tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)
Like others, I suspect, I have to "ping" the remailers before sending anything, and then hope and pray they aren't taken offline for maintenance (or whatever) between the time I ping them and the time I use them for something important.
C'punks, it seems to me that the anonymous pool idea is underutilized by the remailers. I suggest that a remailer variation be developed that posts to an anonymous pool (some appropriate obscure newsgroup) indicating that a message actually was sent from the final hop. The sender can be sure the message made it if they see this posting. If anyone wants to get even more fancy, the final remailer might also post to the pool when the message bounced to the final address back to the remailer. Obviously, without reliability the anonymity is worthless.