Anonymous e-mail? [LWN.net]

Anonymous e-mail?

Posted Dec 18, 2003 5:38 UTC (Thu) by lovelace (subscriber, #278)
In reply to: Spam-proofing the mail system by freemars
Parent article: Spam-proofing the mail system

Doesn't your system preclude the possibility of sending anonymous e-mail (since every e-
mail account must be hooked up to a bank account)? And what about people who don't have
a bank account? While I hate spam as much as the next person, it seems to me your system
gives away too much.

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Anonymous e-mail?

Posted Dec 18, 2003 14:53 UTC (Thu) by tonnesen (guest, #3589) [Link]

Any of these proposals would limit the possibility of sending anonymous e-mails. What would we lose if, say, the domain keys proposal was limited? A whistle blower couldn't send an e-mail to a newspaper without worrying that he could be identified later? I'm sure there are many other instances where anonymous e-mail is desirable. How is anonymous e-mailing done now? You can't just forge the sender. The originating IP address will still show in the headers and be traceable.

Should anonymous e-mailing be a pay-as-you-go system? You can send mail from your account at wekeepyouhidden.com which you pay $20/month for.

What about the "free" e-mail systems like hotmail, yahoomail, etc. They'll presumably get domain keys, and continue allowing spamers to send spam through them. What percentage of current spam is sent through these systems now? They wouldn't solve the anonymity problem because, as far as I know, they all attach the originating IP address to the messages they send.

Should anonymous e-mailing be a pay-as-you-go system? You can send mail from your account at wekeepyouhidden.com which you pay $20/month for. My gut tells me this is the only way to get true anonymity now (short of cracking computers and sending from there, but I can't exactly endorse breaking the law as a solution).

My feeling is that blacklists like SpamCop et al would be significantly more effective under the domain keys proposal. Blacklist systems could easily link all messages from one domain together and aggregate the complaints they receive about that domain.

Anonymous e-mail?

Posted Dec 18, 2003 18:06 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

Anonymous email would still be possible under the SPF system, at least,
by simply permitting mail from hosts that don't claim to be anyone in
particular. Such email wouldn't be verified at all, since it didn't claim
to be anything in particular. Most people would just throw it away, but
anonymous tip lines wouldn't (since they wouldn't get anything else,
obviously), and spammers wouldn't tend to spam such addresses anyway (do
spammers really want to reach investigative reporters at their work?).

Furthermore, if people are actually using an anonymizing network, the
email will come out with a perfectly valid and legitimate address which
simply can't be tracked back to the sender, and is authenticated as being
an anonymous message from this remailer. These systems are generally
pseudonymous, in any case, so that the original sender can send
additional messages authentically, and these systems would merely
authenticate the pseudonym. Again, this mail would be filtered by most
people, but would get through to people who intend to pick up anonymous
tips.

Yes, anonymous e-mail

Posted Dec 18, 2003 16:03 UTC (Thu) by freemars (subscriber, #4235) [Link]

Doesn't your system preclude the possibility of sending anonymous e-mail (since every e-mail account must be hooked up to a bank account)? And what about people who don't have a bank account?

I believe in the value of anonymous email, and believe this plan supports it better than the ones suggsted above. While it's true the ISP must be hooked up with a bank an individual sender needn't be. Imagine a system where you go to a convenience store and buy a CD with 200 email stamps worth a dime each. The CD might cost $25 -- $20 for the value of the stamps, $2.50 markup for the store, $2.00 for the bank, and $0.50 for the CD, packaging & distribution. You could pay cash for the CD and take it to your local Starbucks/Internet Cafe to send emails.

Since you're trying to be annonymous, you forge your return address, so you never get your rebate. It either gets lost in cyberspace (and never cashed in; the bank thanks you) or goes to your favorite charity.

A poor person might have to scrape to come up with the $25 purchase price, but doesn't need to jump through all the hoops of getting a bank account. If most of your mail goes to people who know you -- and have you on their whitelists -- your initial supply of stamps will last a long time.