unfortunately if you want to be truly anonymous, you have to take great care. (I would probably only ever update the blog over Tor, make sure I used a randomly generated password etc.)

Then again, even if it goes viral, I don't think it's that likely anyone is going to care enough to find out much about you, but it's impossible to say for sure.

Nil Einne (talk) 16:11, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

BTW, I just tried 3 of the tracks I found on Youtube and all of them are detected as Katharine McPhee songs on SoundHound. I didn't try My Lips since I couldn't find it. One thing I forgot to mention is that one disadvantage is not that it may encourage people to get the songs for cheap but if people listen to the songs on services like Apple Music or even Youtube to try and work out if they are Katharine McPhee, it means whoever is behind this may get royalties if it isn't taken down soon enough. However I think it will have to go ultra-viral for this to have a significant effect, even on services like Apple Music which generally have a better payment rate. I was also very surprised to find out how many followers the scammer seems to have on Twitter (211k). I don't see any sign the music is popular, which makes me think many of these must be fake/paid for. Nil Einne (talk) 16:36, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Sendmail required for mailx to work on Linux?

Dear Wikipedians:

I notice that when I take off the execution bit of rc.sendmail (that is, sendmail daemon is not running on my Linux box), even mailx'ing an email to myself, the new message will not appear in my mbox.

Is Sendmail required for mailx to work on Linux?

Thanks,

45.56.154.62 (talk) 23:23, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Oh boy! Command-line mail programs! The real answer is, it depends on where you got your mailx and sendmail binaries (and configuration files). Chances are really high that you got them from GNU Mailutils, packaged and distributed by whomever put together your linux distribution.

If this is true, then your mailx binary is simply a wrapper for a mail user agent. In a very old-fashioned way, your user-agent is a totally different program from your mail transfer agent (sendmail).

If you're out in the wilds of *nix, you may some day come across strange variants of these tools; you might find mailx that statically links against libmailutils, or some other mail agent; or perhaps your mail tool is actually just a perl script wrapping some built-in SMTP features; or you might find pretty much anything else... such tools might work entirely independently from sendmail. If you dare to read the documentation, you can see that you can even configure the standard GNU mailx to use some other mail agent. But if you've got a sort of "vanilla" installation of one of the more standard Linux distributions, your mail and mailx programs can't send mail unless sendmail is available, executable, and correctly configured.

Nimur (talk) 02:00, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Nimur for your detailed response. I am the OP. I am running Slackware Linux 14.1 69.158.78.39 (talk) 12:27, 9 January 2016 (UTC)