AAM Subject Line Profile

Tools/AAM subject lines/new

The program supports both HSUB (hashed) subjects and ESUB (encrypted) subjects. This dialog gathers the information necessary to find the subjects you're looking for.

Nym

The Nym field indicates the nym that the subject applies to. When you click this field you'll get a drop-down list showing all your secret PGP keys. Your nym's PGP key should be among the keys listed. If not, you haven't created a key for you nym yet, and need to do that before continuing. Be very careful when selecting to insure you get the correct key.

Subject

Place your message subject in this field. Create a subject that will help identify the nym. For example, for nym Tom Jones, you can use 'Tom Jones' or 'New mail for Tom Jones'. There's one caveat. If your subject is hashed (HSUB), you need to add some random characters to your subject like: 'Tom Jones fyW3Ghjk'. Hashing is a cryptographic function that transforms plain text into an encrypted form without the use of a password. It's like a PGP signature or an MD5 checksum. The reason for adding the random characters  is that you need a subject that can't be guessed easily. If the attacker knows your nym is Tom Jones, he might search for the 2 examples I've just shown above. If the subject is successfully guessed, the attacker can then find every message belonging to the nym in a.a.m. Of course, that only exposes your messages. Without your nym's PGP key passphrase, he cannot read your mail. Still, keeping your subjects secret is very important.

If your subject is encrypted (ESUB), then there is no need for the random characters, since you'll also be providing a password for encrypting the subject.

Encrypt Subject

This field only applies if you are using ESUB. In that case, put the password you want to encrypt the subject with, in this field. Enabling this, automatically changes the definition from HSUB to ESUB. This particular field only applies to Type 1 nyms. The new experimental nymserver supports only HSUB.

Encrypt-Key

This field applies to Type 1 nyms and optionally to the new experimental nyms. The former could require 2, 3 or even more passwords to fully decrypt the message to (but not including) the nym's PGP key layer of encryption. If you have Type1 nyms with more than 1 encrypt-key, enter the passwords, starting with the outer layer of encryption and working inward, in a comma separated list. Place only commas between passwords--no spaces.

Under certain circumstances, the new experimental nyms also use 1 encrypt-key layer of encryption. The purpose of using this does not apply to nym mail you download with this program. Because of that, don't bother with Encrypt-Key with the new nyms.