Question for Job and others / was: Re: Tor and Thunderbird: Outgoing Email Unsafe?

[Job]

Hello George,

I understand your point of view. Indeed, I am not a US resident and 
therefor not limited by US law.
I live in The Netherlands where privacy is still much more of an issue 
and -for example- downloading(but not uploading) of music etc is 
legal.(so are soft-drugs, abortion and gay marriage btw)
The Dutch are far from repressed i think ;)
The way you describe it makes it sound a bit shady I think. My reasons 
for wanting my emails to be anonymous is not because of harassment or 
spam. Actually i wouldn't even know how to send spam.
The concern -for me-  is not one related to my ISP as I don't anything 
to violate their policies or break laws and actually i am not using an 
obscure email account (yet).
I want to offer my future clients the option of contacting me and me 
contacting them without for example the receivers spouse, family, 
friends or boss being able to trace anything due to the nature of the 
service I will provide as this is related to topics that are highly 
personal. Unfortunately I cant elaborate on this too much due to the 
exact same reasons. The most I can share with anyone at this point is 
that its in the field of Psychology. This causes me to be able to offer 
a level of service that from the receivers side is totally untraceable 
or near untraceable( however, like i stated before, i DO want them to be 
able to contact me too) That is also why i am not very concerned about 
the traces left on my own computer as these are not accessible by the 
significant others of the client. I want to make the barrier to take 
that first step to get into contact as low as possible. The anonymous 
email is just part of the privacy I want to offer but since I am just 
looking into the online anonymity option and I am new at Tor this seems 
to be a good place to start and look for extra information.

Best,
Job




GeorgeDS schreef:
> On Tue, 2007-01-02 at 11:53, Job wrote:
>   
>> . . .I just want to be sure receivers of email wont be able t see my 
>> IP and stuff. . .
>> As long as i dont send any emails to anyone isnt it safe? I 
>> understand my ISP and mail.com will be able to trace me but not 
>> receivers of emails as I am not sending any at that moment.
>>     
>
> I got curious about Tor because of concerns of businesses, including my
> ISP, tracking my activities over the Internet. Ultimately I became most
> concerned about Google due to the thousands of searches I've performed
> over the years, including medical, political, and financial searches
> that I thought were of a private nature. I've learned that Google keeps
> a permanent history of all searches, and if they wished, could probably
> sell most of my search history, properly linked to my real name and
> address. I don't believe the US has any laws to stop this. What I've
> learned about Google disturbed me enough that I removed Google ads from
> my web site.
>
> As it develops, it appears that Tor's most valuable contributions will
> be in the area of allowing people under repressive governments (and
> other non-benign powerful organizations) to access and share information
> their governments does not want them to see, and to communicate with
> like minded individuals, in and out of their own countries. The "Why We
> Need Tor" section of the Overview http://tor.eff.org/overview.html.en
> says "It [lack of anonymity] can even threaten your job and physical
> safety by revealing who and where you are. For example, if you're
> traveling abroad and you connect to your employer's computers to check
> or send mail, you can inadvertently reveal your national origin and
> professional affiliation to anyone observing the network, even if the
> connection is encrypted."
>
> While Tor certainly can hide you from your final destination, whether it
> be a server or individual, that seems more a by product than a core
> feature.
>
> I've found parts of this thread mildly disturbing. The Overview suggests
> an excellent reason for email through Tor, though in such a case you
> will not at all be anonymous to the email's recipient, but should be
> anonymous to the first and subsequent links providing the connection
> back to your employer. I'm having some trouble visualizing (maybe I lack
> imagination) why it should be so important to hide yourself from someone
> receiving your email. If you've already gone through a free email
> service, and used an obscure email name, your real IP has negligible
> value. That is unless the emails were harassing or otherwise violated
> the origin ISP policies, in such a way that the ISP might reveal sender
> information to the recipient, or cancel the sender's account. 
>
> Job, can you explain, in an abstract manner, why it is important to you
> to send emails where the recipient has no way to identify you, but you
> do not care about your ISP or independent email provider being aware of
> your other activities, except when you are contacting these special
> recipients, when you will be using Tor?
>
> It's unlikely to be relevant in this situation (Job does not appear to
> be a US resident), but US residents who use Tor to harass or annoy email
> recipients anonymously are committing a federal crime. In early January
> 2006, Bush signed the Violence Against Women Act, which provided among
> other things "Whoever...utilizes any device or software that can be used
> to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that
> are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet... without
> disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or
> harass any person...who receives the communications...shall be fined
> under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."
> http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3576511 So you can
> annoy someone by email if you don't hide your identity, but if annoy
> someone anonymously it becomes a federal crime.
>
> George Shaffer
>   
>
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