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

[Phillip Hallam-Baker]

On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 1:47 AM, Richard Clayton <richard at highwayman.com>wrote:

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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.
>

Which is why I think Ted Lemon's idea about using Facebook type friending
may be necessary.

I don't think we can rely on that for Key distribution. But I think it
needs to be a part of the mix.


I have a protocol compiler. Just give it an abstract schema and out pops a
server and client API library. Just need to add the code to implement the
semantics. It is up on Sourceforge, will update later this week.


-- 
Website: http://hallambaker.com/
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