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Official Mixmaster Remailer FAQ



This FAQ was originally written by Alex Kirk < alex@schnarff.com >.
It is currently maintained by Colin Tuckley < colintu@users.sourceforge.net >.
If you find an error, have a further question, or wish to make modifications/updates/additions, please notify him.

Last Update: 22/11/07

Table of Contents


1. Introduction
1.1 Document Audience and Licence
1.2 What's an anonymous remailer?
1.3 Why should I run an anonymous remailer?
1.4 History of remailers/cryptography
1.5 Newsgroups/Mailing Lists
1.6 Important Reading

2. Planning
2.1 Requirements
2.1.1 Hardware
2.1.2 Internet Connectivity
2.1.3 Operating System
2.1.4 Software
2.1.5 Filesystem/Drive Space
2.2 Decisions
2.2.1 Uptime
2.2.2 Middleman
2.2.3 Nyms
2.2.4 Name
2.2.5 Policy

3. Software Configuration
3.1 MTA (Mail Transport Agent)
3.1.1 MS Exchange
3.1.2 Postfix
3.1.3 Qmail
3.1.4 Sendmail
3.1.5 Add-Ons
3.1.5.1 TLS-SSL
3.1.5.2 RBLs
3.2 Downloading Software
3.2.1 Remailers
3.2.1.1 UNIX/Linux/BSD
3.2.1.2 Web Frontends
3.2.2 mail2news Gateway
3.2.2.1 UNIX/Linux/BSD
3.2.3 Pingers
3.2.3 UNIX/Linux/BSD
3.3 Installing Software
3.3.1 Mixmaster Remailer
3.3.2 Pinger
3.4 Useful System Tools
3.5 Bounce Re-Inject Script
4. Security
4.1 Host System Security
4.1.1 Philosophy
4.1.2 Firewalls
4.1.3 Minimalism/Unnecessary Software
4.1.4 Local Attacks
4.1.5 Patches/Updates/Upgrades
4.2 Key Security
4.3 Logging
4.4 Floods & Spam
4.4.1 MTA
4.4.2 Asian ISPs & Subnet Filtering
4.4.3 Prevent Massive Crossposting
4.4.4 Flood Detection
4.4.5 Duplicate Detection
4.4.6 Blocking Obnoxious Hosts

5. Policy
5.1 Always Have A Posted Policy!
5.2 Responding to Abuse Complaints
5.3 To Monitor Or Not To Monitor?
5.4 Cryptographically Signing Posts & E-mail
5.4.1 How To
5.5 Changing Remailer Keys
5.6 Legal Links

6. Announcing Your Remailer

7. I'm Being Blocked!
7.1 Static IP
7.2 Dynamic IP
7.3 Dial-Up/POP

1. Introduction

1.1 Document Audience and Licence

This document is intended for those who run or are thinking about running an anonymous remailer, mail2news gateway, or remailer statistics pinger. It might answer some questions for those who want to know what these are, but the primary audience is administrators, potential or current.

This document is published under the MIT License.

Copyright (c) 2002,2003 Alex Kirk
Copyright (c) 2007 Colin Tuckley
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without
restriction, including without limitation the rights to use,
copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the
Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following
conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES
OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT
HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR
OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.


1.2 What's an anonymous remailer?

From the Anonymous Remailer FAQ:
"A remailer is a computer service which privatizes your e-mail. A remailer is in sharp contrast to the average Internet Service Providers [ISP] which is terribly anti-private. In fact, ISP could equally stand for "Internet Surveillance Point".

"Traditionally, a remailer allowed you to send electronic mail to a Usenet news group, or to a person, without revealing your true name or e-mail address to the recipient. Today, new web-based remailers permit you to send mail using your real name (if you wish), while protecting your email records from the snooping eyes of your Internet Service Provider.

"In the first version of this FAQ (published in 1995), all popular remailers were free-of-charge. Today, a number of services either charge user fees, or support themselves via advertisers.

1.3 Why should I run an anonymous remailer?

There are several good reasons for running an anonymous remailer. You might be interested if you want to:

1.4 History of remailers/cryptography

1.5 Newsgroups/Mailing Lists

Those interested in running an anonymous remailer or mail2news gateway should subscribe to the remops mailing list remops@lists.mixmin.net . You should also frequent alt.privacy.anon-server and alt.privacy.

1.6 Important Reading

Papers of note include:
Chaums digital mixes
Mixmaster FAQ by Lance Cottrell.
Mixmaster and remailer attacks. An essay by Lance Cottrell, which motivates the original design of Mixmaster
Anonymous Remailer FAQ by Andre Bacard.

