[ Thanks to Mark
Durham for this link. ]
“There are a hundred uses for anonymous remailers that
don’t involve telling your boss that his fly was open during last
week’s meeting. Whistleblowers can use them to report illegal
activity, battered women can send pleas for information and help,
critics of repressive governments can safely publish their
dissents. But, really, the boss thing is the most fun.”
“The Internet, including email, is notoriously difficult to hide
behind, especially if your pursuer is determined to get you into
his office where he can yell at you. The systems in place today
weren’t designed with privacy in mind, and every email message you
send contains routing data – where it originated and how it got to
its destination – that can be used, in conjunction with log files,
timing information, and even law enforcement subpoenas, to track
you down. You know you’re in trouble when the person who approves
your paycheck passes you in the hall and casually mentions that
‘butt-head’ has a hyphen.”
“But while normal email can be traced fairly easily, ‘remailed’
email can’t. In fact, anonymous remailers are the only truly
effective way to send totally anonymous, totally untraceable email
over the Internet. There are a lot of half-measures that come close
to offering the functionality that remailing services provide, but
a well-regarded anonymous remailer is your only choice if being
discovered means getting called on the carpet, or worse.”