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Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

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Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#192
post #17

Uhmm... screenshot the mail; self-destruction circumvented.

It wouldn't prevent humans from remembering the mails, too. But screenshots are easily faked, and IMHO might (and should) not hold up in court. This is the equivalent of hearsay.

It’s interesting you call it hearsay, because this would neatly fit into some of the exceptions to the rules AGAINST hearsay:

Records of a Regularly Conducted Activity. A record of an act, event, condition, opinion, or diagnosis if:

(A) the record was made at or near the time by — or from information transmitted by — someone with knowledge;

(B) the record was kept in the course of a regularly conducted activity of a business, organization, occupation, or calling, whether or not for profit;

(C) making the record was a regular practice of that activity;

(D) all these conditions are shown by the testimony of the custodian or another qualified witness, or by a certification that complies with Rule 902(11) or (12) or with a statute permitting certification; and

(E) the opponent does not show that the source of information or the method or circumstances of preparation indicate a lack of trustworthiness.

Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email is doomed either way. The standard is indefinitely stuck in "IE6" mode, where there's few if any improvements, updates, or fixes. Everyone time anyone suggests significant improvements one of the big players (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, etc) says no and it stalls. If email gets a "HTML5"-like major refresh at some point then I'd be proven wrong but that hasn't happened yet in my lifetime. Microsoft in particular…

Not having improvements is a feature. Yes, please leave email the way it is, because it works fine. It’s one of the few things that does. The only feature I want is end to end encryption. Google will never make encryption easy on their own because they’ve got perverse incentives not to.

Email does not work fine. There is no standard for encryption or any other information security mechanism. No server identity verification. No delivery confirmation. No push standard. No concept of groups or other ways to categories and manage access between users in a domain. Every provider has their own implementation of threaded conversations. No major provider supports non-ASCII addresses. Servers can't even agree on simple message formatting. Most things that make email actually useful are outside the spec and tacked on by each individual provider.

Email is one of the last widely used open communication protocols, and it is sad that people are so resistant to its evolution because that is exactly what is accelerating its demise in favor of proprietary software.

Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#194

This is only possible if one believes in the capacity to control client security on the other side. There’s also the problem that something viewable by the recipient’s eyeballs is also photographable by the recipient’s camera. Moreover, I worry about the new Gmail feature that undermine the open platform of email. Email is just about the last unwalled comms platform we have, and I really worry for its safety if gmail…

Email is doomed either way. The standard is indefinitely stuck in "IE6" mode, where there's few if any improvements, updates, or fixes. Everyone time anyone suggests significant improvements one of the big players (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, etc) says no and it stalls. If email gets a "HTML5"-like major refresh at some point then I'd be proven wrong but that hasn't happened yet in my lifetime. Microsoft in particular…

I wish more things were as stable as email. It just works. It has worked perfectly for 20 years. Email I received 10 years ago is easily readable today. Email I send today will be readable for the next decade and more. In other words, it's a feature, not a bug.

I wish people who want to "advance" the standard went off and used something else. Go use allo or hangouts or whatever new locked-down app google is pushing this week. I suspect there will always be people who are content with email.

Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#195
post #155

Gmail intentionally deviates from the IMAP spec, forcing email clients to either become Gmail clients or work poorly with Gmail. They refuse to support IMAP push, instead saving push for the Gmail API. Recently they introduced AMP for Email, which happens to work via emails that only Gmail can read. Now they introduce another feature which happens to work via emails that only Gmail can read. I think it's pretty clear…

That's because Push-IMAP was abandoned a long time ago and isn't even part of the standard. Every provider out there (Microsoft with Exchange ActiveSync, Apple's MobileMe and iCloud push, Yahoo, and others) has their own push mechanism.

FastMail itself is using something non-standard, and saying it is open source and "being standardized" means nothing. See https://xkcd.com/927.

Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#196
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email is doomed either way. The standard is indefinitely stuck in "IE6" mode, where there's few if any improvements, updates, or fixes. Everyone time anyone suggests significant improvements one of the big players (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, etc) says no and it stalls. If email gets a "HTML5"-like major refresh at some point then I'd be proven wrong but that hasn't happened yet in my lifetime. Microsoft in particular…

Dont fix what aint broken ;) Email is not doomed. Actually it is getting more and more relevant, this picture might shed some light: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/chat_systems.png All the chat programs are making all the communication pain in the neck and the only way of communicating that you can rely to are old school phone calls, sms and email. There is also other side, with email you actually think what you are wr…

> immediately when it leaves it, it is probably just a mime header which I will gladely ignore

Apparently it isn't so easy. They send you a link, which you click. Then the message opens in a web page.

Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

marked as SPAM. I get that a lot

Not good at all. This should happen only if one of your servers has been compromised and spits out spam that gets logged by Google. Does unmarking your email as spam by the recipient work? If not that would be an indication it's intentional.

Most of the big providers are shit, I wish I could shame them, but alas, I can not.

If I'm responding to e-mail from their users, I expect at least my initial response will get through. You really don't need any fancy crap like DKIM/SPF/nice IP addresses database/AI/bayes/etc. in this case to make the decision if e-mail is legitimate.

All my responses contain randomly generated ID of the message I'm responding to that nobody else than the sender and the intended recipient (me) can know. If it matches one of the e-mails their user sent me, say within a reasonable timeframe, and it's a first response or so, it is almost certainly genuine.

It just shows how little they give a crap about their own users, if they don't make such a simple check to make sure that their users can get responses to all sent emails.

Instead of making e-mail work, they're inventing bullshit like this new "expiring email" thing and making redesigns nobody asks for.

Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#198
post #118

Unless you locally encrypt your content before shipping it to Google or any other mail server , you can never be sure that your e-mail is "self destructing". This is a dog and pony show.

Even then it is not "self-destructing", you need to ship an exe that works only after it asks your server over the internet.

Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#199

About 2 years ago I received a quote in my yahoo email that on the bottom said "this email will vanish from your mailbox within 48 hours". And sure it did! I wonder how the author did that. He wasn't working for yahoo or anything like that; it was a quote not related to technology in any way. I'm still puzzled by this one. Anyone?

I don't think there is any way to do that unless yahoo was in on it.

Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#200
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you keep the keys? * On the device? Oops--device broke, guess my emails are gone forever * In the "cloud"? -- Oops, can't guarantee encryption Who generated the keys and how do you build trust? For both of these, you can trust Apple do do the right thing, but that's putting all your eggs into that basket, similar to iMessage.

On device with the key exportable and optionally escrowed to iCloud. Key management isn't exactly an unsolved problem.

> Key management isn't exactly an unsolved problem

you're right its not an unsolved problem, its an unsolvable problem.

There is little point in encrypting mails between apple users, if the keys are kept on the apple servers. What would it achieve after all? Apple, and by extension every nation of importance would still have access.

the only reward you'd get from that is getting locked into the apple ecosphere even stronger, because now you won't be able to read your mail archive anymore unless you use an apple device.

And you obviously can kiss search goodbye. There is no way to search encrypted data after all, unless you decrypt it.

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