2. Planning

2.1 Requirements

2.1.1 Hardware

With the right operating system, you can run an anonymous remailer on the most paltry hardware: some large remailers run on 486 DX 33MHz boxes. Of course, this can only be done if you're running a UNIX-style operating system and if the machine is dedicated to its task. More realistically, especially if you intend to use your hardware for anything else, you should have at least a Pentium 75MHz, with 16MB of RAM.

Windows users will need a bit more system resources: at least a Pentium II 200MHz with 64MB of RAM. This is due, of course, to the large overhead of keeping a GUI running.

2.1.2 Internet Connectivity

It is possible to run a remailer without a dedicated connection, as long as you have POP access and an account with a decent quota that won't bounce messages all over the place. This setup is not recommended, however, because it requires constant administrator intervention. Any form of broadband is preferable. Note that, on average, Type II remailers consume anywhere from 84-140 MB per day in bandwidth (3,500-5,000 messages * 28125 bytes/message). Type I remailers typically consume less bandwidth, as they are lower traffic, though this can change if you allow binaries to move through your remailer.

2.1.3 Operating System

Your best bet is probably UNIX, Linux, or a BSD, as these systems are generally free, stable, and relatively secure. Chances are, if you have a well configured machine running this type of operating system, it will be exremely low maintenance. The personal recommendation of the original author of this document (though not that of the Mixmaster team at large, as some of them have complaints about OpenBSD's disclosure & advisory policy) is OpenBSD, whose claim to fame -- six years with only one remotely exploitable hole in the default install -- is a good indicator of its security track record.

It is possible to run a remailer on a Windows system, but due to the massive security holes and general lack of stability, this is not recommended. If you do choose to run Windows, you will probably have the most success with Windows 2000, as it is the most stable and secure of the Windows operating systems.

2.1.4 Software

Remailers: mail2news Gateway: Pingers for Remailer Statistics:

2.1.5 Filesystem/Drive Space

Actual drive space is probably less of a consideration now than it was in the past, due to the proliferation of extremely large drives. However, it is still good to know how much drive space you should set aside, especially for those running on older systems.

Remailers:

2.2 Decisions

There are many decisions you will have to make about how to set up your remailer which will impact its ease of administration and performance. Note that you can successfully run a remailer no matter what you decide here; the only thing these considerations are relevant to are your level of involvement in administration.

2.2.1 Uptime

Contrary to what one might first think, it is not necessary to have a box up 24/7 to run a remailer. While an always-on setup is obviously preferable, it is possible to run a remailer on a box without guaranteed uptime, so long as mail is POP'd through at least four times per day. If you cannot send mail through at this minimum rate -- including times when you are away on holiday or otherwise out of your daily -- you should not run a remailer. Doing so would cause unnecessary bottlenecks in the network, causing problems for everyone.

2.2.2 Middleman

In order for the remailer network to function properly, there is a need for "middleman" remailers -- boxes that don't actually send e-mails to recipients or posts to Usenet, but instead simply function as additional hops along the chain (remember, the more hops a message traverses, the more secure it is). These systems are also useful in nym reply blocks.
If you want to run a remailer, but are afraid of potential consequences from user complaints (i.e. your ISP cutting you off, your friendly neighborhood government getting upset with you), you should run a middleman remailer. Since you will never send messages to anyone but other remailers, you should never get any official complaints, and thus will avoid all of the unpleasantness of dealing with the general public.

2.2.3 Nyms

2.2.4 Name

All remailers must have a name to identify themselves within the network. This name must not exceed eight characters. Preferably, it should be something easily associated with the remailer, even something humorous, so that it can be easily remembered.

2.2.5 Policy

Before putting your remailer into action, you need to have a clearly articulated policy governing use and abuse of your system (even if you are a middleman, this is a good idea). It should be posted on your web site and be included in autoresponses to non-remailer generated messages (i.e. in abuse.txt). You should probably read an example before finalizing your own.
Reasons for doing this include: keeping unhappy end-users from escalating complaints by giving them an easy way to resolve problems; being a good netizen; making sure you really know what you're doing and why you're doing it before you start.

