subject line -- to hide or not to hide

[sen_ml@eccosys.com]

thank you for the response.

> On Tue, 8 Feb 2000, sen_ml@eccosys.com wrote:
>   i've been wondering whether there is a good way to keep the subject
> of a message confidential w/o losing the convenience for the recipient
> of having a meaningful subject line.

wk> I use  a subject line with something which is not related to to the
wk> message like "Beer or Wine" or "Eat potatoes".  This way you can
wk> easily figure out to which thread a message belongs but you are not
wk> giving away any information.  There may be an interconnection
wk> somewhere deep in the brain and psychologists may find a way to deduce
wk> some information from the subject line.  I think this is a much lower
wk> risk than all the information you can get from traffic analysis.

let me begin by saying that i have tried this in the past.  when the
number of messages involved that are treated this way is small, i
agree that it is actually not such a bad idea.  btw, i agree w/ you
about the "deep interconnection" -- i do not worry about that ;-)

when the number of messages that you deal w/ grows, then i submit that
it is not a practical solution.  it certainly doesn't work well for me
right now -- months after i have sent or received certain messages w/
cryptic subject lines.

wk> If you want to encrypt the subject you should use MIME and encrypt an
wk> entire message as an rfc822 attachment.

yes, i could do this -- this solution and the one you mentioned above
are practical in the situation where the number of such messages
remain small.

when the number of such messages grows and the time since reception or
sending of message grows to a certain length, it is not very
practical.

if there is no method of dealing w/ this intelligently, i think some
mechanism should be designed.

i would like to hear the opinions of other users of gnupg/pgp as well.