From: hfinney@shell.portal.com
Date: Fri, 20 Aug 93 22:52:01 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: anonymus@charcoal.com is going away
Message-ID: <9308210316.AA16687@jobe.shell.portal.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


It does not really surprise me that Kleinpaste is shutting down his
server.  He always seemed to be a weak supporter of anonymity, IMO.
I remember how he was one of the loudest complainers when the contro-
versy arose over Julf's anonymous remailer.

This is how I would have handled the situation.  If the sysop of this
system sent mail to me (he couldn't get my phone number, I don't think),
asking whether so-and-so sent mail to such-and-such, I would only be
able to say, "I haven't the faintest idea."  I don't keep logs, and one
of the reasons I don't is so that I have no expectation of being able
to answer such questions.

What I would then do is to ask the sysop for the addresses which are
receiving the objectionable mail, and I would add them to my "blocked"
list, so that my remailer would no longer send mail to those individuals.
They would then have no more reason to complain to me.

All mail from my remailer includes a header message telling people that
they should complain to me if they get objectionable mail.  In the several
months that I have been running my remailer, only one person has asked to
have his name blocked.

Parenthetically, this incident shows the value of remailers which add some
delay to the message forwarding process.  This would then make it harder
to correlate the arrival of anonymous mail with the transmission of mail
from a particular user.

Hal Finney
hfinney@shell.portal.com