Alias cascades

Matthew Rapaport mjr at netcom.com
Fri Jan 8 19:57:22 PST 1993


****** Hal <74076.1041 at CompuServe.COM> ******

>I think the lesson is that this process of automatic alias assignment
>may not be the best way to handle things... look at all the problems
>Karl ran into.

If I understand Karl right, he got this cascade of aliases because he
tried to talk to HIMSELF through different accounts/aliases at alternate
ends of the chain. Since no one would want to do that (other than to
test things) normally, this wouldn't be a problem.

>I still lean towards the idea of a "constructed" anonymous address,
>where I decide ahead of time which remailers I'll use, and in what
>order.

But I already *do* control the order of use for MY mail, that means
stuff I send out and stuff people send to me in DIRECT reply to my
stuff. There is nothing to stop someone from sending to my id on pax say
through a first remailer of their own choice, provided they originate
the mail (i.e. a REPLY is not equivalent to ORIGINAL mail in this case).

As for picking my own alias, this sounds appealing but is actually much
weaker then a randomly assigned one. Besides that, it could be an
administrative nightmare for the sysadmins on the aliasing systems.

matthew rapaport     Philosopher/Programmer At Large      KD6KVH
           mjr at netcom.com     70371.255 at compuserve.com






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