Theodore Ts'o writes: If your mail system is broken enough that it inserts signatures without your permission, and you have no way to controlling it, it's broken. End of statement. Fix it or ditch it. I can imagine a system administrator choosing to require that all mail originating from his machine include a signature that correctly identifies the local name of the sender. I make this special point to illustrate a broader problem with remailers: They require operators of remailers to be sympathetic with the ends of the users of remailers. This obviously does not include the entire population for at least the recipient is not sympathetic. I suspect that technical solutions sought in recent mail will founder in presence of the politics of the operators of the remailers. I understand that routing your message thru at least one "friendly" remailer may be enough but if your reasons for using remailers are not sufficiently popular, then society, in some form, will pressure the friendly remailers to betray the sender without advance warning. If society polarizes into camps then there may be remailers in each camp. A remailer in one camp is unlikely to service messages from the other. Barriers then arise. I think that the technical issues are only the tip of the iceberg.