On SportsNight (the best show you're not watching, according to TV guide), there was a reference to anonymous remailers this past Tuesday. Is this the first mention in pop culture? Office nerd Jeremy has recently met a porn star in a bar and is thinking about seeing more of her (so to speak). He is trying to contact her via email. He goes and talks to producer Isaac for advice. Isaac: "I'm not that wild about email traffic from porn stars coming to the office." Jeremy: "I set up a special address, she's the only one who can hit it. But it's been three days since I sent it and I haven't heard back from her. By the way, if you ever want to do it, you use a server in Finland, it stores the return address in an encrypted file, sends the message to the recipient with an address from the remailer." Isaac: "Does the porn star know you're this much of a dork?" Of course the famous Finland remailer, anon.penet.fi, did not use an encrypted database, and got shut down a couple of years ago. This sounds more like a description of the "cypherpunk" nym servers which use encrypted remailer chains to provide better security.
