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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?

#241

Post by nirvdrum »

gavinlynch wrote: post #187
evilduck wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30s searches....I've gotta ask, how many gigabytes of email do you have? I've got about 3 and mine come back in less than a second.

I have almost 2.5 GB's and also have zero problems with GMail's default search. Comes back in less than a second.

Maybe it's number of messages vs size of store. Or perhaps because a large percentage are similar in structure (google groups, monit alerts, etc.), they cause indexing to perform poorly. Dunno. But I wish I had < 1s searches.

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

#242

Post by emidln »

ary wrote: post #176
icebraining wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no privacy in either case. Every single email passes in clear text through some ISP who may very well be storing copies of them. If you want privacy, you use PGP.

That's what I'm getting at. Have you tried using GPG? Most "security" products (or projects) have terrible usability. Disclaimer: I work on a "security" product.

"Usability" is ill-defined. GPG seems to have pretty good "usability" from mutt (which auto signs outgoing email and optionally encrypts with a keypress). Maybe your MUA is broken or you forgot to RTFM.

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

#243

Post by saalweachter »

Riesling wrote: post #142
shingen wrote: post #47

Why don't all people make their own food? The same argument applies to almost any category of product, with varying ramifications unique to each. If I made my own soda, I'd leave out high fructose corn syrup. Why do I let Coca Cola poison me? And so on and so forth.

> Why don't all people make their own food? I do not think that this is a valid comparison. It would be more like, why don't farmers produce their own food (and rely on packaged food instead).

Most farmers don't produce most of their own food.

The modern world is built on specialization: most farmers have specialized in some direction or another, and the ones who haven't usually make less money. At best, a farmer with livestock will occasionally take a pig or cow off to be butchered (since butchering is another specialty entirely, needing specialized equipment to do well), or a farmer growing corn will plant a few rows of sweet corn in a field near his house, or a farmer growing produce -- usually just a half dozen varieties -- will keep back a little for himself.

But the calories a farmer will produce for himself are generally a small part of his intake. In the end, it's a better use of his time to focus on producing as much of a handful of crops as possible and buy what he needs from a grocery like the rest of us.

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

#245

Post by wwkeyboard »

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…

I do something very similar for my calendar, but it's kept in markdown and instead of deleting the done items I move them under a heading for the date completed(along with any notes about the item). While I'm not required to submit a timesheet for my employment, I find it nice to have a log of my actions.

The contacts file sounds interesting, I'll give that a try.

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

#246

Post by bwarp »

gbog wrote: post #233
bwarp wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't need to search. My inbox (my only folder) is 4 items at the moment. I rarely initiate an email conversation but whe I do it's simply select the addres from the text file and paste with the right mouse button.

Mutt has an autocomplete function but TBH I can't be bothered to set it up.

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

#247

Post by ary »

emidln wrote: post #242
ary wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I'm getting at. Have you tried using GPG? Most "security" products (or projects) have terrible usability. Disclaimer: I work on a "security" product.

"Usability" is ill-defined. GPG seems to have pretty good "usability" from mutt (which auto signs outgoing email and optionally encrypts with a keypress). Maybe your MUA is broken or you forgot to RTFM.

Usability (as I've employed it) is when someone non-technical can derive benefit from something beyond their understanding. Rest assured I've read every line of the GPG man page and then some.

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

#248

Post by elmindreda »

Judging by the replies, it seems to be a combination of preferring webmail and having poor ISPs.

Personally, I have run my own email server for several years now and have found this to require almost no maintenance. On the server side I use Postfix and Dovecot on Debian, and on the client side I use Thunderbird. For security, I only allow local IMAP connections and tunnel IMAP and SMTP from my laptop over SSH tunnels set up when I log in, and the server only accepts public key authorisation for SSH.

IMAP means I get any email within seconds and Thunderbird automatically sifts away 95% of what little spam I receive. The server is under my desk and the only downtime I have is for kernel upgrades and problems on the ISP end, which are both rare.

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

#249

Post by nupark2 »

gnosis wrote: post #203
nupark2 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The primary reason I won't outsource this service is trust. I don't trust anyone with that data. Access to my email allows for resetting all my passwords, seeing all my contacts, and tracking literally everything about my day-to-day business and personal life.

I hope all your email is encrypted, because otherwise every hop the email traveling to/from your server takes has access to all the data you hold so dear.

This is a much smaller attack surface than a centralized data store holding static e-mail archives and accounts for a large number of users, open to at-will offline browsing.

DNSSEC and SSL further reduce this attack surface.

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

#250

Post by gst »

tehwalrus wrote: post #244

In the UK you are legally responsible to save all mail forever (if you run your own mailserver), in case the police want to search it. For this reason alone I never use my own mailserver - my content is actually MORE deniable this way.

According to Wikipedia that is wrong: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_data_retenti...
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