How private is your email? Not very • Hacker News Board

Re: How private is your email? Not very

#21

Post by raldu » Wed, Jul 01, 2015, 4:14 PM UTC

pkorzeniewski wrote: post #16

raldu wrote: post #6

> Other than rolling our own email server, another solution is to use paid email alternatives ... Actually there are a lot of very strong free alternatives which seeks to protect privacy and security of the users. ProtonMail [1] is a very promising one, for example. The entire mailboxes of the users are encrypted so that even the sysadmins cannot read them. And there are the likes of Riseup [2] and autistici [3], pro…

The main problem I find with these smaller email providers is the uncertainty of their future - they can easily disappear the next day, because they ran out of money or simply lost interest, and then you're f.cked. With Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft you can be at least sure they'll provide their email service as long as possible.

Which is exactly the reason that I have provided rather well-established examples.

Protonmail is developed by a group of people from MIT and CERN, and they raised more than half a million in their crowdfunding campaign [1]. They take the matter so seriously that its co-founder has talked about privacy at TED Global [2]. And riseup has been providing e-mail and VPN services for activists since around 1999.

Just check the links for more information.

The point is that if you take privacy and security really seriously, it is not very hard to find people just as serious as you.

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[1]: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/protonmail#/story

[2]: http://www.ted.com/talks/andy_yen_think_your_email_s_private...

Re: How private is your email? Not very

#22

Post by Oletros » Wed, Jul 01, 2015, 4:59 PM UTC

egwynn wrote: post #11

microtonal wrote: post #9

It’s not entirely clear if this only applies to the free Gmail offering or also the Google Business App offering. This is entirely clear: No. There are no ads in Google Apps Services or Google Cloud Platform, and we have no plans to change this in the future. We do not scan for advertising purposes in Gmail or other Google Apps services. Google does not collect or use data in Google Apps services for advertising purp…

So they do read it… just not for advertising?

Every email server has to "read" the email if they do spam filtering or search

Re: How private is your email? Not very

#23

Post by rakoo » Wed, Jul 01, 2015, 7:16 PM UTC

raldu wrote: post #6

> Other than rolling our own email server, another solution is to use paid email alternatives ... Actually there are a lot of very strong free alternatives which seeks to protect privacy and security of the users. ProtonMail [1] is a very promising one, for example. The entire mailboxes of the users are encrypted so that even the sysadmins cannot read them. And there are the likes of Riseup [2] and autistici [3], pro…

> The entire mailboxes of the users are encrypted so that even the sysadmins cannot read them.

Come on. If there is one thing we should have learned, it is that trust is not enough, we need more insurances. At the face value, ProtonMail is saying "we receive your emails in plaintext, we encrypt them immediately and we promise to never ever read them. Pinky swear". "We promise we won't give your information to anyone. Trust us, we're from CERN !". That is absolutely not acceptable; we need guarantees that give us the assurance that they can't access the content of our communications. Basically, there is no other way than having everything done on your machine, and treat any provider as a stupid router. At least mailpile is a step in the right direction, because it doesn't assume your mail provider will help in any way.

There's a saying in french, it goes like this:

"Promises only bind those who believe in them".

Please please please don't promote something that is based purely on promises. We should already be beyond this.