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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

#211

Everything I read in the article made me cringe. It's pretty obvious Google is moving the facebook way. This will evolve into a proprietary messaging system, basic mail gets demoted to a third-class service, and people get locked into yet another non-standard ecosystem controlled by one company. The only difference is that facebook was blatant about it, and google's taking the boiling frog approach.

The same happened with GTalk, first completely standard XMPP service then some extensions to it, then abandoning. Embrace, extend...

Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#212
post #210
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are email client specific issues.

How would you solve them in the client, that GMail hasn't been able to?

> Hard to separate pending tasks from just conversations.

Emails aren't tasks.

In any case, Outlook allows for assigning tasks to emails and organize them.

> Hard to split conversations into separate threads when two topics diverge.

An UI/UX design issue.

If the subject is no longer the same, one could provide an UI feature that allows them to be viewed separately.

> Leaving a conversation isn't just your decision: you have to both reply all and hope that no one else replies all using a previous email in the thread.

Leaving a conversation is my decision. I just stop replying and create a rule to delete all further emails using the same topic from the group of senders.

> In a corporate email, inability to prevent mass emails from other employees. Hard to do for personal email too.

In some emails clients, specially corporate ones, it is possible to customize how send, reply and reply-all work, either via group policies or custom plugins.

GMail has not wanted to, which is quite different from being able to.

Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#213
post #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 .

At least they're trying to be as transparent as possible, and working with the ietf certainly gives it some additional legitimacy. Google as usual just goes the "we're big enough, so accept it or go fuck yourself" way. They're the new Microsoft of the 90s, only much worse.

Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#214
post #67
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Encryption doesn't work unless both sides use it. Apple supporting it won't help apple users one bit, because nobody else uses an actual application to check mails anymore. It's mostly web mail clients everywhere, and they obviously can't use encryption.

> nobody else uses an actual application to check mails anymore Got any data to back that up? I do, and so do a lot of my friends and colleagues.

Indeed the vast majority of people I know use a MUA program to access their e-mail. They're just called 'apps' nowadays.

Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#215
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, so Gmail is finally moving away from email. Guess it was a question of time.

If anything it sounds closer in outline to djb's proposed Internet Mail 2000 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Mail_2000 ) in which initial storage is the responsibility of the sender, not the recipient, thereby making spam much more expensive. This implementation, however - especially centralized tracking & policy enforcement, and HTTP as the delivery substrate instead of some properly designed protocol - typ…

That's interesting - I hadn't thought about greylisting like that; but I suppose that's one way to look at it. The sender needs to queue the mail, which effectively means "take responsibility for initial storage".

Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#216
post #175

"In the compose screen, there’s a tiny lock icon called “confidential mode”. It says that the recipient won’t be able to forward email content, copy and paste, download or print the email." I can see how they could prevent this happening for the average user, but do they really have some way actually stop this?

I mean .. nothing stops you from taking a picture of your screen The way I see it, it could be useful for internal emails you don't want inadvertently shared with the outside.

Hopefully no service will go so far as to blank the screen when a lens is detected by the webcam...

Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#217

What a bunch of hype garbage this is. If you send something in plaintext to a server it's already game over. If Google was serious about privacy it would pgp-encrypt everything so only the client, client-side can decrypt it, just like what protonmail does. pfff, 'self destructing emails', what a heaping pile of razzle dazzle no-ops that is -- this is more likely subliminal advertisement for the new mission impossible…

When your garbage goes out on the curb it's perfectly legal for anyone - including law enforcement - to sort thought it. I have to wonder if the same concept would / could be applied to such emails? The email might be gone from my account and yours, but it's still in a digital landfill somewhere. Free to be reviewed, sans warrants, etc. Perhaps?

Bullshit. The "garbage on the curb" situation is due to the fact a court ruled that once you dispose of garbage "in a public place", there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. Destroying email is exactly the opposite - there is an extremely strong expectation of privacy.

Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

In which case the response will be "I can't read your mail, please resend in plain text".

Exactly. Or wget on smtp server side, recrafting it into email attachement (removing all remote links) and sending it to the user. Link like this is another way of privacy violation from google and I wont tolerate it.

#abandongmail

Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do that all the time without any problems. What issues have you seen with it?

marked as SPAM. I get that a lot

DKIM sign emails and fix reverse resolving. Had that problem too, I was highly pissed off that DKIM signed emails were still regarded as spam, even if there is no way to forge them until I fixed reverse resolve.

Anyway, I dont know anyone relevant to me who is using gmail. Most of them are tehnical and they all stopped using gmail years ago, also more and more people are moving to self hosted solutions.

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