3. Software Configuration

3.1 MTA (Mail Transport Agent)

3.1.1 MS Exchange

3.1.2 Postfix

3.1.3 Qmail

3.1.4 Sendmail

3.1.5 Add-Ons

3.1.5.1 TLS-SSL

TLS-SSL stands for Transport Layer Security-Secure Socket Layer, and it is intended to add an extra layer of security to your mail server's communications. It does so by encrypting all header information when sending mail between MTAs that support it. As any extra level of security is generally a good thing when running a remailer, you are strongly encouraged to install TLS-SSL on your MTA.

For those running Qmail, the procedure is rather straightforwrad. Download the patch, apply it to your source tree with patch < tls.patch, make your server certificates as mentioned in the patch instructions, and re-run make setup check to install the updated binaries. Make certain you have run make clean first, and that Qmail is shut down during the recompilation (and of course turned back on once successful ;-).

3.1.5.2 RBLs

3.2 Downloading Software

3.2.1 Remailers

3.2.1.1 UNIX/Linux/BSD

Mixmaster -- Type I & II remailer (http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=37891&release_id=129918)
(Mirror) Mixmaster -- Type I & II remailer (ftp://ftp.shinn.net/pub/remailer/mixmaster)
Nymserv -- Nym remailer (ftp://ftp.shinn.net/pub/remailer/nymserv)

3.2.1.2 Web Frontends

Freedom -- modified version of the original cypherpunk web frontend, used by the GMS/GILC remailer (ftp://ftp.shinn.net/pub/freedom-remailer)
COTSE -- Church Of The Swimming Elephant -- Many resources available here

3.2.2 mail2news Gateway

3.2.2.1 UNIX/Linux/BSD

Multipost (ftp://ftp.shinn.net/pub/remailer/mail2news_gateway)

3.2.3 Pingers

3.2.3.1 UNIX/Linux/BSD

rlist (ftp://ftp.shinn.net/pub/remailer/rlist-plus-pinger-1.0.tar.gz)
remlist (http://www.tahina.priv.at/~cm/hacks/)
Pingstats -- This pinger needs only a Unix account with gpg, Mix 2.9, a mail server, procmail, and a random device; it does not need a database or premail. Capstrings and keyrings are automatically updated and (if tmpwatch is installed) expired. It generates stats in both formats for both Mixmaster and Cypherpunk remailers (but no nymservers yet). To get the source, send a message with subject "get-pingstats" to cmeclax@ixazon.dynip.com. Please allow for the latency of this remailer for delivery (it may take a day or more on a busy day). (http://lexx.shinn.net/cmeclax/pingstats.html)

3.3 Installing Software

Getting Mixmaster software to function on your system is a straightforward task, much like installing any other piece of open-source software for your box. Making sure that you're set up to have a properly behaving remailer is another task altogether.

3.3.1 Mixmaster Remailer

Follow these steps to make sure you've set up your remailer properly:

3.3.2 Pinger

3.4 Useful System Tools

3.5 Bounce Re-Inject Script

cmeclax po'u le cmevi'u ke'umrs written a script (http://ixazon.dynip.com/~cmeclax/resend) which automates the process of re-sending valid messages that have been bounced because of problems with a particular remailer, such as an over-quota account or misconfiguration.

To use it, you need to first put the entireity of the bounced messages into one big file. Alex Kirk has a script (http://www.schnarff.com/mixmaster/combine) which will do this automatically for those running Maildirs.

Once you have your messages in this file, simply run resend , prefereably as the mix user (since, if you were to run this as example_user, messages appear to be coming from example_user@yourdomain). You should probably pick a remailer besides the one that has ben bouncing messages to you, and probably go with one that has a good uptime/statistics history.

Keep in mind that this procedure should be repeated regularly, so that a) messages actually get through with some sense of timeliness, and b) you don't end up shooting out hundreds of messages to a particular remailer in one go.

4. Security

4.1 Host System Security

Ensuring that the system your remailer runs on is secure is of the highest priority. After all, if the host you are using is cracked, the intruder could do any manner of horrible things, including abusing your mailer and getting your IP blacklisted, shutting down your mailer, compromising your private key, etc. There are several things you can do to protect your host, many of which are one-time-only, policy-oriented fixes.

4.1.1 Philosophy

4.1.2 Firewalls

4.1.3 Minimalism/Unnecessary Software

Most operating systems come with a great deal of programs and services enabled that you, the administrator, are unaware of and will never use. The number of such programs varies greatly, with Windows in all its forms being the worst offender down to OpenBSD, which ships with almost everything turned off.

The reason these programs are relevant to security is simple: if you have a service running that you know nothing about, you're not likely to keep up on exploits related to it. Thus, you're likely to end up with any number of remotely exploitable holes on your system that you're completely unaware of.

