Remailer list
This is an automatically generated listing of remailers. The first
part of the listing shows the remailers along with configuration
options and special features for each of the remailers. The second
part shows the 12-day history, and average latency and uptime for each
remailer. You can also get this list by fingering
remailer-list@kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu.
This is a (more or less) comprehensive listing of the type-1
remailers. The Mixmaster remailers are listed separately in the Mixmaster
list.
History key
- # response in less than 5 minutes.
- * response in less than 1 hour.
- + response in less than 4 hours.
- - response in less than 24 hours.
- . response in less than 2 days.
- _ response in more than 2 days.
Options and features
- cpunk
- A major class of remailers. Supports
Request-Remailing-To: field.
- eric
- A variant of the cpunk style. Uses Anon-Send-To:
instead.
- penet
- The third class of remailers (at least for right now). Uses
X-Anon-To: in the header.
- pgp
- Remailer supports encryption with PGP. A period after the
keyword means that the short name, rather than the full email address,
should be used as the encryption key ID.
- hash
- Supports ## pasting, so anything can be put into the
headers of outgoing messages.
- ksub
- Remailer always kills subject header, even in non-pgp mode.
- nsub
- Remailer always preserves subject header, even in pgp mode.
- latent
- Supports Matt Ghio's Latent-Time: option.
- cut
- Supports Matt Ghio's Cutmarks: option.
- post
- Post to Usenet using Post-To: or Anon-Post-To:
header.
- ek
- Encrypt responses in reply blocks using Encrypt-Key:
header.
- special
- Accepts only pgp encrypted messages.
- mix
- Can accept messages in Mixmaster
format.
- reord
- Attempts to foil traffic analysis by reordering messages.
Note: I'm relying on the word of the remailer operator here, and
haven't verified the reord info myself.
- mon
- Remailer has been known to monitor contents of private email.
- filter
- Remailer has been known to filter messages based on content. If
not listed in conjunction with mon, then only messages
destined for public forums are subject to filtering.
Society and remailers
- André Bacard's anonymous
remailer FAQ is an excellent nontechnical introduction.
- Remailers are starting to show up in the popular press, including
these two articles in Wired, and
anti-anonymity editorials in the Wall Street
Journal (a rebuttal
was written by Avi Baumstein) and San
Francisco Chronicle (by Martha Siegel herself, no less!). I wrote
a response
to the latter, but it didn't get printed. Peter Lewis wrote a front
page article for the New York
Times that had most of its facts wrong. A better attempt was made
by Reid Kanaley in the Philadelphia
Inquirer. Thanks to Avi Baumstein for putting these documents and
others related to anonymity
on the Web.
- Another recent news item is the compromise of anon.penet.fi as a
result of a Scientology complaint. Only one name was obtained
(originally they wanted the entire database), but the legal situation
remains unclear. Here's a post describing what
happened and press release from
Johan Helsingius. There was a story in Time
Magazine by Joshua Quittner. Daniel Akst of the LA Times wrote a
column
about the incident, as well.
- For a somewhat, ah, er, different take on Net anonymity,
hop over to L.Detweiler's
home page. By the way, he tells me that I am an "outsider"
relative to the cypherpunks. This may come as a surprise to the many
who have been following my involvement with the remailer network and
PGP. However, Mr. Detweiler knows (better than I) that I don't really
subscribe to the hidden "black" cypherpunk agenda.
Tools
- I have written premail, a mail client
which automatically prepares outgoing mail for the remailers, and also
transparently handles PGP encryption. Premail is fairly easy to set
up. Once this is done, it will take care of all the details for you,
including automatically choosing remailers based on this list. As yet,
there is no support for Mixmaster or alpha.c2.org, but stay tuned.
- Version 3.3 of mailcrypt is out, and
it directly supports remailers and PGP encryption. It's pretty much an
Emacs implementation of premail. Anyone who uses Emacs for their news
and mail should definitely check this one out. It can automatically
load the information from this remailer list.
- Private Idaho
is an anonymous remailer utility for Windows, supporting PGP, the
cypherpunks remailers, and Mixmaster, and the alpha.c2.org alias
server. It too automatically configures itself based on this remailer
list.
- ChainMail
is a remailer chaining utility for Mac users, by Jonathan Rochkind. To
use it, you need Eudora, MacPGP, and applescript, in addition to a
number of applescript scripting additions.
- Privtool is
a PGP-aware mailer that also supports Mixmaster.
- New: The Community ConneXion has put the Web-premail
gateway on its SSL
server. That means that you can send anonymous email from the Web
without exposing your message in the clear on the connection between
your Web browser and the gateway. Good stuff.
- Sameer Parekh's NEXUS Berkeley /
Community ConneXion has a web page set up for sending anonymous
mail from your Web client.
- Michael Hobbs has set up Web gateway to
premail. Now you can send anonymous email directly from your Web
browser. Don't use this for extremely sensitive stuff, though, because
it isn't quite as secure as running premail yourself (in particular,
the connection between your Web browser and the gateway is not
encrypted).
Remailer help
- A good source for remailer information is the Anonymity,
remailers, and your privacy page compiled by "Galactus". This is
also the best place to look for information about anon.penet.fi.
- Matt Ghio's remailer list is
available by fingering
remailer.help.all@chaos.taylored.com. This file also has
all the public keys for PGP-friendly remailers. Matt also has a
pinging service similar to this one, available by fingering
remailer-list@chaos.taylored.com. Update: Chaos is
having problems getting recognized on the Net. Try
remailer.help.all@204.95.228.28 and see if that works any
better. Last I checked, the information here was more than a month out
of date. Newer information can be gotten by sending mail to
mg5n+remailers@andrew.cmu.edu.
- Replay remailer help.
- Penet remailer help.
- Help for Matt Ghio's alias system for creating
anonymous addresses. I'm not sure if this service is still
supported.
- Help
for the Alpha alias server (also available in a plain email version). In my opinion, this
is the best way to create an alias for anonymous replies to mail. Not
only is it the most cryptographically secure, but you get to pick the
alias nickname of your choice. The email addresses are of the form
alias@alpha.c2.org. Highly recommended.
Remailers have home pages too!
Other resources
Suggestions and more links are highly welcomed.
Raph Levien home