From: Hal Finney <hal@rain.org>
Date: Sat, 16 Nov 1996 22:32:55 -0800 (PST)
To: ph@netcom.com
Subject: Re: Remailer Abuse Solutions
Message-ID: <199611170631.WAA03064@crypt.hfinney.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


From: ph@netcom.com (Peter Hendrickson)
> Another way to have anonymous posting but not be subjected to spam
> and the like is to dispense tokens every week to the subscribers.
> They can be signed blindly so that anonymity is preserved, just
> like e-cash.

I had proposed a similar idea to this a few years ago.  You would dispense
tokens, each of which needed to be included in an anonymous message.
So this prevents spam.  But it can also deal with abuse.

After sending the message, if it was not abusive, a new blinded token
would be broadcast which could only be decrypted by the sender of the
original message.  But if it was abusive, no new token would be sent.
Remailer users would watch these token broadcasts and get their new
tokens each time they sent a message.  The remailer might have to delay
issuing the replacement tokens for a day or two to give the recipient
time to complain.

If you gave everyone in the world an initial supply of a few tokens,
then every time they abused, they'd lose one.  But as long as they use
the remailer reasonably they can continue to use it forever because they
get a new token for each one they use.  Messages still remain completely
unlinkable and the remailer has no way of learning anything from the
tokens it sees since they were all issued in blinded form.

Hal