Your best bet in solving this problem -- besides picking an O/S that isn't a major offender here -- is to scan your box and to find out what services it's running, and then shut down those that aren't relevant to your operations (including, for the most part, those that you have no idea what they do). For UNIX-based systems, first use the ps command to check for actively running programs; you can usually turn them off permanently by editing a file like /etc/rc.conf and commenting them out.

More importantly, no matter what your O/S is, you should run a port scan from a remote machine, and then go about shutting down ports that offer unnecessary services. A good free web-based port scanner is at crypto.yashy.com/nmap.php; hitting this URL will tell you what ports you have open and what's running on them.

4.1.4 Local Attacks

4.1.5 Patches/Updates/Upgrades

4.2 Key Security

4.3 Logging

To log or not to log? That is every remailer's question. ;-)

Seriously, though, whether or not you keep your mail server logs is an important decision. The information contained in them could be valuable to any number of malicious entities -- crackers, someone seeking to track down an anonymous message sender, even government entities (which have been known to use subpoenas and other, more devious tactics to obtain logs).

If you are serious about protecting the identities of those who mail through you -- particularly if you're not just a middleman remailer, and your server interacts with real users regularly -- you should take precautions regarding your mail server logs. The simplest of these, of course, would be to simply turn your logs off altogether; that way no one can possibly break into them, and even if your records are subpoenaed, you can truthfully and legally say, "But I have none." If you're one of those people who simply can't function without running logs, you should at least use CFS or some other filesystem encryption scheme to protect your logs. Keep in mind that, if you do have logs that you need to erase, no standard O/S delete function will really delete them -- the data will remain recoverable on your hard drive unless you use special data-wiping software (and even then, it may still be recoverable given the proper amount of effort/resources on the attacker's part). Note that some UNIX systems have a flag to rm that will attempt to fully delete a file; so far, none of these perform the necessary steps (with the exception of OpenBSD 3.3 when it is released in April, as a patch was recently added to perform full overwriting). For more info on secure deletion, see Peter Guttman's 1996 USENIX paper Note that some UNIX systems have a flag to rm that will attempt to fully delete a file; so far, none of these perform the necessary steps (with the exception of OpenBSD 3.3 when it is released in April, as a patch was recently added to perform full overwriting). For more info on secure deletion, see Peter Guttman's 1996 USENIX paper, "Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory."

4.4 Floods & Spam

4.4.1 MTA

4.4.2 Asian ISPs & Subnet Filtering

Many systems administrators of late have noted that a the vast majority of spam being sent these days comes from severs in Asia. A good number of them have taken to blocking off the entire continent at their firewalls in an effort to stop this flood of spam.

While reading Slashdot recently, I came across an article referencing Andy McFadden's proposal of a slightly less drastic way of slowing this sort of spam. After conducting a study of spam he received, he compiled a list of particularly bad subnets in Asia -- ones whose owners eitehr were not competent to stop spam or simply did not care about it. He suggested that administrators use the lists he compiled to slow spam instead of blocking off an entire continent.

Eager to receive less spam, I tried this myself. I am please to report that blocking off these subnets drastically reduced the flow of spam into my inbox, though without measurements from before installing the list I have no scientific evidence of such.

4.4.3 Prevent Massive Crossposting

To prevent cross-posting to an unreasonably large number of lists, add these lines to your header.blk file:
/^Newsgroups:([^,]*,){X,}/q
/^Followup-To:([^,]*,){X,}/q
where X is the maximum number of groups a message can be cross-posted to. A reasonable limit here is probably about 5. This comes by default in current versions of Mixmaster.

4.4.4 Flood Detection

You can use Michael Shinn's Spamshield (ftp://ftp.shinn.net/pub/spamshield/output/spamshield.tar.gz) to help detect and deter floods on your box.

4.4.5 Duplicate Detection

4.4.6 Blocking Obnoxious Hosts

While it is probably best to block abusive hosts at the firewall, in that this method uses up the smallest amount of system resources, there are cases where this is not possible -- when one does not have access to modify the firewall, or when an abusive address lives at a domain so widely used that it cannot be blocked (i.e. yahoo.com, hotmail.com). In these cases, you should add the abusive address(es) to your source.blk file. If this file does not exist, simply create a textfile of that name, listing addresses one per line. Regular expressions are permitted, so if you want to block off an entire domain, you could use *@domain.com.

