On 18 Dec 2001, at 14:42, Meyer Wolfsheim wrote:

On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, David Honig wrote:

...

Can't spam be repelled by not forwarding email not encrypted to the remailer's key?

Who is to say that spammers won't use remailer clients that automatically encrypt to the remailers' keys?

Wouldn't it HAVE to do that if they want their spam forwarded? I mean, doesn't the remailer perform one layer of decryption to find the address that it's supposed to next forward the message to? Say, what IS the situation with spam and remailers anyway? are spammers really trying to use the mixmaster network to send lots of spam, or is it more like that the remailers get sent lots of spam and have to filter it out because it would take too long to process? I mean, does spam follow the protocol?

Using remailer clients should be *easy*. Saying "this is too hard for the average spammer to figure out" isn't acceptable.

You know what else should be easy? Setting up and running a remailer! So why shouldn't an ambitious spammer set up his own remailer server? Or better yet, a whole bunch of them? Except instead of sending dummy traffic, it sends spam. This is actually a really good thing from remailer security, because a dummy message that ends up telling some fool about russian porn sites ot nigerian graft opportunities is much more befuddling to an attacker than one that just disappers, right? George

-MW-