Re: On return addresses

[jim@bilbo.suite.com (Jim Miller)]

Eric Hughes writes:

> I've been troubled for many months by an invariant in all forms of
> return address schemes: The outside world contains sufficient
> _persistent_ information to find a real adress.
> 

> [stuff deleted]
> 

> So how do we solve it?  By abandoning return addresses and
> using mail spool facilities. 

> 

> [more stuff deleted]
>
> 1. I have a machine and I'll sell you an address on it...
>
> 2. When mail come in for you, it sits in a spool...
>
> 3. Your mail sits in the spool until you access it with... a
> mail server command of "send me a mailbox file of my
> waiting mail".
> 

> [even more stuff deleted]
>
> The elimination of persistent identifying information
> for return paths is a worthwhile design objective.  I
> propose that we start thinking about it more thoroughly.
> 

> Eric 

> 


Let me see if I understand your idea correctly.  I am picturing  
something like the following:

There will exist a bunch of remailers that, in addition to forwarding  
mail, will also sell mailboxes.  (I'm combining the remailer with the  
mail spools to add to the mix of messages to and from).  The  
"mailboxes" are actually e-mail addresses referring to a  
pseudo-account on some machine that hosts a remailer/mail spooler.

Bob would purchase a number of mailboxes scattered throughout the  
remailer/mail spooler system.  Bob would give out the address of one  
of these mailboxes to people so they can send "reply" messages to  
him.  Messages addressed to Bob's "public" mailbox would be spooled  
by the remailer hosting that mailbox.

Periodically (perhaps frequently), Bob would send an anonymous  
message (via other remailers) to the remailer hosting his public  
mailbox to command the remailer to send the contents of his mailbox  
to one of his other mailboxes.  The remailer wouldn't necessarily  
know it's sending to another mailbox, it's just sends to an address  
supplied in the command message.

Bob repeats this process to move his messages from his second mailbox  
to his third mailbox, and so on.  Eventually, he moves his messages  
from his Nth mailbox to his "real" address.

Is this approximately what you had in mind?  I left out IP  
redirectors and POP clients because I'm not familiar with them.

Jim_Miller@suite.com