-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I don't see that X-TTL is very useful as currently proposed. As I see it, I would have to create something like this: ======================================= :: X-TTL: 5 Request-Remailing-To: remailer1 :: Request-Remailing-To: remailer2 :: Request-Remailing-To: remailer3 :: Request-Remailing-To: remailer4 :: Request-Remailing-To: remailer5 Dummy message to be sent. ======================================= (Or an equivalent structure could be set up with nested PGP encryptions.) This would go through remailers 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, decrementing the X-TTL field each time, and after the last one when it was 0 the message would be deleted. The X-TTL is not very convenient in this case since you still have to come up with a path for sending your message which is at least as long as the X-TTL value. It seems to me that the X-Discard idea is simpler; you can just put the X-Discard in the command block for the last remailer, and you don't have to count them. What is needed to make X-TTL useful is for the remailer to choose another remailer as its destination, and ideally to encrypt the message before sending it. This way X-TTL can be used to insert a random remailer path of n hops in the middle of a sender-constructed remailing path. This leads to a system where the remailer decrypts an incoming message, reads the X-TTL value, decrements it, re-encrypts the message for the next remailer in the chain, and sends it. The X-TTL value is never exposed to outsiders. At one point I wrote a modification to my remailer to cause it to encrypt any message which it sent to another remailer which supported PGP. But I decided that this didn't really help security enough to be worthwhile. It would be much better to encourage users to encrypt their messages themselves in a nested fashion so that no remailer sees any more information than the bare minimum necessary. Hal Finney 74076.1041@compuserve.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.2 iQCVAgUBLB5mUKgTA69YIUw3AQHlRwQAmQ4t6ZcSNbieK4Y8ywj2t1vT1WR9amsY RB1H/cBGfIsVZOcpFb7K5OLrwhTh+aIO6b7sUzXVBsbsgNKLtv0yPjracDpPH5y1 EJ6U9k+74mXDpxl7vo4tqFUiEFd3s3I6by/TjmVAtKy8eX1+o83yo0BJgt9YgNSr psi8xbAFGUI= =4DtE -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----