From: hfinney@shell.portal.com (Hal Finney)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 93 10:53:06 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Warning about exposing anon id
Message-ID: <9310231752.AA11323@jobe.shell.portal.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


I agree with Alan's position that anonymization not be done automatically
on reply to mailers, but in fairness Julf has argued that the "least
astonishment" position goes the other way.  Apparently for several years
anonymous/pseudonymous servers have operated on the talk groups which
do the automatic anonymization.  People there have come to expect that
when they reply to an anonymous message their own identity will be protected.
Providing an anonymous server for which this established behavior does
not occur will no doubt astonish many experienced users of these services.

Still, I think the current behavior is wrong, and IMO the sooner people
learn a new way of using anonymous servers, the better.  When we do
deploy anonymous servers which allow replies, it will be important to
include disclaimers which remind people that their replies will not be
anonymous.  Unfortunately, some or most newsreaders do not show header
fields, and I dislike sticking disclaimers into the message body itself.

Hal