If they were to release the plaintext of Alice's (or, in their case, Paul's) message, wouldn't that include the secret email address?
FWIW, I agree the contest is a sham for the reasons moxie & others listed here and elsewhere.
FWIW, I agree the contest is a sham for the reasons moxie & others listed here and elsewhere.
* Have a special message that does not contain the email address and makes it's contents public. * Take whatever the first message happened to be and replace any characters in the email address with the character X and release that. Giving away the length of the email address wouldn't do anyone any good.