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 anony ...

, is an

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

software program designed to allow people to write

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

ous messages on

Usenet Usenet (), a portmanteau of User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Elli ...

newsgroups and send pseudonymous

email Electronic mail (usually shortened to email; alternatively hyphenated e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving Digital media, digital messages using electronics, electronic devices over a computer network. It was conceived in the ...

. 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, List of cryptographers, cryptographer, and inventor. He is known as a pioneer in cryptography and privacy-preserving technologies, and widely recognized as the inventor of Digital cur ...

wrote an article in 1981 that described many of the features present in modern pseudonymous remailers. The Penet remailer, which lasted from 1993 to 1996, was a popular pseudonymous remailer.

Contemporary nym servers

A nym server (short for "

server") is a server 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, one creates a PGP keypair and submits it to the nym server, along with instructions (called a ''reply block'') to

s (such as Cypherpunk or Mixmaster) on how to send a message to one's real address. The nym server returns a confirmation through this reply block. One then sends a message to the address in the confirmation. To send a message through the nym server so that the ''From'' address is the nym, one adds a few headers, signs the message with one's nym key, encrypts it with the nym server key, and sends the message to the nym server, optionally routing it through some anonymous remailers. When the nym server receives the message it decrypts it and sends it on to the intended recipient, with the ''From'' address indicating one's 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 observ ...

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 most often refers to: * Spam (food), a consumer brand product of canned processed pork of the Hormel Foods Corporation * Spamming, unsolicited or undesired electronic messages ** Email spam, unsolicited, undesired, or illegal email messages ...

(based on 2005 figures) in a paper by

Bram Cohen Bram Cohen is an American computer programmer, best known as the author of the peer-to-peer (P2P) BitTorrent protocol in 2001, as well as the first file sharing program to use the protocol, also known as BitTorrent. He is also the co-founder of ...

, Len Sassaman, and Nick Mathewson.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