5. Policy

5.1 Always Have A Posted Policy!

Putting together and posting a well-thought-out abuse policy is a simple task that yields enormous dividends. If someone who has received abusive mailings through your remailer can see that you're doing your best to stop abuse, and that they have methods of recourse, they are infinitely less likely to complain to your ISP, try to crack your box, or otherwise harm you. Besides, making sure you're a good netizen by not tolerating abuse of your remailer is just good sense (not to mention good karma, if you belive in that sort of thing ;-).

5.2 Responding to Abuse Complaints

Making sure that you pay attention to abuse complaints is a key part of running a remailer. Not only is it good Netizenship, it's good PR for the cause: if someone experiences problems with you as a remop, chances are good they're going to think all remops and the whole concept of anonymous remailers are bad; if you're nice to them, then they'll think well of it all.

Responding to complaints from private citizens or companies is a rather simple process: unless there's some extreme reason not to, block them if they ask, and otherwise try to be accommodating of their wishes. Of course, if that includes "help me track down this SOB sending me these messages", well, you'll have to tell them the whole point of the service is that it's anonymous, and they're out of luck.

If a government entity asks you to block their address, you should probably point out that they have a legitimate requirement to listen to citizen concerns/complaints, and should probably only block an address if there are good supporting details -- i.e. it's someone's private address and complaints would be better received at a general mailbox, or if there was particularly pointless/offensive/etc. abuse or harrassment going on.

It makes your life much easier if you use the appropriate files to insert disclaimers throughout messages sent by your remailer. The file disclaim.txt will insert a string into the headers of all your messages; fromdscl.txt inserts a disclaimer at the start of the message body if there is a user-supplied From: string in the message; and footer.txt inserts a message at the bottom of the body. If you've put clearly stated disclaimers explaining your lack of responisiblity for the message's origin/content, the nature of your service, etc. in these places, and you're still getting complaints...well, you've probably got some really whiny people on your hands. ;-)

Most important of all, though, you need to have a clear policy already posted, so you can point to it and say, "Just follow my policy on this one." It should probably include when you will and won't block an address, what your philosophy is, why you're running the service, and have many good ways to contact you. Here's an example.

5.3 To Monitor Or Not To Monitor?

5.4 Cryptographically Signing Posts & E-mail

If you're running a remailer, you probably have at least the basic concepts of cryptography down -- at least enough to know that it's possible to cryptographically sign mail messages and Usenet posts, and that doing so helps verify your identity in the message. What you may not realize is that there have been (and will probably continue to be) extremely good forgeries of messages from remailer operators on the official mailing lists. Since someone forging a message could do really nasty things, such as issue bogus keys for your remailer, it is of the utmost importance that you *always* sign your messages, so that a forgery will be obvious (and if a forger has access to your keys to sign your messages, well, you've got bigger problems). Remember, if you only sign messages some of the time, it will be very easy for someone to sneak in and act as you (thought the occasional unsigned post followed two minutes later with a "Crap! Forgot to sign that last one!" post will be understood. ;-).

It is even worth your while to sign things like your abuse autoresponse, as forgeries have been known to occur in them as well (particularly when people are accusing you of abuse, and are trying to claim that your abuse policy is not strong enough).

5.4.1 How To

The first thing you'll need to do is have PGP or GPGinstalled. Chances are, if you're here, you've already done this.

Once this is done, you'll want to establish a key seperate from your remailer keys as your administrator key. If you've already got a keyset you're officially using, simply use it; if not, generate a new keyset, preferably RSA (as this is stronger than DSS), and at least 1024 bits (thought 2048 wouldn't be bad at all, especially for the paranoid amongst us).

As far as getting your mail client to work with PGP/GPG, well, it all depends. For many Windows systems, such as Outlook (Express), Eudora, etc., you can simply use the PGP plug-in. For Mozilla, you'll want to use Enigmail, which is freely available for all major operating systems. If you use a webmail system, you'll need to check its documentation.

For those who are running a *NIX, particularly with the X Windows system, your range of choices is much larger (list from http://www.mandrakeuser.org/docs/secure/sgpg2.html):

5.5 Changing Remailer Keys

5.6 Legal Links

Legal information about online anonymity: http://www.epic.org/free_speech/talley_v_california.html -- US Supreme Court Case 362 U.S. 60, Talley v. California (1960), in which the Court ruled that an address of an organization printed on a political leaflet was sufficient for distribution.
http://www.epic.org/free_speech/mcintyre.html -- US Supreme Court Case No. 93-986, McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission (1995), in which the Court ruled that anonymous leaflets of a political nature were protected by the first amendment. The Talley case was used to support the Court's decision here.
http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/articles/ocean.htm -- Discussion by A. Michael Froomkin in the University of Pennsylvania Law Journal on the subjects of Anonymous Electronic Speech, Anonymous Digital Cash, and Anonymity as a Privacy-Enhancing Response to Profiling.

