The discussion just above between Karl, Hal, Johan, and myself, has made me realize that the standard "bounce back" behavior of all the alias servers I've used so far actually defeates the purpose of remailer chains no matter how one embeds the forwarding information. When any person *first* replies to or originates mail across a remailer chain, a new alias is generated at each hop (however many). So far, that is good, a "most conservative assumption" approach, and it provides easily for reply channel maintenance. The problem is that each machine also reflects its new alias back along the chain to the message originator thereby revealing the entire chain to the message originator, something that might not be desirable to the party on the other side. The solution is very simple, just stop bouncing the new alias information back along the chain. This can not HURT anyone using the alias/remailer system because you never need to know what your aliases are as the conversion and forwarding process is automatic. If someone needs, for some reason to KNOW his alias for a given system (or all of them) on *his/her* chain, he/she can easily arrange to ping the server at the appropriate level. Besides not hurting any current operations, Stopping the *automatic* reply to sender about a new alias helps to secure everything a great deal more because it hides the "other guy's" chain, something that both parties might reasonably expect. matthew rapaport Philosopher/Programmer At Large KD6KVH mjr@netcom.com 70371.255@compuserve.com