Metadata anonymization through time delayed email messaging.

[Nghia Duong]

Great idea, however I think the user should still have the possibility to
choose a timely delivery if the context requires it, right?

I have always had questions about obfuscating e-mail metadata too. For
instance, would it be possible to implement "burner" accounts (like
ChatSecure [1] did)?

The concept of a burner account is that you can quickly create a new
> clean account with no identifying or memorable details, and have that
> account only exist on your device [...]
>

That way people would be "shuffling" their e-mail accounts and that would
make it harder to infer social links via email metadata. This may be a very
stupid question, but hey, I'm curious.

[1] http://chrisballinger.info/apps/chatsecure/


On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 12:22 PM, Jeff Scofield <jscofiel at gmail.com> wrote:

> We know that with or without data content analysis of actual email
> messages, lots of information can be inferred through various forms of
> metadata collection.  Given this reality the question becomes, what can be
> done?
>
> One strategy might be to consider the adoption of a time delayed email
> system.  The reason why the use of such a mechanism to allow someone the
> ability to write an email, and then have it sent off at a specified (or
> randomly generated unspecified) date is useful for multiple reasons.
>
> If a program could be coded in a way which could delay the actual
> transmission of data in such a manner that the original time of creation
> was adequately masked, it could hamper nefarious metadata collection of
> time-stamping and possibly geo-locating of user information.
>
> For example:
>
> A person walks into a computer café at 10am and sets an email to send at
> around 4am the following morning (via cloud or machine).  The data gets
> sent at 4am when the building is empty.  No CCTV photos/cameras are able to
> document who sent the message because the computer café is unoccupied at
> 4am.  The software is designed in such a fashion that it is nearly
> impossible to unmask the original time when the message was instructed to
> send, thus hiding the metadata associated with time-stamping, and thus
> hiding the true identity of the computer user at the café at 10am the
> previous day.
>
> Any and all feed back regarding this idea is welcome.
>
> --
> Tuan Nghia DUONG
> Élève-ingénieur en Informatique et Réseaux
> ESISAR, Valence
>
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