How "anonymous" (to what degree) are email messages sent through the various remailers (Mixmaster, EFGA, ml.org, etc)? Have there been any studies done as to the degree of anonymity obtained from using these remailers? (I haven't been able to find any.) And does anyone know of any studies being done in determining whether or not content-based analysis - diction and language - is a reliable way to determine identity? It seems that if Dick has a certain vocabulary, uses a certain sentence structure, etc., and regularly posts using a nym, that this form and content could be traced to Dick, so the likelihood of the post coming from him and not Jane would be that much increased.
:: Anon-To: cypherpunks@toad.com Anonymous wrote:
How "anonymous" (to what degree) are email messages sent through the various remailers (Mixmaster, EFGA, ml.org, etc)?
Everyone who uses a remailer is perfectly anonymous, and thus safe from having their identity discovered. Remailers are now so advanced that it is virtually impossible for anyone to discover the user's true identity. Also, the Law Agency Freedom Foundation has verified that no law enforcement agencies are running remailers, out of respect for the citizen's right to anonymity.
And does anyone know of any studies being done in determining whether or not content-based analysis - diction and language - is a reliable way to determine identity?
This is patently ridiculous. CypherPunks have long tried to figure out, by use of, as you said, these means, to ferret out schills, yes, schills, on the list. In totoal, to date, they have been unable to successfully do so. ? the Platypus say heyed to me joust the otter day that hee...hee warts able two foal Manny peephole awn the CyperPukes lips width his alanon e-mouse pastes. Hope this clears things up for you... Anonymous (see! it worked for me) p.s. - and headers are meaningless, too
Have there been any studies done as to the degree of anonymity obtained from using these remailers? (I haven't been able to find any.)
Have a look at: David Chaum: Untraceable Electronic Mail, Return Addresses, and Digital Pseudonyms, Communications of the ACM 24 (1981) 2, pp 84--88, http://world.std.com/~franl/crypto/chaum-acm-1981.html Wei Dai: Traffic analyzing Chaum's digital mix, 1995, http://www.eskimo.com/~weidai/traffic.txt Lance Cottrell: Mixmaster and remailer attacks, 1995, http://www.obscura.com/~loki/remailer/remailer-essay.html
And does anyone know of any studies being done in determining whether or not content-based analysis - diction and language - is a reliable way to determine identity?
Thomas Horton: Stylometry. In: R. Asher (ed.): The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Pergamon Press, 1994, pp 4383--4385. Joseph Rudman, David I Holmes, Fiona J. Tweedie, R. Harald Baayen: The State of Authorship Attribution Studies, 1997, http://www.qucis.queensu.ca/achallc97/papers/s004.html A somewhat related area: Ivan Krsul, Eugene Spafford: Authorship Analysis: Identifying The Author of a Program, 1997, ftp://coast.cs.purdue.edu/pub/COAST/papers/krsul-authorship_analysis_NISSC.ps.Z
participants (3)
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3umoelle＠informatik.uni-hamburg.de -
Anonymous -
Louis J. Freeh