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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?

#111

Post by fbuilesv »

bwarp wrote: post #83

I took "the pragmatic UNIX way" about 15 years ago with email. It works. I've not had to change it and don't feel compelled to bother changing it. I host my own mail server. It's not hard regardless of the platform you use. I use debian+postfix+mutt as it pretty much works out of the box. I've changed perhaps two lines of postfix configuration (to set up maildir) and added a couple of lines to my muttrc to pick up ma…

I unlike you, took the pragmatic way (without quotes or Unix). Email is part of my life and I don't want it going down.

I don't spend time configuring servers, updating packages, guaranteeing uptime. My email is federico@mheroin.com, and I write it everywhere. I still don't get any spam. If I need an alias I just append characters to the email address and I don't have to fiddle with anything else.

I can get it quite happily through IMAP using Emacs or the client on my phone. I can search for past emails in seconds without worrying about the space they consume. I can share my contacts and calendar appointments with one M-x command.

I'm curious about your setup since Debian/Postfix/Mutt are not enough for POP3 or IMAP. How do you access your email from other devices (phone, table, etc)?

I hate Gmail, with passion, but Google Apps is the easiest way to keep all my email working without thinking about reliability/installation/etc.

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

#112

Post by erikano »

mike-cardwell wrote: post #81
acavailhez wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice to know, thanks for the tip Did you try it and can compare it to gmail? Especially on: - linking other accounts (POP and IMAPS) - spam detection

I actually host my own email. I developed an open source application for automatically encrypting all email with my public key as soon as it arrives, and I can't do this if somebody else hosts my email. You can read why and how here: https://grepular.com/Automatically_Encrypting_all_Incoming_E...

Brilliant! Thank you for sharing the post and code. I'd be interested in hearing thoughts on how to make it searchable. If you don't index, searching will take quite some time. I guess the best thing to do would be to index each e-mail (keywords?) before it is encrypted and then encrypt the index itself as well. There is a problem with the keyword approach though - if the index encrypts the words but the "link" between message id and encrypted keywords is not encrypted, then an attacker who is in posession of one or several other message bodies in plain text can see correlations between the content of known and unknown message bodies.

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

#113

Post by billswift »

emu wrote: post #20
there wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. You're picturing some massive server failure, but not the more likely case of your Google account being disabled for any random reason, which has happened to more than a few people. As Gmail gains more users, you become that much less important to t…

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.

If there isn't much that you are worried about losing, you can just save a local copy from your browser. I only do that with a few per month, but it works fine with no extra fiddling.

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

#114

Post by tripzilch »

eropple wrote: post #97
moreorless wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Because if you got nothing to hide, you got nothing to fear! Yay!

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

#115

Post by Drbble »

dshep wrote: post #90
melvinmt wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Gmail POP does not deleted mail as you read it. I have a POP client on my Mac that output pulls Gmail as a backup of my webmail. Nothing gets deleted.

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

#116

Post by Drbble »

bwarp wrote: post #83

I took "the pragmatic UNIX way" about 15 years ago with email. It works. I've not had to change it and don't feel compelled to bother changing it. I host my own mail server. It's not hard regardless of the platform you use. I use debian+postfix+mutt as it pretty much works out of the box. I've changed perhaps two lines of postfix configuration (to set up maildir) and added a couple of lines to my muttrc to pick up ma…

If you email anyone ever, or use any ecommerce site, your email hits the spam databases when they are compromised.

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

#117

Post by eropple »

tripzilch wrote: post #114
eropple wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Because if you got nothing to hide, you got nothing to fear! Yay!

A mischaracterization (and, given your tone, probably intentionally so).

A useful mail system has value to me. It outweighs the (in my mind vastly overhyped) dangers of Google doing something nefarious with my data. If you disagree, you're welcome to run your own mail server. Nobody's stopping you.

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

#118

Post by Drbble »

rphlx wrote: post #87
DanI-S wrote: post #21

Because we care about efficiency, not least with regards to our time, and running one's own mail server is not an efficient use of such a scarce resource.

