> ----------
> From: Bill Stewart[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Reply To: Bill Stewart
> Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2000 4:35 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: pseudonymous remailers
>
[...]
> I ran a remailer about 5 years ago; I've commented on the issue in the
> distant past, but no longer have copies of it.
> Remailers generally have two uses:
> - sending private mail to individuals, which needs to be encrypted in and
> out
> to prevent eavesdropping (so forgery isn't really an issue), and
> - sending broadcast messages such as Usenet groups and mailing lists,
> where the output needs to be unencrypted, and forgery is possible.
>
[...]
> The classic abuses to do with it are posting flamebait to Usenet
> or posting test messages to alt.test which get autoreplied to by thousands
> of machines. I closed the remailer I ran when somebody posted
> forged hate mail to the net - the headers weren't forged, but the
> target's name and email address were in the message body.
> My ISP asked me to close it unless I could find a way to prevent
> similar abuses, and there weren't a lot of good options at the time.
>
> Most remailer operators who are concerned about preventing abuse
> are also concerned about preventing complaints that get them shut down,
> so they're motivated to deal with the problem. A relatively common
> approach is to add mail headers clearly indicating (to anybody who
> reads mail headers) that the message came from a remailer,
> may be forged, and where to find more policy information.
>
[...]
> Thanks!
>
I don't run a remailer, so I'm not speaking from experience, but....
If a remailer restricted itself to sending out messages which were
still encrypted after decrypting with the remailers' key, I would think
you'd remove nearly all spam (since no spammer is going to encrypt
thousands of messages with the public keys of each of his recipients),
and give the operator a layer of protection from liability ('No, you
Imamness, I did not and could not know that an infidel was using
my remailer to send quotes from "The Satanic Verses'")
This would make it more difficult to send plaintext messages to
usenet, though messages which decrypted in the remailer to
plaintext targeted for known gateways and mailing lists could be
let through.
Peter
[If everyone put CPUNK at the end of their subject line, you could
filter all other messages as probable spam]
