Electronic P.O.Boxes

John Styles hpengwyn at cix.compulink.co.uk
Sun Dec 13 11:52:18 PST 1992



Do any of the remailer schemes proposed address the problem of the ability
to have replies sent to you without the replier knowing to whom they
are replying - this being akin to P.O.Boxes / Magazine box numbers and
equivalents.
A sample use might be.
I wish to send someone a message so I request a box from someone
e.g.
---
mail to someone at somewhere
AllocateBoxTo:hpengwyn at cix.compulink.co.uk
---
This would send a code to you identifying a unique box and allowing you to
identify yourself (presumably you would want the ability to send this reply
by remailer so you are not identifying yourself to the box holder). It would
also send a code to you for you to pass on to repliers to your message.

You would then post and/or send the message to the person/people you wished
to communicate with (this need not be from the same account) passing on the
second of these two codes and an address to send messages to (this would
presumably be the box holding company unless you wanted the replier not to kno-
w
who was running the box, as well as not knowing who it is for).

They would reply by sending this code and a message to the address given 
(possibly anonymously of course).
This message (probably encrypted) would be held for you - allowing you to
receive messages from accounts not even set up at the time you requested
the box.

You would then get the replies by sending a message
e.g.
---
mail to someone at somewhere
GetReplies
<text of FIRST code sent by box holder>
<address or some mechanism for replies to find you>
---

Maybe the scheme discussed previously can do all of this (except the ability
to have accounts set up after replies have been sent to you) if so please
explain how. [I have only recently joined the list]

Thanks,
John






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