[tor-talk] Mailpile SMTorP [ref: nexgen P2P email]

[Jonathan Wilkes]

On 05/26/2015 09:13 PM, Mike Ingle wrote:
> I tried out Bitmessage and it did not seem to deliver without the 
> sender and recipient online. It's supposed to, it just didn't. Waiting 
> for key exchange.

Any response from the devs/forum when you reported the bug?

> It's also a bandwidth pig due to its broadcast nature.

For those unfamiliar with Bitmessage, it is designed so that everyone 
receives everything.
Within a two-day buffer, at least according to the white paper.

Why does it broadcast in this manner?  Imagine that you wish to read 
blog entries
of your 10 favorite bloggers, but you're afraid because 2 of the 
bloggers may be
considered dangerous by your favorite state-sponsored spy agency.

Let's suppose you can choose one of the following methods to read these 
blogs:
a) read the blogs as web pages, accessing them through Tor
b) read the blogs by subscribing to Bitmessage mailing lists

If you choose Tor and the spy agency has a _full_ view of the network 
traffic, then they
can violate your reading privacy.  They could-- for example-- record you 
as a reader
of the 2 "dangerous" blogs, distinct from users who, say, only read the 
8 "harmless"
blogs.

If you choose to read from Bitmessage mailing list posts and the spy 
agency has
a _full_ view of the network traffic, they cannot violate your reading 
privacy wrt the
2 "dangerous" blogs. They can link you to "suspicious activity" due to using
Bitmessage.  But through traffic analysis alone they cannot separate 
your reading habits
from people who use Bitmessage to only read the 8 "harmless" blogs. To 
them it
just looks like everyone is downloading the same data.  And because 
reading a Bitmessage
mailing list doesn't require _any_ special request back to the network, 
there's no way to tell
from traffic analysis which lists someone happens to be reading.

Bitmessage certainly has its share of issues, but I'm unaware of any 
other extant piece of
software that has a feature like that.

-Jonathan

>>
>> What about Bitmessage?
>>
>> -Jonathan
>>
>>
>