From: "L. Detweiler" <ld231782@longs.lance.colostate.edu>
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 93 00:56:24 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Standard Headers for Anonymous Remailers
In-Reply-To: <9309210352.AA18893@indial1.io.com>
Message-ID: <9309210754.AA11724@longs.lance.colostate.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


mentor@indial1.io.com (Loyd Blankenship)
>We've been kicking around the pros and cons of anonymous remailers
>here at io.com. One of the big problems is anonymous bombardment of a 
>helpless newsgroup.

you are talking about a problem associated with a *mail to new
gateway*. this is not the same as a *remailer*. In fact, the latter
operators should not have to worry about the former.

>This (and the problem of auto-screening anonymous
>mail) could be solved if there was a standard header keyword (or maybe 
>even a new header field) that could be screened from a newsgroup.\

although I think the idea of anonymous identification tags in the
header has `some' merit. but its an extremely problematic issue,
because it could have the effect of censoring anonymous posting.

the best goal is to allow the end user to make the decision, i.e. kill
files, and *never* put any kind of a choke upstream that would prevent
them from making that decision.

hence, the solution is to have the mail-to-news gateway reject overly
voluminous posting -- either posts that are too long, or too frequent
posting from the same address or (the latter which of course can be
thwarted to some degree) in overall frequency of accepting articles,
such that some might get bounced back to the user if the site is being bombarded.

of course, remailer operators have to guard against mail bombs too, but
not in the overly sensitive, distributed way that NNTP servers do.