From: wcs@anchor.ho.att.com
Date: Sun, 5 Feb 95 23:44:10 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Creating commercial acceptability for remailers?
Message-ID: <9502060742.AA01282@anchor.ho.att.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


How can we convince _lots_ of people to run remailers,
assuming it can be made technically painless?
How can we spread remailer-operations beyond the cypherpunks and
fellow travellers and the privacy/paranoia businesses like
tax reduction and pharmaceutical retailers?

Suppose you were in the "Get Connected To The Net" consulting business,
and you wanted to include a remailer in the outside-the-firewall
part of the mail handler - how would you get companies to accept it?

What kinds of other businesses could benefit from providing anonymous service?

Some ideas for non-mundane businesses -
- Shrinks-r-us or other on-line recovery groups, beyond the current
	use in a.s.a.r.?
- Tax advice - one-shot anonymous returns so you can ask questions
	from the IRS or whatever without much risk of audit?
- Anonymous tips (the D.A.R.E. hotline?)  Arrrgh.	
- Whistleblowers.com?  (Who'd trust whistleblowers.gov?)
- For one-way anonymity, perhaps MTV could run an "email from Beavis" server,
	letting you send rude comments to your friends.
	Digitally signed, with optional MIME noises!
	Sending mail through it might put your address in an
	email junk-mail marketing list, but without tying it
	to the outgoing message?
	
But what about mundane businesses?  I've seen suggestion boxes
operated with minimalist anonymization for internal use
(no attempt to obscure the time or prevent logging, just header-zapping.)
University ombudsman's offices could be a good approach,
and might help get around the occasional reactive sysadmins.
But that's inside the firewall, though I suppose you could
use them for outgoing mail as well. 

Another use for inside-to-outside remailers is to preserve the privacy of
internal addresses, though that's more likely to need a service which 
replaces the originating headers with the real user's name, using some 
authentication to prevent forged email from the company president, etc.

Any suggestions on getting companies to accept outside-to-outside-capable
remailers on their gateways, or outside-to-inside?


		Anonymity is cool, heh,heh..
			Beavis