[tor-bugs] #8125 [TorBirdy]: add alternative to mail providers

[Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki]

#8125: add alternative to mail providers
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 Reporter:  proper       |          Owner:  ioerror
     Type:  enhancement  |         Status:  new    
 Priority:  normal       |      Milestone:         
Component:  TorBirdy     |        Version:         
 Keywords:               |         Parent:         
   Points:               |   Actualpoints:         
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 I am proposing to add a feature to use the mixmaster network to send mails
 without need for registration. User clicks a send anonymous mail button,
 can enter recipient, sender, subject and text and press send.

 Please refer to mixmaster as a tool to send mails and discard the
 anonymity aspects. [1] [2] Needless to say, I suggest using mixmaster over
 Tor.

 Although the network is quite old and small, the remaining node operators
 are active on the remops list and not looking like they are about to shut
 down the network. There are even some new developments on github
 (mixfaster).

 I've been experimenting with the mixmaster remailer network. It works
 reliable. Sending a mail takes approximately 5 to 30 minutes, when using a
 one hop mixmaster node.

 Anonymity would be provided by Tor and mixmaster would gladly deliver
 mail. I think this is quite interesting, since it doesn't require mail
 providers or registration.

 Mixmaster supports also posting messages to Usenet Newsgroups.

 Users who wish this, could alternatively receive their messages in
 alt.anonymous.messages (or another group of their choice), which is also
 less dependent on a single e-mail address. It's like a big shared inbox,
 where no troll can delete other peoples messages or change their account
 password.

 This has the advantage, that no single mail provider can log when someone
 pseudonym checked an account. This is because users can fetch the whole
 newsgroup instead of single messages so no servers know which message was
 belongs to whom. Doing it right, no observer can find out who communicates
 with whom and when.

 ,,
 [1] In theory, remailers or to be more concrete, high latency networks are
 more secure than low latency networks like Tor. The anonymity provided by
 the remailer would add up to the anonymity provided by Tor. Given the
 facts, the there is almost no activity activity (press, blog posts, forum,
 mailing list discussion, development ceased) it's easy to assume that
 remailers have very few remaining servers and users and add not much
 anonymity in practice.
 [2] Recommend reading: http://www.mail-
 archive.com/liberationtech at lists.stanford.edu/msg00022.html

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/8125>
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The Tor Project: anonymity online