Re: Pasting in From:

It seems to me that the purpose of a remailer is to strip the headers,
including the FROM header, not to put in fake headers.  Until someone can
explain it to me, I'd consider the idea of adding a FROM header to
anonymous mail to be asinine.

Best I can tell, the only reasonable good purpose for this is to create a
persistent nym identity without a reply to capability.  Well, remailer
software cannot support everything I suppose. (Even if Cracker may
apparently support this)

I would think the best way to put in a persistent nym capability would be
to database the PGP key id's along with the persistent identity.  Then the
remailer could produce lines like

	From: "Monty Cantsin" <anon@anon.efga.org>

Persistent identities would be created by sending a signed PGP message that
includes both the PGP public key and the persistent identity.  Since the
identity server would not database email addresses, only PGP key id's, and
only work for signed messages, there should be no problem with people
worrying about the remailer being compromised.  This also keeps someone
from stealing another's reputation capital.


  -- Robert Costner                  Phone: (770) 512-8746
     Electronic Frontiers Georgia    mailto:pooh@efga.org  
     http://www.efga.org/            run PGP 5.0 for my public key

"Robert A. Costner" <pooh@efga.org> writes:

> It seems to me that the purpose of a remailer is to strip the headers,
> including the FROM header, not to put in fake headers.  Until someone can
> explain it to me, I'd consider the idea of adding a FROM header to
> anonymous mail to be asinine.
>
> Best I can tell, the only reasonable good purpose for this is to create a
> persistent nym identity without a reply to capability.  Well, remailer
> software cannot support everything I suppose. (Even if Cracker may
> apparently support this)
>
> I would think the best way to put in a persistent nym capability would be
> to database the PGP key id's along with the persistent identity.  Then the
> remailer could produce lines like
>
> 	From: "Monty Cantsin" <anon@anon.efga.org>
>
> Persistent identities would be created by sending a signed PGP message that
> includes both the PGP public key and the persistent identity.  Since the
> identity server would not database email addresses, only PGP key id's, and
> only work for signed messages, there should be no problem with people
> worrying about the remailer being compromised.  This also keeps someone
> from stealing another's reputation capital.

Igor's STUMP has a similar feature, although I don't think a lot of posters
currently use it.

---

Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote:
> "Robert A. Costner" <pooh@efga.org> writes:
> 
> > It seems to me that the purpose of a remailer is to strip the headers,
> > including the FROM header, not to put in fake headers.  Until someone can
> > explain it to me, I'd consider the idea of adding a FROM header to
> > anonymous mail to be asinine.
> >
> > Best I can tell, the only reasonable good purpose for this is to create a
> > persistent nym identity without a reply to capability.  Well, remailer
> > software cannot support everything I suppose. (Even if Cracker may
> > apparently support this)
> >
> > I would think the best way to put in a persistent nym capability would be
> > to database the PGP key id's along with the persistent identity.  Then the
> > remailer could produce lines like
> >
> > 	From: "Monty Cantsin" <anon@anon.efga.org>
> >
> > Persistent identities would be created by sending a signed PGP message that
> > includes both the PGP public key and the persistent identity.  Since the
> > identity server would not database email addresses, only PGP key id's, and
> > only work for signed messages, there should be no problem with people
> > worrying about the remailer being compromised.  This also keeps someone
> > from stealing another's reputation capital.
> 
> Igor's STUMP has a similar feature, although I don't think a lot of posters
> currently use it.

CBI news agency used to do it until it got tired of signing non-ASCII
messages.

One of the groups that uses STUMP went even farther and decided to allow
only PGP signed anonymous messages. I was really surprised when I saw
that provision.

	- Igor.

At 12:34 PM 12/1/97 -0800, stewarts@ix.netcom.com wrote:
>But you don't need a special anonymity server to do that;
>a keyserver plus either a personna certificate or some archiving mechanism
is enough.
>The certificate shows that you're the first+only person at that
>certificate issuer to use the name you've chosen; the archive
>shows that the first poster using the name <nym> used PGP Key <key>.
>I have a PGP key I use for signing pseudonyms which performs
>the personna certificate function - I'll verify uniqueness
>of keys that I've signed.  

I was thinking of remailers sending out anon messages with a distinct from
line that has zero connection (in the nym database) to any email address.
Is this possible?  To establish a nym only through one way communication?




  -- Robert Costner                  Phone: (770) 512-8746
     Electronic Frontiers Georgia    mailto:pooh@efga.org  
     http://www.efga.org/            run PGP 5.0 for my public key