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

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

#181

Post by bongobingo1 »

kazinator wrote: post #67
bongobingo1 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my fear. It's not really the running or configuring that scares me, it's the unceremonious bouncing/filtering at the other end. I have run some mailers (postfix) for some clients who didn't want to spring for a MAAS provider, I would to my knowledge, set up everything correctly with SPF, DMARC, DKIM, stuff would still land in the spam folder half the time. Maybe still my mistake, maybe over eager receivers, m…

Bouncing on the other end has nothing to do with running your own mail domain. In e-mail, sending and receiving are decoupled. Some people use the same local mail server to do both: to relay outgoing mail and to receive. But these are independent functions, and you don't have to send mail through your server. You can configure your mail client(s) with the SMTP credentials from you mail provider (such as your ISP). Th…

Doesn't that depend on my ISP running basically an open relay, if I'm trying to mail from me@hn.com and they only provide me@isp.net? Always figured they'd just dump the request with a "i don't know you".

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

#183

Post by EGreg »

neysofu wrote: post #147
EGreg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If you want to go all the way, you can make a system where you can’t prove how you voted. But you can check using ZKP that your vote was counted in the final result. https://medium.com/edge-elections/what-is-a-zero-knowledge-p...

But out of curiosity, what exactly do you imagine happens in vote selling? Someone pays off each individual in half the population to vote a certain way? How do they do this at scale and how do you know it isn’t more cost—effective to just influence them?

Most people who voted for Biden instead of Bernie ahead of Super Tuesday made up their minds on the way to the polls. Biden wouldn’t have even won if nearly all the other participants wouldn’t have dropped out and endorsed him. He was losing badly to Bernie (and Pete) but as soon as he managed to prove electability in one state, all the other candidates fell on their sword. It’s like in a poker tournament where the chip leader loses to some guy who isn’t even 2nd or 3rd because everyone else stands up and gives him their chips.

And also, there are trade offs the other way. There are tons of failure modes in voting non electronically. I write about them here:

https://www.coindesk.com/in-defense-of-blockchain-voting/

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

#184

Post by alexslobodnik »

hiq wrote: post #179
alexslobodnik wrote: post #167

web3 is correcting this with censorship resistance usernames via ethereum name service[0]. a lot of famous folks have already using them [1]. [0] https://ens.domains/ [1] https://ethleaderboard.xyz/

With no recourse if you lose your private key, is it really any better for 99% of users?

that's a good question.

would i rather have an entity that i have no power against (google) or only my own error? the outcome is the same, i had x, now i don't. personally, i'd prefer being responsible, but it is a by a thin margin.

that being said, key management has and will continue to get easier. so over time, the risk of key loss should diminish.

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

#185

Post by eulenteufel »

kumarvvr wrote: post #65
somat wrote: 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 am a developer but have limited knowledge about setting up my own email server. Do you know of any resources that I can read to help me do it on my own?

If you're not afraid of running nixos, nixos-mailserver is a pretty good all in one package.

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

#186

Post by kornhole »

somat wrote: 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…

Gandi.net gives you two mailboxes with unlimited aliases in France for every domain you rent. This is a very easy alternative for most people who cannot run a mail server.

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

#187

Post by hiq »

TekMol wrote: post #49

The 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…

You mention losing your private key, what about somebody else getting it (data leak, hack...) and controlling your identity before the end of the 3 months?

Blockchain-based "solutions" are not actual solutions because they don't account for this fairly common case. Once they do, they rely on a 3rd-party, and you're back to square one.

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

#188

Post by waqf »

causi wrote: post #170
dusted wrote: post #79

Earlier 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…

Everyone deserves an e-mail that can't be taken away from them without a court order.

And a phone number, and a bank account/CC number (so that you won't get escalatingly locked out of stuff because your direct debits fail. Don't ever use N26, kids.)

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

#189

Post by hiq »

alexslobodnik wrote: post #184
hiq wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With no recourse if you lose your private key, is it really any better for 99% of users?

that's a good question. would i rather have an entity that i have no power against (google) or only my own error? the outcome is the same, i had x, now i don't. personally, i'd prefer being responsible, but it is a by a thin margin. that being said, key management has and will continue to get easier. so over time, the risk of key loss should diminish.

> Personally, I'd prefer being responsible, but it is a by a thin margin.

I'd wager that's not the case for 90% of users choosing the email provider they trust the most, both in terms of what they expect the risks are, and what they actually risk in practice.

> key management has and will continue to get easier

You're talking about the blockchain space where it was not even the state of the art when it started. Key management remains a problem in all spaces, but it has even more dramatic consequences when you have no recourse.

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