From: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@Athena.MIT.EDU>

Or suppose someone sends 20 messages (all different) about how ---- ------ stiffed him/her out of some amount of digital cash? I'd suspect you could do some real damage that way.

In response to this, let me first quote Eric Hughes:

"How much reputation has an anonymous source?"

I believe that this is the true question being asked. I believe that in the not-so-far-off future there will be an immense quantity of anonymous traffic on the nets, and I will set my filters to ignore the large percentage of it (though perhaps I may want to see notes with my name in them, or perhaps not). This doesn't mean I won't see *any* anonymous messages, as my positive reputation system will work to counter-balance the effect of the filter, and allow messages from anonymous sources that are connected to me via a "line of trust", that is, through a set of anonymous keys and signatures that prove to me that the source of the information is from someone that I trust, or that they trust, or... Further, pseudonymous posters may gain quite a bit of respect. As was earlier pointed out on this list, most posters to net news are today pseudonymous, for I know not if their real name is what their From: line states, but I learn to recognize and differentiate names (pseudonyms) bearing good info from those that know not what they say or those that just flame. It is from this last set of anonymous publishers that we may have the problem being discussed. For example, "NBC" may as well be an anonymous pseudonym, but we (well, a lot of the general public, anyway) have decided to place a fair amount of trust into them. This problem stems from people being too ready to abdicate their responsibility from having to think critically about the world around them, and the information they receive. In other words, the big problem, as we all know, is one of education. Just say "know"! Fen