From: ghio@temp0122.myriad.ml.org (Matthew Ghio)
Date: Thu, 2 Oct 1997 06:45:21 +0800
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: Re: Remailers and ecash (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <199709300125.UAA14206@einstein.ssz.com>
Message-ID: <199710012227.SAA17395@myriad>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Jim Choate wrote:

> What would motivate an average consumer to use an anonymous remailer?
> 
> Clearly simple anonymity or writing nasty letters to Grandma anonymously are
> not going to motivate most folks irrespective of cost - they simply have no
> interest in such activities. So, the question becomes:
> 
> What besides raising hell anonymously, laundering money, and defeating
> merchant purchase traffic analysis are commercial anonymous remailers good
> for?

Okay, let's take a look at what remailers are actually being used for.
Go to dejanews and type in the addresses of all the remailers you know of,
count the number of posts to each newsgroup and add them up.  Here are the
top twenty newsgroups that I got when I did this little experiment:

  10471	alt.anonymous.messages
   7272	alt.test
   6236	alt.hackintosh
   4392	alt.binaries.mac.games
   1326	misc.test
   1253	alt.religion.scientology
   1109	alt.sex.stories
   1023	soc.culture.singapore
    915	alt.amazon-women.admirers
    877	soc.culture.iranian
    770	alt.anonymous
    622	fj.news.usage
    573	alt.politics.nationalism.white
    571	alt.sex.spanking
    557	talk.politics.guns
    543	alt.tv.real-world
    518	alt.cracks
    517	alt.drugs.pot.cultivation
    512	alt.privacy.anon-server
    498	alt.revisionism


So what are remailers being used for?

 1) Private communication in the form of anonymous message pools
 2) Test posts
 3) Discussion of Macintosh computers
 4) Discussion of obscure religions
 5) Sharing erotic fantasy stories
 6) Avoiding censorship in Singapore
 7) Avoiding censorship in Iran
 8) Discussion of remailers themselves
 9) Discussion of controvertial political topics (racism, guns, drugs)
10) Discussion about a TV show


Note that this list does not include harassing Grandma, money laundering,
and all your other delusional terrorist fantasies.  Welcome to the real
world.