On Wed, 20 Sep 2000, Riad S. Wahby wrote:

Asymmetric <all@biosys.net> wrote:

...

As for my being naive as you claim in a second here, who is really being naive here? You think that just because the remailer doesn't maintain an active database of nym mappings that it's immdiately impossible for it to be reversed? You implicitly trust anyone who says "here, use my remailer, I guarantee it's anonymous?" Get with the program. One fucking line on a console, in a firewall rule, anywhere along the way could fuck you into losing your anonymity, unless the message was sent encrypted to the remailer, and that's just to start with.

You should read up on Type 1 and Type 2 remailers. Both involve encryption. In the case of Type 2 remailers, you only need to trust one in the chain that you use in order to be sure that your identity is securely hidden.

That's not even 100% correct. If you are chaining, and the first server in the chain is evil, all that the admin can tell is that you are using a remailer. The content of the message, and the final recipient, are not known. (A good case for generating random cover traffic...) -S.R.