Email should be considered legally equal to physical mail. It should be regulated by the USPS.
Just like a company can't yank your ability to send snail mail, they shouldn't be able to yank your ability to send electronic mail.
Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)
131–140 of 258 posts
Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)
#132The solution I hope for: A crypto based toplevel domain like the Ethereum Name Service. But with a twist: If I lose my private key, the domain is not lost, but locked for 3 months and nobody, not even the registry can move it. After the 3 months, if I stay "silent" and not confirm my ownership via my private key, the registry can move the domain. The registry should have this process: During these 3 months, I have to…
For a .eth name, this is trivial: provide operator approval to N-additional wallets
Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
But what credentials do you use to log into the personal domain name provider, to manage it? Another email? Unless there is state-guaranteed ownership of a domain name, this will remain to be chicken-and-egg problem: to manage a domain one needs an account with an email, and to have an independent email one needs a domain. Even then, moving between countries is normal now which poses a huge challenge to the concept o…
A physical address to receive recovery codes? In Denmark, every person has a digital identity and they can authenticate themselves using either a smartphone or a dedicated TOTP key fob, and that could also work. Heck, we even have digital mail boxes for every person. The reason that email is popular as an online identity is that it is an easy and cheap method for the service provider and user to establish an identity…
[deleted]
Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)
#134It is a bit overkill, but the closest you can get to owning your online identity is to "own" your own domain. sarcastiquotes used because you don't really own a domain you only rent it. I run my own mail server because I am a sys-admin and running a mail-server is something I do for fun. but the amount of agency you gain once you have a domain is staggering. people without a domain are pretty much second class net ci…
I wish more people did this. Self-hosting email is quite advanced, but most domain registrars offer a very reasonable mail package that is very. Since so few people do this, it's becoming increasingly harder to use such email adresses with important services - eg I set up something like this for a relative, and I remember it wasn't straightforward to set up an Apple ID with this custom email for them (I think I might even have had to call their support).
Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
I run my own mail server as well, on my own domain, own server, physically present in my home. It's increasingly becoming a hassle.. Especially sending mail from a "consumer" line is tricky, they block outgoing port 25 and no longer really provide a relay host for you to go through either.. I basically had to infiltrate my current ISP to get access to people in netops and gaslight them into configuring reverse-dns an…
What can work really well, is to rent the cheapest, smallest VPS you can find. Then redirect the SMTP port with a VPN to your local server, which can be anywhere in the world. You can run IMAP the same way if you want to.
Personally, I'm fully capable of doing that, but even then, it's all entirely dependent on the graces of random VPS providers, it's another route I'd rather not go, I already find it repugnant that the Internet service itself is in the hands of private entities which are under no obligation to provide any specific quality of service (not an enforceable one anyway, as I cannot really chose whose running the actual network fabric, even if I can chose which "company" I pay the bill to). Geez, if water and power delivery was as unregulated as Internet delivery, we'd be like "well, it's mostly AC, maybe DC offset a few thousand volts, on sundays it's 10 hz slower, and it's somewhere in the range of 100 and 500 volts"
"Yeah, this is what we call water.. No, we don't support Hydrogen molecules, they're dangerous you see."
On top of that, most people don't care (don't know why they should) and don't have the ability to host this infrastructure themselves, and frankly, they shouldn't have to either..
Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)
#136State-funded email with E2EE. Every citizen gets an email address. You don't have to use it (and it will probably suck compared to competitors), but you'll have it as a permanent fallback address. And presumably it will come with some legal protections and due process.
Alternatively, give everyone an assymmetric encryption key associated with you identity. To prove your identity, you sign a challenge with your private key, and the other party verifies it using your public key (which could itself be signed your government). Although, for that to fully work,you would need international cooperation on a standard for that protocol.
Many countries have something close to that, actually. I've seen this used for various eGovernmnet-type services, although the UX isn't really different from any 2FA-authenticated service. But it allows you to perform some official legal acts online (filing taxes,...).
Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)
#137It is a bit overkill, but the closest you can get to owning your online identity is to "own" your own domain. sarcastiquotes used because you don't really own a domain you only rent it. I run my own mail server because I am a sys-admin and running a mail-server is something I do for fun. but the amount of agency you gain once you have a domain is staggering. people without a domain are pretty much second class net ci…
> I wish municipality offered domains, for example: you move to St Louis you would get name.stlouis.mo.us this would give you the same agency online that a mail address gets you offline. Australia kinda does this with their `.id.au` second level domains for 'Individuals (by real name or common alias)' Not many folks use it or know about it.
Croatia as well, you can get a firstName-lastName.from.hr domain for free.
Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think I have a good idea of what you mean, but for those who don't, could you elaborate on the benefits?
You can give unique throwaway addresses to people you don't fully trust (e.g. newsletters, recruiters) and apply the rules you want. It would be very naive to think that Big Tech won't abuse their market positions.
My Gmail is my throwaway address, if something is important I use my real address (selfhosted).
Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)
#139And this is why, back in 2007, I registered my own domain, and signed up for then-free Google Apps for Your Domain (then GSuite, Google Workspaces, whatever they're calling it now). Earlier this year I moved my email to Fastmail, and I can move it elsewhere if I want to, with zero disruption or downtime. I really wish email providers would make custom domains either the default, or a very obvious option when signing…
I was in the same boat as you, got a free GSuite account with custom domain, then moved my email to FastMail. I’m considering just removing my GSuite account, and registering a new one, although still evaluating the implications that might have.
Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you own a domain? If you rely on a registrar, it just move the identity owner from an email provider to a registrar. Real overkill method is own a TLD. It's unrealistic for an individual though.
Perhaps it would be easier to just own an IP address?
the certificates needed to secure email require a domain name