There are many reasons one might wish to communicate anonymously. One main reason for using anonymous e-mail is to prevent disclosure of your association with another person or group. Even if you are using encrypted e-mail (and you certainly should be) the fact that you and I exchange two or three e-mail messages per week shows, at least, that we know each other and that we are maintaining an on-going correspondence about something.

   Or maybe you believe in freedom of speech and understand that men are only truly free to speak their mind in open debate when they are also free to speak privately without fear of government surveillance and censorship.

   One way to safeguard your privacy and keep cyber-snoops out of your personal business is to send your e-mail through an anonymous remailer. A remailer is a computer system that takes any properly formatted message, strips off the identifying header information, and then forwards the body of the message on to the intended recipient.

To send a message through a Type I remailer you first must properly format your message so that the remailer knows how to handle the message once it receives it.

   Formatting a remailer message is very easy. To format your message, begin the very first line of the body of your e-mail message with a double colon (::). On the next line type the remailer command “Anon-To:” followed by the e-mail address of your intended recipient of the message. Now skip one line and type the text of your e-mail message. For example:

   With some remailers you could simply send the above message to the remailer and it would be forwarded to the intended recipient after the remailer removed any identifying information about you from the message header. However, anyone monitoring your connection to your Internet Service Provider (ISP) would be able to read the text of your e-mail as well as the addressee on the Anon-To: line.

   To solve this problem many remailer operators added the ability to send encrypted mail to the remailer. Some remailers even require encrypted mail, rejecting any message that is not in encrypted format. Remailers use PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) as their standard encryption protocol. You can download a free copy of PGP from either the MIT Distribution Site at: http://web.mit.edu/network/pgp.html or from the PGP International Site http://www.pgpi.org.

   Once you have PGP and have a copy of the remailer's PGP public key, you simply prepare your message for anonymous remailing as previously discussed. Then encrypt your message using the remailer's PGP public key. Cut and paste the encrypted message into your e-mail program. Above this encrypted message we are going to add remailer instructions so that the remailer knows how to handle the message. First we add the double colon (::) to the first line of the body of the e-mail message, which tells the remailer that the next line is a remailer instruction. On the following line we insert the remailer command “Encrypted: PGP”. Skip one line and add the PGP encrypted text. For example:

   Remailers come and go, but there are always several up and running somewhere on the Internet. One of the best places to get a copy of the current remailer list and statistics is from the EFGA web-site at: http://anon.efga.org/Remailers. This list is also posted on a daily basis to alt.privacy.anon-server. The following remailer list shows the top 10 remailers on a given day while this article was being written. You should always check for the current list on the day you plan to use a remailer.

   While all Type I remailers function in the same basic way, you can obtain a detailed help file for a remailer by sending an e-mail message to the remailer with the subject line of “Remailer-Help.”

   Remailers can seem a little confusing for the first-time user, but are in fact very easy to use. You can practice using remailers by sending messages to yourself through the various remailers.

   To make the use of remailers even easier some of them have set up web-page interfaces allowing you to simply fill in a message form on-line and have it processed automatically through the remailer. This is not the most secure means of using a remailer, but it does allow you to send a message through a remailer without really knowing what you are doing. One such web-page interface to a remailer is at https://riot.eu.org/anon/remailer.html. Visit the Riot Remailer web-page and try it!

   The Riot Remailer actually uses Type II remailers called Mixmasters. Mixmaster remailers are much more secure than Type I remailers, but also require that you download software to use them. Mixmasters route your e-mail through multiple remailers, stripping off a layer of encryption at each stop until finally delivering the message to its intended recipient. I use both Cypherpunk remailers and Mixmasters to secure my personal e-mail. Both types increase your privacy and security and both have their place. If you are interested in Mixmaster remailers you can download the Mixmaster software at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mixmaster/.

   It would be nice if there was a program that automated working with remailers, making anonymous e-mail simply point-and-click. Thankfully there is such a program. It's called Private Idaho and is available in many places on the Internet. Private Idaho was written by Joel McNamara (http://www.eskimo.com/~joelm/pi.html) and although he no longer personally supports the program it is still very popular and supported by others. For example the current edition of Private Idaho can be downloaded from http://www.itech.net.au/pi/.

   If you use remailers on a regular basis you should certainly know how to format remailer messages by hand, but once you are confident in their use Private Idaho makes their use even easier.

   Another excellent system for sending anonymous and secure messages is the Stealth Message system at http://www.stealthmessage.com. The Stealth Message system takes a different approach to e-mail. Instead of sending messages through an e-mail server, you access the Stealth Message web-page where you prepare and encrypt your message (using a script running on your computer/client side encryption). The Stealth Message system requires that you have arranged a password with the intended recipient of your message (the message will be encrypted with a password and the recipient will need to know this password in order to access the message). However, Stealth Message does not require that you establish an account or enter a “From” e-mail address. Additionally, Stealth Message lets you set self-destruct times on your e-mail messages so that even the recipient can't save the message, copy it, or forward it to others.

   Stealth Message is an excellent tool for sending brief, secure messages.

   ZipLip, http://www.ziplip.com, allows you to establish a free, web-based e-mail account that gives you some degree of anonymity. When run in its secure mail mode, ZipLip's function is similar to Stealth Message in that it saves your message to a web-site where the recipient must access it (with the option of requiring a password).

   ZipLip uses client side encryption (encryption is accomplished on your computer) so the messages traveling across the Internet can only be read by their intended recipient (with knowledge of the password securing the message). The advantage of ZipLip (in secure mode) is that your e-mail messages do not pass through standard mail servers, as they will with other web-based e-mail services. This means that there is no copy of your message available to someone monitoring your e-mail hub.

   ZipLip, however, can also be run in a “standard e-mail” format where it works like any other web-based e-mail system (i.e., Hotmail). The standard e-mail format sacrifices security and anonymity, but may be of general use to anyone who would use a web-based e-mail account.

   If you are going to have a web-based e-mail account, the one to have is ZipLip. ZipLip security features along with the ability to operate in a standard (non-secure) mode makes ZipLip the ideal choice for a web-based e-mail service.

   In an article, it isn't possible to discuss every possible function of anonymous remailers and secure e-mail, but it is my hope that this article has provided you with one more tool you can use to safeguard your personal privacy and rightful liberties.

   Remailers are easy to use. They can be fun, and best of all they enhance your privacy. Begin by checking the current remailer list for the day. Then prepare a remailer message and send it to yourself through the remailer. (Remember, some remailers require PGP encrypted messages, but you can always download a free copy of PGP if you don't already have it.)

   Once you have successfully sent a message to yourself through a remailer, it's a simple matter to send messages to others in like manner, and you have one more privacy tool in your inventory.

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