A pseudonymous remailer or nym server, as opposed to an

anonymous remailer An anonymous remailer is a server that receives messages with embedded instructions on where to send them next, and that forwards them without revealing where they originally came from. There are cypherpunk anonymous remailers, mixmaster anonymo ...

, is an

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...

software program designed to allow people to write

pseudonym A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person or group assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true name ( orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individu ...

ous messages on

Usenet Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it wa ...

newsgroups and send pseudonymous

email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" mean ...

. Unlike purely anonymous remailers, it assigns its users a user name, and it keeps a database of instructions on how to return messages to the real user. These instructions usually involve the anonymous remailer network itself, thus protecting the true identity of the user. Primordial pseudonymous remailers once recorded enough information to trace the identity of the real user, making it possible for someone to obtain the identity of the real user through legal or illegal means. This form of pseudonymous remailer is no longer common.

David Chaum David Lee Chaum (born 1955) is an American computer scientist, cryptographer, and inventor. He is known as a pioneer in cryptography and privacy-preserving technologies, and widely recognized as the inventor of digital cash. His 1982 dissertati ...

wrote an article in 1981 that described many of the features present in modern pseudonymous remailers. The

Penet remailer The Penet remailer () was a pseudonymous remailer operated by Johan "Julf" Helsingius of Finland from 1993 to 1996. Its initial creation stemmed from an argument in a Finnish newsgroup over whether people should be required to tie their real nam ...

, which lasted from 1993 to 1996, was a popular pseudonymous remailer.

Contemporary nym servers

A nym server (short for "

server") is a

server Server may refer to: Computing *Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provides functionality for other programs or devices, called clients Role * Waiting staff, those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending customers and su ...

that provides an untraceable e-mail address, such that neither the nym server operator nor the operators of the remailers involved can discover which nym corresponds to which real identity. To set up a nym, you create a

PGP PGP or Pgp may refer to: Science and technology * P-glycoprotein, a type of protein * Pelvic girdle pain, a pregnancy discomfort * Personal Genome Project, to sequence genomes and medical records * Pretty Good Privacy, a computer program for the ...

keypair and submit it to the nym server, along with instructions (called a ''reply block'') to

s (such as

Cypherpunk A cypherpunk is any individual advocating widespread use of strong cryptography and privacy-enhancing technologies as a route to social and political change. Originally communicating through the Cypherpunks electronic mailing list, informal g ...

or Mixmaster) on how to send a message to your real address. The nym server returns a confirmation through this reply block. You then send a message to the address in the confirmation. To send a message through the nym server so that the From address is the nym, you add a few headers, sign the message with your nym key, encrypt it with the nym server key, and send the message to the nym server, probably routed through some anonymous remailers. When the nym server gets the message, it decrypts the message and sends it on to the intended recipient, with the From: address being your nym. When the nym server gets a message addressed ''to'' the nym, it appends it to the nym's reply block and sends it to the first remailer in the chain, which sends it to the next and so on until it reaches your real address. It is considered good practice to include instructions to encrypt it on the way, so that someone (or some organization) doing in/out

traffic analysis Traffic analysis is the process of intercepting and examining messages in order to deduce information from patterns in communication, it can be performed even when the messages are encrypted. In general, the greater the number of messages observe ...

on the nym server cannot easily match the message received by you to the one sent by the nym server. Existing "multi-use reply block" nym servers were shown to be susceptible to passive traffic analysis with one month's worth of incoming

spam Spam may refer to: * Spam (food), a canned pork meat product * Spamming, unsolicited or undesired electronic messages ** Email spam, unsolicited, undesired, or illegal email messages ** Messaging spam, spam targeting users of instant messaging ...

(based on 2005 figures) in a paper by Bram Cohen,

Len Sassaman Leonard Harris Sassaman (April 9, 1980 – July 3, 2011) was an American technologist, information privacy advocate, and the maintainer of the Mixmaster anonymous remailer code and operator of the ''randseed'' remailer. Much of his career gravitat ...

, and

Nick Mathewson Nick Mathewson is an American computer scientist and co-founder of The Tor Project. He, along with Roger Dingledine, began working on onion routing shortly after they graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the early 2000s. ...

.Se
The Pynchon Gate: A Secure Method of Pseudonymous Mail Retrieval

References

External links

Anonymous Remailer FAQ

Mixmaster FAQ

Official I2P-Bote eepsite
{dead link, date=April 2018 , bot=InternetArchiveBot , fix-attempted=yes (I2P-internal) Anonymity networks Internet Protocol based network software Routing Network architecture

Contemporary nym servers

See also

References

Further reading

External links