Well, I don't agree that doubleblind is a great idea.
Neither do I. But many of the users of anon.penet.fi are not very computer-and-email-literate, and they have been using other services, providing double-blind. Unfortunate, but too late to change now... What we can do is to provide better ways for those who *are* computer literate enough to use extra headers etc.
Evidentally there is positive harm that can occur by automatically anonymizing all messages which pass through a remailer. ... For anonymous posting and for mail to a non-anonymous address, it's more reasonable to assume that anonymization is desired. ... But when sending a message to an anonymous address, it's not known whether the sender wants to be anonymized or not.
I think it's imperative that the sender use X-Anon-To to be pseudonymous. This is consistent with the principle of least astonishment.
But in this case I feel the principle of least astonishment is overruled by the principle of least risk of accidental exposure.
Also, I have seen proposals that anonymous ID's should be made less recognizable, so that instead of an5877@anon.penet.fi we would have joe@serv.uba.edu. In such a situation it might be tedious to scrutinize every email address we send to (via replies, for example) to make sure it isn't a remailer where you have an anonymous ID.
It would be a real boon to make pseudonyms less prominent -- this seems to have kicked over a hornet's nest on USENET (even though pseudonyms have been quietly in use for years). But were this the case, scrutiny would be an understatement.
I think that hornet's nest needed to be kicked. But I am also disappointed that not enough people defend the need for anonymity in places like news.admin.policy. I think pseudonyms *should* be prominent - as you have noticed, anon.penet.fi adds an explicit warning at the end of every message.
All in all, I think some changes need to be made in how anonymous addresses are used and implemented in order to provide reasonable amounts of security.
I agree that more discussion is in order. I'm especially concerned about the broader issues regarding anonymity through remailers.
Agree 100%. Julf