Anonymous remailer

A remailer is a pseudonymisierender and / or anonymizing Internet service that accepts and forwards e- mail messages. The software de-personalized the message by removing e -mail headers, allow conclusions to the original sender.

Thus, it allows you to post about in a Usenet forum or send someone an e -mail without the recipient can find out the name or the e-mail address of the sender. By incorporating asymmetric encryption method, where applicable, the safety of the procedure.

Variants

A distinction is made between Remailern type 0, type I and type II and type III:

This classification takes into account the type 0 Type III increasing performance in terms of anonymity.

In general, it is a software that works as a server. So-called hybrid remailer (also Typ-I/Typ-II-Hybride ) combine features of different types of remailers or grant the operator greater freedom to determine the Funktionensumfangs one.

Remailer get normal drafted posts by e -mail program of the sender or of a specialized client software in the form of an appropriately formatted data packets. The remailer may be on the same computer, on a computer in the local network (LAN) or installed on a computer on the Internet.

Attacks against remailer

Remailers are always under attack. Many driven by pure idealism operators of such services have at the end of a large-scale campaign eventually abandoned. It will continue to be so that mass mailings and mass postings that are routed through the remailer, - but also smear campaigns that carry as the only significant source address of the remailer - threaten their survival. Mainly to avoid misunderstandings because of their motives, will give users the Remailerdienste adherence to the same principles of conduct demanded that apply to most other public Internet deals with empowerment. Often, the publication of such rules by the remailer operator is the only possible form of self-protection.

Exemplary follow the rules of a typical remailer abuse:

• Sending messages to disturb or annoy in the first place.
• Use of the remailer to any illegal purposes. Due to the global nature of the Internet, it is the sole responsibility of the original station to find out what is legally acceptable.
• Unsolicited commercial advertisements (spam).
• Complaints to the senders of unsolicited advertising or bulk mail. "

Just as the conventional mail, also remailer can not completely eliminate the shipping unacceptable material. However, the remailer operators have the option of excluding known sender or recipient addresses from participation in the process.

Systematic sabotage

Observations from operators and users of remailers shown that it is not possible even with the most reliable software to guarantee interference-free communication. What was commonly defects in the design of protocols, programming error or generally attributed to uncertainties in the use of the Internet, has after a thorough investigation (see remailer Vulnerabilities ) apparently its root causes in the systematic approach by an unknown assailant against the remailer network. Often unspoken, but always involving government, U.S. agencies is in the room. That this might be evidence of more than a baseless, new conspiracy theory arises from the situation-dependent predictability of the loss or delay of certain exceptional emails.

From the observation of new technical requirements for the next generation of remailers result. They should be implemented at least in part in the new Mixminion software.