Subject: PPTP

From: "Bill Cunningham" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 11:25:00 -0400

Does the PPTP offer a secure layer from spam and people being able to read
your e-mail over a search engine only by knowing your email address?

---

From: James Carlson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 11:57:39 -0400

> your e-mail over a search engine only by knowing your email address?

PPTP is the Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol, a proprietary Microsoft
mechanism for carrying PPP across an internet.

PPP is a link layer protocol that can carry IP datagrams, among other
things.  The features of PPTP and PPP have no effect whatsoever on
email applications.

So, the answer would have to be "no."

PPTP is often used with MPPE, Microsoft's proprietary encryption
scheme.  This encrypts the datagrams as they go over the internet.
This affects only the packets between the two nodes speaking PPTP, and
has no effect at all on the packets once they leave that tunnel on
their way to some an email server, search engine, or other node.

(On top of all that, if people can read your email on any search
engine, then you have much bigger problems than any protocol could
ever hope to solve.)

Good luck.

-- 
James Carlson, Solaris Networking         <[email-masked]>
SUN Microsystems / 1 Network Drive         71.234W   Vox +1 781 442 2084
MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757   42.497N   Fax +1 781 442 1677