On Wed, 14 May 1997, Roger J. Jones wrote:
Why is it that some who are very concerned about their personal privacy utilize anonymous remailers that:
1) Log all of their mail messages?
Good. They will mainly waste space on a bunch of encrypted stuff with the possible exception of the very last entry in the chain (which may only give the recipient, and a message, which might reveal the author when decrypted by the recipient's key). Everything else will point to another remailer and be readable only by it. They can log who is using it if they are first in the chain (so run your own remailer), but all they will know is who is using it, assuming it is not a nym.
2) Are in many cases reputed to be run by foreign intelligence services?
So who says they don't provide a public service :). Although I would resent my tax money supporting something that can be done in the private sector if I lived in such a country. There should be a move to privatize them.
Do they really trust the owner of the remailer? (Unless of course, it is their remailer?) I seem to be missing something.
I shouldn't have to unless I only use one remailer exclusively. If I use random chains, or mixmaster type remailers, I don't HAVE TO TRUST the remailer. The worst they could do is not pass on mail (which would show up in the stats), or selectively not send mail, or log content when they were last on the chain and if the message was actually plaintext at that point. There are a few subtleties, but if you do things right, things are very secure. It depends if you are trying for 100% security or merely want to avoid spam.