From: remailer@rebma.rebma.mn.org (Mr. Nobody)
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 94 21:14:28 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Remailer pings.
Message-ID: <199408240414.XAA13841@rebma.rebma.mn.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


I regret sending this to the list, but other attempts to contact the people
involved haven't been successful.  I won't send more than this one message.

The remailer at rebma.mn.org is connected via a UUCP link.  Rebma picks up
its mail in the middle of the night, Central Standard Time.

There are a half dozen people who are pinging the remailer on an hourly or
half-hourly basis.  You can do the math, I'm sure.

There is no point in pinging this particular remailer in this way.  You won't
get up-to-the-hour reports on its availability, since it doesn't pick up the 
mail until late in the evening.  You aren't adding to the traffic mix in any
useful way, because your messages aren't chained and are only encrypted once,
to the remailer.  If you think it's a problem for the enemy to do traffic 
analysis on identical messages from the same person over the same mailpath that
are sent every hour on the hour, you're an idiot.

And there's an even better reason.  People who do this for any length of time 
are added to the Detweiler list, and the remailer becomes useless to them in
any form.

I recognize that people are trying to provide a remailer service.  I realize
they are trying to do a good thing.  It just doesn't apply, here, in this case,
for this remailer.  

Once a day would be sufficient, because that's all the more often the mail is
retrieved from my service provider.