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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?

#231

Post by lrobb »

drhowarddrfine wrote: post #147
lrobb wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, they data-mine my email anonymously, but they try to not be evil about it. Eventually, as it happens in all public companies, the "do no evil" people are going to be out , and the "maximize the buck" people are going to be in .

You think a "maximize the buck" move by Google would be to start rooting around in your personal drawers?

Well, they already root around... That's why they can serve contextual ads.

Right now it's "harmless"... But people get a lot more personal in email or google searches than they do on, say, facebook.

There's some gold to be mined in there.

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

#232

Post by tankenmate »

kunley wrote: post #230
Niten wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree on most points... 1. It takes a few hours to set up, sure, but it isn't difficult – setting up a mail server on a *nix box isn't exactly uncharted territory, every possible aspect of it is documented to death on the web. And once it's up and running it takes practically no effort to maintain. Yes, even with spam filtering that keeps my inbox spam free, despite my address having been used in several public…

I'd love to ssh to my server and use some modern MUA like Sup, but there are lot of places where you cannot ssh through local firewalls. When you work parttime as a consultant or when you just meet with some potential customers/investors/cofounders/whomever you often need to use THEIR infrastructure. So what then? Do you imagine that you'd be unable to get an email from the people you're talking on the spot just beca…

A handy trick I have always used is to get a second IP address on my servers and set up ssh on port 443. From memory I have only had one case where a firewall blocked it.

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

#233

Post by gbog »

bwarp wrote: post #222
tennineten wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"My contacts list is a text file called contacts.txt. Works on anything. Can be grepped. My calendar is a text file called cal.txt. Works on anything. Can be grepped." I really like the sound of that. Can you elaborate a bit on the format, or provide a couple of sample lines from each?

Yes - it's very simple: contacts.txt - in order of surname, firstname Surname, FirstName, Primary telephone number with code, Email address so: Joe, Bloggs, 02033345545, joe@bloggs.com I only keep a single number for people, but you could extend it to two numbers if you want. cal.txt - latest dates at top of file: 2012/02/02 16:00+ What to do # time specific event 2012/03/03 --:-- Someone's birthday # all day event W…

So I guess you don't have Gmail's recipient autocompletion, or you do? This is the killer feature of Gmail for me, with its keyboard shorcuts and search.

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

#235

Post by lamnk »

rufo wrote: post #153
Niten wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you host your own what software? Dovecot and Postfix on a small FreeBSD VPS. Easy to set up, and it takes almost no effort to maintain once you've got it running. (The last time I modified my Postfix configuration was over a year ago, to relax my attachment size limit.) Between the FreeBSD handbook and the official Postfix documentation, all the info one could possibly need is provided. A combination of Postgrey…

Getting the email server set up is easy, almost trivially so. It's dealing with all the other issues that's an immense pain. SpamAssassin is not always a magic bullet, deliverability to third-party mail servers can be a major problem even if you follow all the rules, and Gmail's UI has a number of advantages that many mail programs can't compete with. If you compare the hours of time a month that takes with the up-fr…

Exactly, setting up a mail server is not hard. What's hard is that you have to keep your server secure; have to make backups, and make sure that backups work; have to troubleshoot problems when mails are not delivered, god knows how much time does it take; have to train your spam filter to get to the level as half efficient as Gmail is.

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

#238

Post by agwa »

aethr wrote: post #177
Niten wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree on most points... 1. It takes a few hours to set up, sure, but it isn't difficult – setting up a mail server on a *nix box isn't exactly uncharted territory, every possible aspect of it is documented to death on the web. And once it's up and running it takes practically no effort to maintain. Yes, even with spam filtering that keeps my inbox spam free, despite my address having been used in several public…

And in my experience, OP has it right. 1. Setting up the mail server is not the issue. It's the ongoing maintenance to ensure close to 100% uptime so you don't lose any mail. Having worked as a sysadmin maintaining linux boxes for several companies, mail server maintenance accounted for the vast majority of the hours we spent working on servers. This doesn't even account for the hardware upkeep to keep RAID sets in g…

Regarding point #1, I have maintained Linux mail servers both for large shops as a professional sysadmin as well as for myself and small organizations, and each has been a very different experience.

In the large environment, mail server maintenance does take a disproportionate amount of time. But that's because the environment is so complicated: there are several layers of servers, mail is stored on NFS so there are weird locking issues, LDAP is used for user accounts, etc. There are some very bad failure semantics and if we're not careful, we start bouncing mail.

My small setups use exactly the same software (Debian, postfix, dovecot, spamassassin) but the environments are much simpler: one server, no NFS, no LDAP. I use a VPS so I don't have to worry about hardware. Backups are an off-site rsync in cron. Failures rarely happen but when they do the semantics are much nicer: temporary failures so the mail is resent later. My VPS host failed for the first time in 5 years recently, so I couldn't get mail for a few hours, but I didn't lose any mail and didn't have to spend any time on recovery.

I also run other stuff on my VPS, so the monthly cost and recurring maintenance overhead (security updates/backups) is amortized. Adding mail as another service doesn't change these costs.

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

#239

Post by sdfjkl »

drhowarddrfine wrote: post #147
lrobb wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, they data-mine my email anonymously, but they try to not be evil about it. Eventually, as it happens in all public companies, the "do no evil" people are going to be out , and the "maximize the buck" people are going to be in .

You think a "maximize the buck" move by Google would be to start rooting around in your personal drawers?

All it takes is one idiot in middle management that thinks "who's going to notice if we just ...". Like the recent Mocality case.

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

#240

Post by johnpowell »

I just stayed up all night setting up my own on Linode. I barely know anything about servers. I wanted to do it for months and have tried for weeks.

I use a lot of google stuff and wanted to move off. I trust Linode a lot more than I trust google.

Now roundcube is working and I am a happy camper.

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