Re: Standard Headers for Anonymous Remailers

[tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)]

Loyd Blankenship writes:

> 	We've been kicking around the pros and cons of anonymous remailers
> here at io.com. One of the big problems is anonymous bombardment of a 
> helpless newsgroup. This (and the problem of auto-screening anonymous
> mail) could be solved if there was a standard header keyword (or maybe 
> even a new header field) that could be screened from a newsgroup. The
> group would have to be semi-moderated -- an automatic filter passes on
> all posts except those with the keyword in the appropriate header field.

Which reminds me of something I forgot to mention in my post yesterday
about remailer policies and the properties of "ideal mixes." Remailer
bombing (by volume, not the content) can of course be solved by
*digital postage*, the fee charged by a remailer. As with ordinary
postage, this reduces junk mail somewhat.

However, digital postage (and digital money in more general forms) is
not available now. A remailer could sell lists of numbers that act as
postage, using reputation/trust to "honor" them. (To avoid using them
for tracing, the lists could be bought from others, or traded with
others, or possibly even "blinded" a la Chaum. Digital postage is
sufficiently low-value (money-wise) that not as much attention to
detail is needed, at least not for trial use of "Pretty Good Digital
Postage.")

> 	Words such as "anon" and "anonymous" might occur naturally in
> the headers. I'd propose something like "ANONYPOST" or "ANONPOST" that 
> isn't likely to occur in nature.
> 
> 	Voluntary adoption of this type of standard by remailers would
> take away some of the ammo that the anti-anon frothers are shooting,
> and would go a long way toward improving the image of remailers in 
> general.
> 
> 	Comments?

I think it's a good idea. Eric Messick has already proposed replacing
the message names in mail with something to maker traffic analysis
harder.

For anonymous postings to newsgroups, a prefix system voluntarily
adopted by users is another approach, e.g., "ANON: The Virtues of
Anonymity."

It's doubtful that all users, or all remailers for that matter, will
ever adopt the same conventions for signalling an anonymous message,
so the problems will persist, albeit on a different scale.

Long range, a combination of pay-for-what-you-use digital postage and
"positive reputation filters" will be what a. keeps newsgroups from
being flooded with anonymous posts, and b. allows readers to find the
messages they want to read out of a huge pool of messages.


-Tim May


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