Back in April we circulated an announcement for a system called "Crowds" for browsing the web anonymously. Here is an update on its status. 1) There is a new, more complete version of the Crowds paper, and a new web page from which you can retrieve it. The page's URL is http://www.research.att.com/projects/crowds/ Of course, comments are welcomed and appreciated. 2) AT&T has finally decided to release the code, and we are working out a free license for noncomercial use with our lawyers right now. Once that is done, we would like to start alpha testing. Alpha testing will require some commitment from the testers, and we are looking for serious people who are interested in contributing to our attempt at providing anonymity to the Internet community. To be an alpha tester, you should have access to a machine - running SunOS, Solaris, or Irix - with Perl 5.003 or later - with a high-throughput connection to the Internet (no modems please!) - that is not behind a firewall Moreover, testers must be US citizens, due to the cryptography in the code. If you are interested in being an alpha tester, please send email to either of us. In your email, please describe the platform on which you'll be running. Mike Reiter <reiter@research.att.com> Avi Rubin <rubin@research.att.com>