From: ichudov@algebra.com (Igor Chudov @ home)
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 1997 19:59:34 -0800 (PST)
To: dlv@bwalk.dm.com (Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM)
Subject: Re: remailer spam throttle
In-Reply-To: <9RB04D45w165w@bwalk.dm.com>
Message-ID: <199703280354.VAA03151@manifold.algebra.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text


Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote:
> 
> Hal Finney <hal@rain.org> writes:
> > For example, one idea is to have a list of people who are willing to
> > receive anonymous mail without questions.  It could be that the remailer
> > is set up to ask before sending mail normally, but to people on such a
> > list it doesn't have to ask, it just sends it, because they have given
> > permission.
> >
> > Some people have objected to this proposal because the existence of the
> > list might give a hint about which people send mail through the remailers.
> > Even though the list is of people willing to *receive* anonymous mail,
> > it could well be that there is a strong correlation with people who want
> > to send such mail.
> 
> Instead of keeping this list in cleartext, one could keep 1-way hashes
> of the addresses. Thus a remailer (or anyone) can check whether a given
> address is on the list, but they can't just go through the list and
> "investigate" the addresses on it.

Well, they can compile the list of addresses off of USENET postings and
such and then compute the hashes of the compiled names and identify
those that are on the anon acceptance list. Not that it completely
invalidates the idea, but certainly it is a problem.

	- Igor.