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Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

mako.cc

291–300 of 400 posts

Re: Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

#291

Unless the e-mail you send is either encrypted with something like PGP or whatever, or else you send it directly from your machine your friend's SMTP server, using TLS, then the operator of any SMTP forwarding host in between could have your e-mail, not to mention someone just snooping traffic. Speaking of encrypted e-mail, if you send that to a gmail user, then Google only has the fact that that user received an e-m…

>...or else you send it directly from your machine your friend's SMTP server, using TLS, ... That is normally what happens these days. Intermediate email forwarding is so rare as to be non-existent. Only a small percentage of email is sent unencrypted between servers[1]. Agreed that email should be encrypted and, perhaps more importantly, signed... [1] https://articles.59.ca/doku.php?id=pgpfan:starttls

> Intermediate email forwarding is so rare as to be non-existent.

Where did you get this belief? Almost no e-mail user who uses a client to send SMTP right from their PC or mobile device can send directly to their destination, because they don't have a static IP address with e-mail reputation.

Directly to the destination meaning: looking up the MX record for the domain of target e-mail address, and contacting that host.

People who self-host such e-mail receiving hosts will themselves drop the connection from such a user, if they implement RBL-based anti-spam measures.

Re: Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it known that domain registrars are better than GMail in this regard? Not asking sarcastically, but I had my domain taken over by registrar(not released to public, just registrar took control of it) after few week of notice when auto renew failed to charge my credit card, and my credit card was working fine elsewhere. Also many registrar like Namecheap cancelled subscription for Russian customers during this invas…

Now you know why there are still some people that still take "web3" seriously. It's the only system where you are not at the mercy of some external entity to be always benevolent. Seriously, ENS and Handshake alone should be enough of a reason to silence all of those who keep repeating "but blockchain has no real world applications".

It's not that it has no applications, it's that almost all applications it's suggested for wouldn't actually be improved by having a persistent history, write-only, distributed data backing. Until someone writes a blockchain protocol that allows data to be purged by an individual in a way that forces everyone else's records to update accordingly (i.e. to comply with laws around PII) web3 isn't a solution, it just makes the problem harder.

Re: Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

#293
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What made me switch from Gmail is stories of people losing their entire account overnight with no possible appeal process due to an algorithm deciding there was suspicious activity.

Do you happen to have any actual cases you can point me to? I see this all the time in HN but it's never beyond "a buddy of mine said that he didn't do anything wrong and somehow they got locked out forever with no recourse". Or it's someone saying that happened to themselves, and then they say they never did anything bad with their gmail. Which may or may not be true?

I got locked out of my Gmail for a few years because I moved internationally and Google decided it just didn't like my new ip. I had access to the recovery email and would even get, "someone attempted to sign in emails." But Google just wouldn't let me in at all. I contacted support and they were no help at all. I tried to vpn back to normal locations but at that point I was flagged or something. I would try every few months after I gave up. About 3 years later it just magically let me in and I got all my stuff back. Still have no actual idea why it happened.

Re: Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

#295
post #77
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds bad. Is there anything we can do about it? What is the most reliable domain registrar?

So far Gandi was posted as reliable company and over last 10 years I had no issues with them. One good feature is that you dont have to be owner to renew domain name registered with them. So in case you temporary lose access to your account you can still pay for domains. They also allow to keep credit balance for auto renew. I really didnt have much of issues to talk about so no idea how good is their support at solv…

Thanks! I'll remember them next time I need a domain

Re: Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

#296
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if this was added after your comment, but in the second line of their post jamiek88 said > To this day I have no idea why the card didn't pay as always. One can infer that the credit card did not auto-pay, the domain expired, and Namecheap immediately resold the domain to a squatter rather than first reaching out to jamiek88 to confirm that the non-renewal was intentional.

Pay a bit more annually to a reputable DNS company. For example, I initially whet with GoDaddy, until about ten years ago when I read that they were shutting down people's domains simply upon a "we're investigating thisbperson, kill their domain" letter from the US Marshals (a Federal police force). Around the same time I heard about easyDNS in Canada, and discovered that they will only ever seize one of their custom…

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Re: Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

#297
post #2

I have actually been receiving much spam from gmail addresses lately and have considered banning the domain altogether. > I was surprised to find out that my friend Peter Eckersley — a very privacy conscious person who is Technology Projects Director at the EFF — used Gmail I find that the EFF does this more often than not, like how they also criticize Amazon for giving police warrant-less access to Ring cameras... a…

> I have actually been receiving much spam from gmail addresses lately and have considered banning the domain altogether. For some accounts I block all Gmail usernames ending with a number: from 0@gmail.com to 9@gmail.com. The only exceptions are addresses that I have added to my whitelist. A bit drastic, but it did wonders to my mailbox.

Personally, I know very few people who don't have a digit at the end of their email address.

Re: Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

#298
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if this was added after your comment, but in the second line of their post jamiek88 said > To this day I have no idea why the card didn't pay as always. One can infer that the credit card did not auto-pay, the domain expired, and Namecheap immediately resold the domain to a squatter rather than first reaching out to jamiek88 to confirm that the non-renewal was intentional.

> Namecheap immediately resold the domain to a squatter No I don't see how their post allows one to infer that Namecheap "immediately" resold the domain. Their policy is a 30 day grace period, and within that 30 days the domain should become non functional, so if you're actively using it then you would know something is up. Sounds like jamiek88 was squatting on a somewhat desirable domain and is just sad they couldn'…

No post body was provided.

Re: Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

#300

I think this is everywhere. In India, people in the departments, especially the Governments usually ask, "What is your Gmail?" Almost everyone uses Gmail here and it is extremely rare to find their own custom domain. I'm actually surprised that the Government Departments do not have a service that takes care of these! They will fine Google but almost all of the government email IDs are Gmail. I was one of those that…

I find it utterly astounding that not a single government has started an email service yet for its citizens, with all the legal protections of actual mail and such.

They wouldn't even need to run it, just create a legal category like "This account is officially registered to X and serves as a legal email account" that companies can apply for if they meet some standards.

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