Yes, anonymous e-mail

Yes, anonymous e-mail

Posted Dec 18, 2003 16:03 UTC (Thu) by freemars (subscriber, #4235)
In reply to: Anonymous e-mail? by lovelace
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?

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.

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