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Lavabit Reloaded

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Re: Lavabit Reloaded

#81
post #9

Any reason I shouldn't sign up right now? edit: Signed up. Half off for life is a sweet deal.

Not questioning you, since anon might not be your primary driver. However, this reminds of a UK survey in the early 2000's that said some crazy number (50%?) of computer users would give up their password for a candy bar :-)

Re: Lavabit Reloaded

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want encryption, don't use email. That's total nonsense. > Search isn't possible It absolutely is, in both theory and practice. The server stores an encrypted index, and the client walks it (requesting parts as needed). It's going to little slower, and a lot more complex but it's doable. > If you lose your private key, we can't recover your email This is a damn feature. I had my icloud account social enginee…

> > Search isn't possible > It absolutely is, in both theory and practice. The server stores an encrypted index, and the client walks it (requesting parts as needed). It's going to little slower, and a lot more complex but it's doable. Are you suggesting that to search your mailbox, the client should download every single encrypted message in the entire mailbox and decrypt them all locally to search them? If not, how…

So what, you hash each word in the e-mail and search for the hash, and this returns which emails include those hashed words? Would that be horribly insecure? I guess it would be impossible to salt those hashes, and it probably risks defeating the whole crypto.

Re: Lavabit Reloaded

#84
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > Search isn't possible > It absolutely is, in both theory and practice. The server stores an encrypted index, and the client walks it (requesting parts as needed). It's going to little slower, and a lot more complex but it's doable. Are you suggesting that to search your mailbox, the client should download every single encrypted message in the entire mailbox and decrypt them all locally to search them? If not, how…

So what, you hash each word in the e-mail and search for the hash, and this returns which emails include those hashed words? Would that be horribly insecure? I guess it would be impossible to salt those hashes, and it probably risks defeating the whole crypto.

[deleted]

Re: Lavabit Reloaded

#85
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also search that only uses email titles is still at least 70% as useful as full title+body search. So I wouldn't count this as such a terrible non-feature of e2e encrypted email.

Only if you leave juicy content in the unencrytped subject. Also, "What? subjects and recipients are unencrypted!?" -- Every User Ever

You can encrypt the metadata on the server, and enable local search on the metadata to avoid keeping the full mailbox on a phone, for example

Re: Lavabit Reloaded

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > Spam checking on content isn't possible > This is probably your best point. It's definitely harder to do well I think it's possible, just slower and more complex (like search) - and would have to occur upon unlocking your inbox.

You can mostly get rid of spam by requiring the sender to perform a proof of work if they aren't in your contacts list. I.e. whitelist of senders + proof of work or some kind of configurable per domain quota/proof of work.

I guess that gets rid of all other email as well..

Re: Lavabit Reloaded

#88

If you NEED encryption, don't use email. From: https://blog.fastmail.com/2016/12/10/why-we-dont-offer-pgp/ What's the tradeoff? If the server doesn't have access to the content of emails, then it reverts to a featureless blob store: Search isn't possible Previews can't be calculated If you lose your private key, we can't recover your email Spam checking on content isn't possible To access mail on multiple devices, th…

I think email needs to stop being treated like a database. It should be used for sending and receiving messages, the rest should be handled by other software... like a database for example.

Re: Lavabit Reloaded

#89
Is this the right space to ask for opinions about Fastmail and its privacy? I just switched on trial after being on Gmail. I'm happy but I switched primarily to get part of my life away from Google.
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