CNN.com on Remailers

[Ben Xain]

On 19 December 2001, Peter Trei wrote:
>> Ben Xain[SMTP:bxain at redneck.gacracker.org]
>> In fact, spammers currently *do* send mail encrypted to the remailers'
>> keys.  It's a pain in the ass trying to filter the damn stuff out.
>First I've heard that. Frankly, I'm suprised. 
>
>One solution, which I've long advocated, is for the remailer to drop mail
>which has an unencrypted body after it's applied it's decryption key. 
>
>Provided this is an announced policy, substantially increases the 
>protection of the mail and the remop. It does mean that only people
>capable of using encryption can receive mail via the remailer, but
>that's probably a *good* thing.

I don't think that's necessarily a good idea.  It would eliminate or
reduce the anonymous remailer's usefulness for posting to newsgroups and
mailing lists.

Add to that the concept of some anonymous remailer users being
informants or corporate whistle-blowers, who will often be contacting
law enforcement or media officials and won't have access to public keys
for encryption.

Instead, it would be a good idea for remailers to find some other means
of filtering spam.  There are some great tools out there that might be
useful for this, such as nilsimsa.

Ben Xain
bxain at redneck.gacracker.org