If I wanted to be obnoxious, I could set myself up as a remailer, then screen all incoming messages to see whether they came from other known remailers. If not, then I can archive the message, have a look at it, and maybe compromise the original sender.
Is this so?
Seems quite possible to me.. I think that's why it was suggested a while back that as many remailers be set up as possible. That way, one could use several in a row and virtually eliminate the problem.
In this case, everyone wanting to use a remailer should in principle *own* a remailer, and you'd probably want your own to be the first remailer. Then, to avoid compromise of the recipient, maybe you'd want yours to be the last remailer. So why not use your own remailer exclusively?
I don't think you'd have to worry much about compromising the recipient, if you encrypt the message with with her public key (except possibly traffic analysis, which I doubt poses a problem to very many people, and which can be overcome anyways).
To take this to an extreme, set up a remailer and then use this *all* the time for the mail you originate. Does this gain you anything?
Well, it would probably be ok if a lot of other people used your remailer.. but if you were the only one, I doubt it would be very effective. --- Andrew Derry - derry@sfu.ca | ACS@HCC - Simon Fraser University | Standard disclaimers apply |