Anonymous Remailer - Remailer Abuse

Remailer Abuse

Although most re-mailer systems are used responsibly, the anonymity they provide can be exploited by entities or individuals whose reasons for anonymity are not necessarily benign.

Such reasons could include support for violent extremist actions, sexual exploitation of children or more commonly to frustrate accountability for 'trolling' and harassment of targeted individuals, or companies (The Dizum.com re-mailer chain being abused as recently as October 2012 for this purpose.)

The response of some re-mailers to this abuse potential is often to disclaim responsibility (as dizum.com does), as owing to the technical design (and ethical principles) of many systems, it is impossible for the operators to physically unmask those using their systems. Some re-mailer systems go further and claim that it would be illegal for them to monitor for certain types abuse at all

Until technical changes were made in the remailers concerned in the mid 2000s, some re-mailers (notably nym.alias.net based systems) were seeminlgy willing to use any genuine (and thus valid) but otherwise forged address. This loophole allowed trolls to mis-attribute controversial claims or statements with the aim of causing offence, upset or harassment to the genuine holder(s) of the address(es) forged.