Live data from Hacker News

Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

ctrl.blog

141–150 of 258 posts

Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

#141
post #7

State-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.

This is kinda what Denmark has. Companies and government agencies can send digital letters to your government digital mailbox.

Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

#142
I have the feeling that we are gradually shifting from email-centric to phone-centric systems. With 2FA and recovery, ultimately, your unique phone number becomes more and more THE foundation of everything online, and switching phone number is harder than switching email.

Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

#143
post #79
post #25

It 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 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…

This kind of exists in Norway in the sense that we have at least two systems for communicating with government offices and, to some degree other organizations and people (haven't quite figured that out). This isn't an email solution as such though.

The thing is, all of these solutions are much maligned - despite being a lot better than what we had before (send/receive paper). If the state were to offer email accounts, people would complain about how bad they were (whether true or not) and argue that we should "let the market sort it out".

Which brings us to where we are now. With the market "sorting it out".

Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

#144
After the NYT article [0] I purchased (rented) my own domain, created a cloudflare account and started using their email routing to forward all the email to my gmail address. I also configured gmail to allow me to send emails from the new email address.

As I have a small child and use a lot the telemedicine services I do have a fear that I will be blocked soon.

A drawback to this is that cloudflare does not allow you to forward to multiple email addresses.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveil...

Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

#145
post #25

It 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…

You have to trust a third party company either way, so I don't think you're closer by having the domain, from a trust / vulnerability standpoint. In fact I think that email is best hosted by specialists with experience - and I'm saying this after hosting email for quite some time.

Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

#146
post #25

It 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…

what is the safest registrar? If for instance you own a domain with a TLD managed by a shady jurisdiction, it may not be so secure, right? What's the safest TLD? Other than .com

>what is the safest registrar?

Nominet (.uk)

Whilst not entirely without controversy[1], they do allow any man or his dog to become a member[2], you only need to have "an interest in the operation of the .UK domain".

Nominet membership gives you the ability to maintain your names directly and bypass the middlemen.

The alternative (as others have already pointed out) is to write out a (very big) cheque to ICANN and setup your own TLD where you are the registrar.

    [1]https://publicbenefit.uk/
    [2]https://www.nominet.uk/corporate-governance/members/

Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

#147
post #19
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nah. Just have people generate their own keys. Then distribute a token to everyone, like registering to vote or NYC ID. Finally, have an official mixer like tornado cash that only works with these tokens. Ring signatures baby ! Now you distribute UBI, allow voting etc. And it is all pseudonymous. That’s what we are building out at Intercoin.org/applications btw :)

Ring signatures -based mixers for voting seems like a bad idea... how do you solve vote selling?

Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

#148
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nation states absolutely should provide and host, e-mail accounts for their citizens Because nation states are well known for producing usable software at a reasonable cost to tax payers? IRL this would cost billions and everyone under 60 would forward their gov’t mail to gmail.

> Because nation states are well known for producing usable software at a reasonable cost to tax payers? Well, actually - yes? My country has lots of problems, but government-issued software is surprisingly good. I would have trust issues however after it came up, that they used Pegasus very liberally.

Which country is that?

Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

#149
post #25

It 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…

A domain is an address. If you have a home address you are a citizen, if not you are homeless. That's is.

However there are few issues we have anyway even being Netizens:

- some DNS hierarchies are NOT domestic to our country so in case of political issues between countries or in case of legal issues we do not have much domestic legal protection, witch in Democracy is the protection of our people between us;

- there are too many intermediaries who only resell, they are a danger. Registars MUST BE national and international public bodies ONLY, not private companies and domains must be NOT allowed for sale, people can register them, de-register them but no commerce on them;

- a minor, but no so minor, email issue, is that with modern anti-spam or to be more precise modern bully-sheriff companies hosting their own mailserver is hard. It works of course, but some giants often simply drop your mails.

Personally while I'm a fierce against PRIVATELY controlled digital IDs I favor public ones, not mandatory of course, BUT if you are a Citizen than choose a domain name, it will be on your ID card who happen to be a smart-card PCSC/Java/something OPEN in both middlewire and hw design itself. That's yours and you can use from your homeserver as you wish. Then you are perfectly free to use anything else not much tied to your identity.

Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

#150
post #16

And 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…

AFAIK, you can cancel all GSuite services and enable Identity Platform on GCloud to at least keep the Google Account linked to the domain.
Post reply on HN