jdblair writes:
Jim Miller writes,
All inbound messages to a remailer from a non-remailer address would be considered a "use" of that remailer. A remailer would maintain a list of the addresses of "users" and would occasionally send bogus messages to a randomly selected entry from its user list. Inclusion into the list would be automatic. The list would be a large, but fixed sized FIFO, with old entries dropping off the end automatically.
However, there would be a record of addresses which anonymous mail had been sent to- probably not a good idea.
Julf's anonymizer has such a record, but I thought part of the idea of the cypherpunk remailers was to eliminate these records.
I assume the bad guys can generate their own record of remailer usage. The record could include the addresses used to send messages to remailers and the addresses receiving messages from remailers. They can record when a message enters the system from the outside, and they can record when a message leaves the system. Given they can know all this by just monitoring the remailer system, then there is no reason why the remailers can't also use some of this information. Besides, the "user list" maintained by a remailer only needs to contain the non-remailer addresses used to send messages to the remailer. It does not need to contain any time information or information about the messages passing through the remailer. It also doesn't need to contain destination addresses. Jim_Miller@suite.com P.S. After sending my previous message I realized the proposed mechanism still doesn't help Hal Finney's degenerate case where there is only one sender and one receiver, but I've come to believe it is not necessary to solve for that case.