I think Matthew Rapaport's point is good that much of the trouble with the automatic assignment of aliases comes from the automatic mailing to the user of a new alias. Most of the remailing servers have a special address or command you can send meaning "assign me a new alias, and tell me what it is". Probably, as Matthew says, they should only mail back the newly assigned alias when one of these special commands is used. I'm still not convinced that automatic alias assignment should always be done when mail goes through a server from a new address. It seems like this might generate so many aliases that it would be too great a load on the servers, especially if remailers become more widely used. But it's hard to say how bad a problem this is. I feel that the main purpose of an anonymous address is to protect the anonymity of the person being addressed, not people who send to him. Just because a person chooses to be anonymous is no reason to expect that everyone who wants to talk to him also wants to be anonymous. I think it would be better to only provide anonymity when asked. Systems that do too much for people sometimes get in the way. Hal Finney 74076.1041@compuserve.com Distribution: Cypherpunks >INTERNET:cypherpunks@toad.com