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Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?

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Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?

#91

Post by dshep »

melvinmt wrote: post #52
emu wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back up your email! Just because your data is in the cloud doesn't mean you shouldn't make a backup. I just run getmail which retrieves mail via Gmail's IMAP interface every now and then. If Gmail went away tomorrow, I wouldn't be _that_ sad.

Don't use IMAP for backups, use POP3 instead. If your e-mails are deleted in the cloud, your local IMAP e-mails will disappear as well.

Actually do. Since he's using getmail, its making a copy to his local system. It just happens to be able to do that over IMAP. You are better off doing this than doing the same with POP because Gmail's POP deletes mails as you read them, which is non-standard. You could lose emails if there are network, disk, or other errors.

Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?

#92

Post by api »

1. Running a mail server is an unbelievable pain in the rear from an IT perspective. Note that by "mail server" I mean a good setup with spam filtration, webmail, SMTPS, IMAPS, etc.

2. Really good rich webmail. I personally use Mac Mail.app most of the time, but having that rich webmail is nice.

3. Filters mail at the server side.

4. Very good spam filtering... I post my gmail addresses on web pages with no obfuscation and get maybe 1-2 spams per month.

Cumulative: it's one more thing I don't have to jerk around with. It just works.

Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?

#93

Post by tikhonj »

I use Gmail because I don't care about my emails. Google can know that I'm subscribed to the Haskell, FSF and school mailing lists and that I sometimes talk about school projects or work, all without affecting me much. And that is all I use email for.

Now, I could run an email server myself, but I do not have the time, experience or inclination to do this. I could also use a provider that does not use proprietary software, but that would be pointless: since they're running the server, I would not have significantly more freedom than I do with Gmail.

So really, the reason is simple: it doesn't matter much from a practical or ideological standpoint, and I'm incredibly lazy.

Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?

#95

Post by cyrus_ »

mseebach wrote: post #27

One point about privacy: E-mail is unencrypted and is delivered over public networks. Assume that any government, be it your own, US or other will read your email if they so please, and encrypt anything you don't want them to read.

This trumps all the other privacy arguments. If the government wants to read your email, it need not access it at the endpoints -- it already has access to it in transmission over the compromised backbone. You would need to encrypt your emails to avoid this.

Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?

#96

Post by codeka »

aiurtourist wrote: post #8

So why is there such a high degree of Gmail usage among those groups? Because we're lazy. you give away control over your personal data Yes, and if my data disappeared tomorrow, I'd be pretty pissed off. But since Gmail has a sort of critical mass, it would be likely that other people would lose data too. Lots of pissed off users would tarnish Google's reputation and it's in their interest to avoid that. you put your…

> There are much more nefarious groups tracking my behavior, too.

Right, I'd personally be more concerned about random mailing list administrators "looking through their logs" and drawing conclusions about me than by Google scanning my email for the purpose of targeting better ads to me... hmm...

Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?

#97

Post by eropple »

moreorless wrote: post #60
lukev wrote: post #17

1. Rich webmail is an absolute must for me. I use too many different computers from too many different places for anything else to be remotely practical at this point. 2. No open source webmail servers that I've seen come close to Gmail's functionality, and I don't have time to write one that is. 3. Even if there was/I did, I couldn't get the spam filtering to anything like Google's level even in theory since I don't…

There is Zimbra. http://www.zimbra.com/products/zimbra-open-source.html

We use Zimbra at work. I'd have a hard time recommending it unless you really, really want 80% of Exchange and 40% of the usability.

(Outlook Web Access is still the only webmail client I've found that is in GMail's ballpark. Since running an Exchange server is beyond my skillset, my interest, and my budget, and trusting a managed Exchange host feels odd--at that point I might as well just stick with GMail. So I do.

Google isn't going to find anything particularly interesting about me by my mail, anyway.)

Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?

#100

Post by wtn »

mrschwabe wrote: post #57
rgrieselhuber wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The business model isn't there. I have yet to see a large group of consumers willing to pay for secure email and the only other alternative, advertising, leads to the exact same problem that you face with GMail.

+1 for willing to pay for secure email.

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