Legal information about liability of ISPs for the content of e-mail and bulletin board postings by their users (such as this remailer):
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,36012,00.html -- Wired Article discussing US Supreme Court's dismissal of a suit against Prodigy for vulgar/obscene messages posted by someone who had cracked into another user's account and posted as that user.

Legal information about use of "offensive" speech:
http://www.epic.org/free_speech/cohen.html -- US Supreme Court Case No. 299, Cohen v. California (1971), in which the Court overturned the California Supreme Court's decision that wearing a jacket with the words "Fuck the Draft" in the Los Angeles Courthouse was offensive enough to be disallowed speech.

Relevant Legal Citations or Historical Quotes:

``The public would not be well served by compelling an (internet service provider) to examine and screen millions of e-mail communications, on pain of liability for defamation.''

- Ruling in Lunney vs. Prodigy Services Co., 99-1430. as affirmed by the US Supreme Court

``Under our Constitution, anonymous pamphleteering is not a pernicious, fraudulent practice, but an honorable tradition of advocacy and of dissent. Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority.''

- Justice Stevens: McIntyre v Ohio Election Commission majority opinion

``Anonymous pamphlets, leaflets, brochures and even books have played an important role in the progress of mankind. Persecuted groups and sects from time to time throughout history have been able to criticize oppressive practices and laws either anonymously or not at all.

``Even the Federalist Papers, written in favor of the adoption of our Constitution, were published under fictitious names. It is plain that anonymity has sometimes been assumed for the most constructive purposes.''

- Talley v. State of California, 362 U.S. 60, 64-65, 80 S.Ct. 536, 538-539 (1960)

``Consequently, actions resulting in the restriction of free speech, such as prohibiting persons from engaging in anonymous speech, are unconstitutional. American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan v. City of Goshen, 50 F. Supp.2d 835 (N.D. Ind. 1999) (holding ordinance prohibiting KKK from wearing masks to conceal identity from the public unconstitutional because of its tendency to restrict freedom to distribute information).''

- McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm'n, 514 U.S. 334 (1995).

``After reviewing the weight of the historical evidence, it seems that the Framers understood the First Amendment to protect an author's right to express his thoughts on political candidates or issues in an anonymous fashion.''

- Justice Thomas, US Supreme Court

``Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority... It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation -- and their ideas from suppression -- at the hand of an intolerant society.''

- Justice Stevens, US Supreme Court

``Anonymity is important to Internet users who seek to access sensitive information, such as users of the Critical Path AIDS Project's Web site, the users, particularly gay youth, of Queer Resources Directory, and users of Stop Prisoner Rape (SPR). Many members of SPR's mailing list have asked to remain anonymous due to the stigma of prisoner rape.''

- AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION vs JANET RENO, Attorney General of the United States (http://www.vtw.org/speech/decision.html)

``Printer's ink has been running a race against gunpowder these many, many years. Ink is handicapped, in a way, because you can blow up a man with gunpowder in half a second, while it may take twenty years to blow him up with a book. But the gunpowder destroys itself along with its victim, while a book can keep on exploding for centuries.''

--Chistopher Morley, ``The Haunted Bookshop''

6. Announcing Your Remailer

7. I'm Being Blocked!

7.1 Static IP

7.2 Dynamic IP

7.3 Dial-Up/POP


Contributors and Contacts

This document would not have been possible without all the information contributed by other people.

Additional Authors:
Michael T. Shinn (faq AT shinn DOT net)
trek AT trek DOT eu DOT or
cmeclax Admin (cmeclax AT ixazon DOT dynip DOT com)
christian mock (cm AT tahina DOT priv DOT at)
Editors:
Comments and revisions provided by:
cmeclax Admin (cmeclax AT ixazon DOT dynip DOT com)
Peter Palfrader (peter AT palfrader DOT org)
Others that I haven't had a chance to add to these credits (but I will!)

Acknowledgments

The authors of mixmaster, nymserv, multipost, reliable, rlist, PGP, premail, My Private Idaho, ghio, freedom and all other remailer, mail2news, crypto and pinger software.