7. One goal of this design is that independent client requests are only <del> linkable by the chosen key configuration.  The Oblivious Relay and Gateway resources can link requests using the same key configuration by matching KeyConfig.key_id, or, if the Target Resource is willing to use trial decryption, a limited set of key configurations that share an identifier.  An Oblivious Relay Resource can link requests using the public key corresponding to KeyConfig.key_id or via the URI of the Oblivious Gateway Resource.  We refer to this set of information as the gateway's configuration. Whether or not targets can link requests depends on how gateway configuration information is produced and discovered by clients. Specifically, gateways can maliciously construct configurations to track individual clients. Ideally, all clients share a consistent view of the gateway configuration.  The number of different valid configurations can exponentially partition the anonymity set of clients.  For example, if there are two valid configurations, that would yield two anonymity sets consisting of clients that used one configuration and clients that used the other configuration.  If the size of each set is large enough, this may not be a significant loss of privacy in practice. Ensuring that many clients share a configuration is necessary to provide privacy for clients. </del> <ins> linkable by their content.  However, the choice of client configuration might be used to correlate requests.  A client configuration includes the Oblivious Relay Resource URI, the Oblivious Gateway key configuration (KeyConfig), and Oblivious Gateway Resource URI.  A configuration is active if clients can successfully use it for interacting with with a target. Oblivious Relay and Gateway Resources can identify when requests use the same configuration by matching "KeyConfig.key_id" or the Oblivious Gateway Resource URI.  The Oblivious Gateway Resource might use the source address of requests to correlate requests that use an Oblivious Relay Resource run by the same operator.  If the Oblivious Gateway Resource is willing to use trial decryption, requests can be further separated into smaller groupings based on the keys that are used. Each active client configuration partitions the client anonymity set. In practice, it is infeasible to reduce the number of active configurations to one.  Enabling diversity in choice of Oblivious Relay Resource naturally increases the number of active configurations.  A small number of configurations might need to be active to allow for key rotation and server maintenance. Client privacy depends on having each configuration used by many other clients.  It is critical prevent the use of unique client configurations, which might be used to track of individual clients, but it is also important to avoid creating small groupings of clients that might weaken privacy protections. </ins> A specific method for a client to acquire configurations is not included in this specification.  Applications using this design MUST <del> provide accommodations to mitigate tracking using gateway </del> <ins> provide accommodations to mitigate tracking using client </ins> configurations.  CONSISTENCY provides options for ensuring that <del> configurations are consistent between clients. </del> <ins> client configurations are consistent between clients. The content of requests or responses, if used in forming new requests, can be used to correlate requests.  This includes obvious methods of linking requests, like cookies COOKIES, but it also includes any information in either message that might affect how subsequent requests are formulated.  For example, FIELDING describes how interactions that are individually stateless can be used to build a stateful system when a client acts on the content of a response. </ins> 8.