> From: Evan Harris <eharris@puremagic.com>
> > As with any whitelist, there are potential privacy concerns, but
> > these concerns would be greater here because of the additional data
> > tracked in the database. Of greatest concern would be:
>
> I disagree. One of the nice things about this method is that it keeps
> very little profiling info. It certainly doesn't look at the body or
> even the headers of the messages. The only statistics kept are things that
> could easily be retrieved from the mailer logs anyway.
Please reconsider. Contemplate the value of knowing that Bill Gates has
recieved a message from Steve Case (or vice versa) even without knowing
the contents. Your database doesn't contain messages, but traffic analysis
can be very valuable. That's why "pen recorders" are used by the police.
It's why the legitimacy of some traffic analysis of email and phone
calls is a continuing issue in federal criminal court cases.
There are ways to reduce the problem by storing the sensitive information
not in plain text, perhaps using some one way function like many systems do
for passwords. Still it is an issue.