From: nobody@cypherpunks.ca (John Anonymous MacDonald)
Date: Sun, 25 Aug 1996 10:19:14 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: blahPGP/Remailers in the News!
Message-ID: <199608240525.WAA15838@abraham.cs.berkeley.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Here's an EXCELLENT column on PGP and remailers:

Roadside Attractions Along the Information Highway
	by Dave Farrell [roadside@branch.com]

Your e-mail doesn't have to be for everyone's eyes

	Sending e-mail over the Internet can be a very convenient and 
efficient way to communicate. If things are working right, you can dash 
off a memo to a friend or colleague halfway across the world and they'll 
receive it within minutes. (On the other hand, I've sent off important 
e-mail messages into cyberspace never to hear from them again, but 
that's another column.)
	A big drawback of the e-mail, however, is that it is not 
private. In fact, it's a lot like mailing a postcard to a friend. Just 
as a lot of people handle your postcard before it gets to its final 
destination, your e-email mesages pass through a lot of computers before 
they land in the recipient's in-box. In both cases, there are plenty of 
opportunites for people to read your messages before they get where 
they're going.
	You may not care if someone reads the bean dip recipe you're 
sending to your Aunt Clara, but sensitive monthly sales reports you're 
emailing to your boss might be another story. While there's no way to 
absolutely guarantee e-mail privacy on the Net, there is a fairly simple 
way to make it extremely hard for prying eyes to read your messages. 
It's called encryption, and there's a couple of good programs available 
that can teach you how to encode your messages.
	Encryption basically involves scrambling your outgoing messages 
to make them unintelligible. The recipient then unscrambles them on the 
receiving end, converting them back into plain English. There are 
several encryption programs available on the Internet. I recommend you 
try PGP, which stands for Pretty Good Privacy. You can download a free 
copy of PGP from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Web site: 
http://web.mit.edu/network/pgp.html.
	Of course, PGP works only if you take the time to use it. To 
make that process easier, you should download a copy of Private Idaho, a 
free program that will make using PGP a point-and-click process. Private 
Idaho also will enable you to post anonymously to Usenet Newsgroups and 
do other neat tricks, such as anonymously access Web sites with your 
browser (you did know that you leave electronic "mouse tracks" when you 
visit Web sites, didn't you?)
	You can download a copy of Private Idaho from 
http://www.eskimo.com/(tilde)joelm. [retypist's note: yes, the article 
had "(tilde)" in place of "~"] Unfortunately for Mac users, Private 
Idaho is available only for Windows.
	If you really want to increase your Internet privacy, you might 
want to consider using anonymous remailers to send and receive your 
messages. These remailers strip your messages of your reutrn address and 
allow you to send e-mail that can't be easily traced back to you.
	There are many reamilers on the Net. Some are free, some charge. 
For a nice list to choose from, surf over to: 
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/(tilde)raph/remailer-list.html. If you're 
REALLY paranoid about hiding your electronic tracks, you can send your 
message through several anonymous remailers, which will obscure your 
identity over and over again. To learn more about this process, check 
out http://www.replay.com/staff/usura/chain.html.
	To save some time typing in the addresses of all the remailers 
you want to use, try the Community ConneXion at: 
http://www.c2.org/remail/by-www.html. This site will allow you to 
point-and-click your way through the process of selecting remailers and 
sending your messages.
	Finally, for more information about on-line privacy, visit the 
Electronic Privacy Information Center: http://www.epic.org.