-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Bear with me - original text follows all these quotes At 2:29 PM1/13/96, bryce wrote:
If "digital postage" is ever implemented, this sort of distributed-origin mailbomb-through-a-remailer would be stopped immediately. All the messages that the horny net geeks send would necessarily contain the same postage stamp, and the remailer would notice this right away -- and throw away messages containing the used postage stamp.
One more motivation for e$-like digital postage for remailers.
Unfortunately this is not the case. The perpetrator would simply have to convince the horny net geeks to pay their own postage. In fact, it is *in general* impossible to have both anonymity and prevention/control of mail-bombing. Of course digital postage will help the problem somewhat by making the bombers pay for it, and smarter filters on the recipient's end will help, but in general it is a problem we are going to have to live with if we want anonymity.
Impossible is an awfully strong word. If I was going to implement free digital stamps, I'd have a autoreply daemon (stamps@remailer.com) that when sent a mail, would respond with X number of valid stamps. If you're going to trust me not to log my remailer traffic, extending that trust to believing I won't log the stamp requests shouldn't be that much of a stretch. Alternatively, the stamp could consist of a unique-id, any unique-id, working identically to Usenet message ids. That way, the user can generate his own stamps without being forced to trust the remailer operator not to log them. I prefer the second option as it has both greater anonymity and allows for simple history file patching to the remailer. Either way, if the stamps/message-ids are forced to be inside the encrypted address block, mail-bombers can only get one message through. Even if the HNGs are instructed to add a stamp and re-encrypt the address block, when the spam-o-grams start getting routed through the pre-packaged route, they'll be stopped dead after one message gets through. Joseph Block <jpb@miamisci.org> "We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans ..." -- Bill Clinton (USA TODAY, 11 March 1993, page 2A) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBMPnluAF0VTodVW1dAQHilAgAmuvKLut8tR2uHuUkNTMEaYqYK+OR97W0 Wp9ZCNWSZl2pMNyHwmNPUk8L5x7O3OlbTXYMFd+oHAGavL199qCELij/QecBaT5U L+Nmm86KYvFuVgxvEGcRSZCY8UjQ3nuW7rQ8js9s1I2+uuDgge14qzMajTUYlh2i nI2ZlffJCv1OC3i5RIPrT6/piC0tAD7pBbFuZD5X3lk8bk90F3MgMiJJP26MPgZ3 23qjaaXLFM0JhnK+1p+7+gd97dh6D6G17OIRhu+9/XJbmR1Vz3sEHt77Xk1jFzYO tFS5c9k4xXT+DlY6TdOvXPlE5T5KvzHVkV8mJm3VJy/8aFpL/IlthQ== =faLt -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session. 2048bit-Fingerprint: F8 A2 A5 15 56 42 9B 16 3F BD 57 0F 8A ED E3 21 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Help Phil! email zldf@clark.net or see http://www.netresponse.com/zldf