Poor Julf Helsingius. He just can't get a break these days.

Helsingius, of Helsinki, Finland, runs -- or rather ran -- the anon.penet.fi anonymous remailer that had become a fixture of the Internet community.

In case you've never heard of an anonymous remailer, here is a quick and dirty explanation of how they work.

Let's say I want to send you an e-mail message which contains sensitive information, and that I don't want you to be able to trace who I am. I could be a whistle-blower exposing fraud in government. I could be posting the text of a document to a Usenet group that could embarras a well-known political figure. Or I could simply be a person with time on my hands who wants to tell you that you're a booger.

I need an third party to re-send my e-mail to you in such a way that you have no idea who it came from. My e-mail address, my name, the name of my server -- none of it -- would appear in my e-mail to you. You would have a way to reply to me, but I would have the option of responding or not responding to your replies.

That's what anon.penet.fi did. Of the numerous anonymous remailers on the Internet, Helsingius' server was the most used, and most controversial of the bunch.

Of course such a device that cloaks the people who use it in a nearly impregnable envelope of anonymity can be used for sinister purposes as well. Of course any newsgroups devoted to any illegal activity had several members posting via anonymous remailer. That's no secret.

And it was with this in mind that a London newspaper, The Observer, printed a story in its Aug. 25 edition citing Helsigius as the "man US police-experts charge with being at the hub of 90 percent of the child pornography on the Internet. You can read the story for yourself and decide for yourself if it reads like balanced journalism.

But if you read it, keep this in mind: as first reported in Hotwired, the Observer badly misrepresented the views of this so-called police expert.

Toby Tyler is the "FBI man" misquoted in the story. Not only did the rag get his quotes wrong, they couldn't even tell the difference between the FBI and the San Bernadino County Sheriffs Office, where Tyler is a Seargeant.

"Somewhere between 75 and 90 percent of all the child pornography I see is supplied through this remailer," The Observer quotes Tyler as saying.

But Tyler says The Oberserver deliberatley cast his comments in the wrong light in an attempt to milk the story for all it was worth, saying the paper "selectively chose words that would mean what they wanted," he said.

He further said that he told The Observer that most child pornopgraphy posted to the Usenet does NOT go through anonymous remailers. In fact, he actually supports the existence of these remailers.

Helsingius' remailer service blocked postings to all of the controversial "alt.binaries" newsgroups, and restictied the size of postings to other groups to 16 kilobytes, meaning any pictures that get posted anywhere aren't very big. Both greatly restrict the flow of child pornography through the remailer. In fact, Finnish police had already investigated allegations that the remailer was a conduit for child pornography, and found them to be without merit.

Still, the story found its way to the front page of the Observer, which is exactly what Helsingius didn't need. He has already been fussing with the government of Singapore, which had threatened an ugly lawsuit against him for not supplying the name of a Singaporean citizen who had used the remailer to criticize the government. So far 500,000 people have used the remailer since it was set up.

Add to that the fact that a Finnish court recently ruled that his database of names may be breached to supply to names of certain users to the Church of Scientology in connection with an ongoing legal wrangle.

Caught between a case of yellow journalism and a paranoid government bent on silencing criticism, Helsinguis felt he had no choice but to shut the service down until the smoke clears, and his server's legal status clears up.

He said he is considering a libel suit against The Observer. If he follows through with it, I hope he wins. You see, it's quite possible that the server helped more people than it harmed.

Ask The British group The Samaritans what they think about Helsingius pulling the plug on the server. The group helps people contemplating suidicide by offering friendship in times of person crisis, 24 hours a day. A major tenet of the group's methods include the protection of anonymity both for those who seek help, and the army of volunteers who give it.

With Helsingius' help, they set up a pair of addresses for people to contact the group via anonymous email, which has been jeopardized by the shutdown, which I hope is temporary.

And it's not only The Samaritans who have been affected. Postings from anon.penet.fi have appeared on several groups relating to a wide range of subjects, including mental disorders and depression and even the war in Bosnia.

I'm disappointed bad press coverage has once again contributed to eroding freedom to use the Internet. I've never sent an anonymous message, but I can think of many legitimate instances where it would be appropriate or even preferable to sending a message that can be traced. A tabloid headline and a thin-skinned government should not be enough to deprive the rest of the world the opportunity to remain quietly, comfortably, anonymous.

• New on a bookshelf near you:
"Where Wizards Stay Up Late," by Katie Hafner, a contributing editor at Newsweek covering technology, and her husband, Matthew Lyon, of the University of Texas, Austin, covers the origins and the history of the Internet. I'll bet you didn't know that the Interent is 25 years old. Of course it wasn't called the Internet -- it was the ARPANET. And there were only four nodes by 1970, including one in Salt Lake City. And there was no such thing as e-mail until the mid-1970s, but you couldn't send personal messages, only messages dealing with scientific research. The early buzz on this book is good, so if your curiousity is piqued, check it out.

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Arik Hesseldahl covers business and technology for The Idaho State Journal.