[Cryptography] Email and IM are ideal candidates for mix networks

[Richard Clayton]

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In message <FDD34A58-6CE6-497A-A177-B940D36D050A at lrw.com>, Jerry Leichter
<leichter at lrw.com> writes

>On the flip side, mail systems like gMail or Yahoo mail are complex and 
>difficult to run *exactly because they are immense*.

The mail systems part is really rather simple... and pretty much looks
after itself. That's not where all the employees work.

>  But what are they getting 
>for that size?  There are no economies of scale here - in fact, there are clear 
>*dis*economies.

... the economy of scale is in identifying and routing spam of various
kinds. Some can be detected a priori -- the majority of the detection
relies on feedback from users (the chances are that someone else got the
bad mail before you did, so it can be arranged that you are not bothered)

>Even without the recent uproar over email privacy, at some point, someone was 
>going to come up with a product along the following lines:  Buy a cheap, 
>preconfigured box with an absurd amount of space (relative to the "huge" amounts 
>of space, like 10GB, the current services give you); then sign up for a service 
>that provides your MX record and on-line, encrypted backup space for a small 
>monthly fee.  (Presumably free services to do the same would also appear, 
>perhaps from some of the dynamic DNS providers.)  

Just what the world needs, more free email sending provision!  sigh

>What's the value add of one of the giant providers?

If you run your own emails system then you'll rapidly find out what
2013's spam / malware problem looks like.

Just as success in crypto deployment isn't about algorithms or file
formats, success in mail handling isn't about MX records and MTAs.

- -- 
richard                                              Richard Clayton

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.         Benjamin Franklin

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