It is if you don't want a potential competitor, potential acquirer, or just a large amoral corporation, to have an informational advantage over you.

I would LOVE for someone at Google to violate their TOS and read my mail. That would be far more profitable than any business idea I will execute this year.

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

#119

Post by bwarp »

fbuilesv wrote: post #111
bwarp wrote: post #83

I took "the pragmatic UNIX way" about 15 years ago with email. It works. I've not had to change it and don't feel compelled to bother changing it. I host my own mail server. It's not hard regardless of the platform you use. I use debian+postfix+mutt as it pretty much works out of the box. I've changed perhaps two lines of postfix configuration (to set up maildir) and added a couple of lines to my muttrc to pick up ma…

I unlike you, took the pragmatic way (without quotes or Unix). Email is part of my life and I don't want it going down. I don't spend time configuring servers, updating packages, guaranteeing uptime. My email is federico@mheroin.com, and I write it everywhere. I still don't get any spam. If I need an alias I just append characters to the email address and I don't have to fiddle with anything else. I can get it quite…

Some more info...

Email augments my life but does not control it. That's where the distinction is. Much as writing letters is a tool, so is email. If it went away, the world would not end for me and I intend to keep it that way.

Availability? If mail doesn't get delivered immediately, thanks to the joys of SMTP, it will come later (when my ADSL line is back up). If it's urgent, someone can put mouth to phone rather than finger to keyboard.

Updating packages? Cron does this for me once a week. Maintenance? There is none. Everything is done properly once and automated.

I access everything via SSH if I have to which is rarely. I avoid email on the move where possible as there are more important things to do like looking in front of you and not worrying about stuff.

I make sure I don't need past emails. Not everything everyone has written is golden. In fact most of it is useless and just noise.

For reference's sake, I trialled Google Apps on a domain for 2 months as a possible replacement for my setup. It was a pain in the butt. There is actually no support worth anything if it does go wrong which it did terribly (gmail stopped working entirely with a server error). The entire domain approval process is problematic and time consuming and their contracts are disagreeable. Plus it didn't deliver any additional value.

Ultimately, if you look at it, there is actually more work to setting up a system to backup contacts and calendars and watching that than there is to operate my setup entirely.

I assume you are backing up your google apps accounts?

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

#120

Post by a_a_r_o_n »

eropple wrote: post #97
moreorless wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

"[Gmail/Facebook/USGov/etc] isn't going to find anything particularly interesting about me by my mail, anyway."

There are two problems here:

1. We look at our data from our point of view. Other people and orgs have their own points of view, and it's their actions driven by their points of view that we need to worry and think about. For example, you think your mail is uninteresting, yet Google enhances the value of their ads by correlating your interests with the interests in your communication network.

Government surveillance can also learn a lot just by recording and analyzing who you talk to. When a law enforcement agency cannot get a full wiretap warrant, they will sometimes settle for a pen register, which just records the telephone numbers of your calls. This allows them to find out who you know, and who you talk to the most. This lets them form more detailed opinions about you and your known associates, which may or may not be accurate. You know, like Google does for ads.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pen_register

Oh, you're just not that interesting to the government?

2. Innocent behavior being observed by the government is enough to disrupt your life in minor and major ways. Consider the British couple that was recently denied entry to the United States, merely because their tweets contained boisterous comments about destroying the US (i.e. partying really hard), and digging up Marilyn Monroe's grave. Imagine if they had used the British slang term "crack."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champers#C

It takes nothing more than mere notice to disrupt your life. If you innocently have communication with someone who in turn has communication with a "person of interest," you could find your car carrying a GPS. Just from noting communication networks, never mind the communication content.

I'm not trying to go all tinfoil hat, I'm just suggesting that your view of your data is completely different from corporate and government's view of your data. You could be served an ad (horror!), or you could be served a warrant (horror), based on accurate or mistaken interpretation of any facet of your communication.

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