Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

ctrl.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 258 posts

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

#71

Post by xiconfjs »

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?

https://mailcow.email/ is a good package with a good interface and enough documentation

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

#72

Post by makeitdouble »

ezoe wrote: post #47
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…

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.

Registrars are not infallible, but are a big step above in term of stability.

There is the ideal view that you should be able to have your own virtual island where absolutely nothing can deprive you of ownership (including existing govs. depending on your beliefs), and I kinda root for the people who try to push it as far as possible. But pragmatically, registering your domain goes a very long way and is IMO the best trade-off you can get without going crazy.

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

#74

Post by barrysteve »

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #55
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…

this is not a good idea for multiple reasons. john@smith.stlouis.mo.us ? Who gets that first? arkhramud@maprikhoychich.stlouis.mo.us ? How hard is to trace a person from one location to another? To fix this email problem abandon the email as an account identifier. Use a 'username', or as I do a random set of characters and digits. There is no reason my account (login) has to be indexed as "john.smith@example.com". It…

Could just extend the logic and tie it all the way down to your house address. john.124mainst@stlouis.mo.us and finally commit to a real-world identity to match the cyber one. Why not have a mail server in every house and then it's private and everybody can understand your email address. When you move house, the mail server spits out a thumb drive with your emails and deletes the local storage. You move email address to the new house. You could eventually replace the abc@xyz.com format and just autofill the email for John at 124 Main St in St Louis.

For some reason (probably a good reason) the internet can never be grounded, we always are going to stick to obscure formats that don't necessarily line up with real life and then get surprised when gov agencies collect that data and corps make money selling that exact data, out from under us.

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

#75

Post by superchroma »

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #45
superchroma wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then conservatives win, sell off state assets to reduce government/patch a deficit and suddenly a private company is data mining anonymized emails for money again :(

As opposed to the progressives tracking everything you do, and suppressing/removing rights if you have wrongthink. Don't believe me? Check out how many progressives said you shouldn't be able to participate in society if you didn't get the COVID vaccine.

This wasn't an excuse to expand scope to a team bitching session. Conservatives, even in my country (which isn't America), are famous for privatising public assets. The key point is that I can't see how a service like this that operates at a net-loss, that provides what people who aren't into computers would consider an 'optional service', can survive a cost cutting exercise when you'll have a line of businesses out the door who promise they can make it profitable at the expense of users (who are poorly protected outside of Europe).

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

#76

Post by toomuchtodo »

pa7ch wrote: post #50
daenz wrote: 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.

Also would be cool to have a distinguished (via UI) inbox for government only communications that can't be phished. This way people can access more government services online. And if there are any security problems they can be resolved by the DMV.

“Messaging.gov”

USPS is a better last mile tech support provider imho. Natural fit if they end as a trust anchor and gov identity proofing provider.

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

#77

Post by deepdriver »

TeeMassive wrote: post #33
deepdriver wrote: post #26

Earlier 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.

Fastmail offers this feature as well, for less technical users.

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

#78

Post by hamburglar »

godmode2019 wrote: post #59
Shared404 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do this, and it's very nice to tell who lost/sold my email. Also it's funny to see people react to their business name being in my email :P .

I had a website break, because they were filtering emails that contain their domain name for some reason. And I had no way to apply for the government licence thing I needed, and the people on the phone suggested I use the website.

I’m very rigorous about including the full domain name in my email address (consistency helps me remember what I used. I made the mistake early on of using myname-paypal@mydomain.com instead of myname-paypal.com@… and it drove me insane until I changed it), but every once in a while there’s a site (or occasionally a customer service rep) that refuses to accept that, in which case I just make up some unique three letter suffix to use instead and make a note of it in my password manager. My email for my kids’ school whose name starts with a W, for example, just ended up being mynane-w@mydomain.com. Luckily these exceptions are rarely necessary and I’ve only had to do half a dozen of them in about 17 years of doing this.

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

#79

Post by dusted »

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 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 and leak enough info to me to get access to use their relay..

Back when I got my first ADSL, the ISP apologized for blocking port 25 and explained how to use their relay.. Things sure have turned sour in that regard.

To this end, I've become convinced that the only fair thing to do is make email a human right. Nation states absolutely should provide and host, e-mail accounts for their citizens. (it can be up to the citizens how they want to use these accounts, if they want to use them only for receiving mail from the state, or if they want to use them for everything else too).

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

#80

Post by brewdad »

barrysteve wrote: post #74
WaitWaitWha wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is not a good idea for multiple reasons. john@smith.stlouis.mo.us ? Who gets that first? arkhramud@maprikhoychich.stlouis.mo.us ? How hard is to trace a person from one location to another? To fix this email problem abandon the email as an account identifier. Use a 'username', or as I do a random set of characters and digits. There is no reason my account (login) has to be indexed as "john.smith@example.com". It…

Could just extend the logic and tie it all the way down to your house address. john.124mainst@stlouis.mo.us and finally commit to a real-world identity to match the cyber one. Why not have a mail server in every house and then it's private and everybody can understand your email address. When you move house, the mail server spits out a thumb drive with your emails and deletes the local storage. You move email address…

That gets unwieldy in a hurry for apartments and other multi-unit addresses. Not to mention 124 East Main St vs 124 West Main St.

Then what happens when John (who is actually John Jr., but never uses the Junior unless legally required) has a son John III? Then John Sr. moves in rather than to a nursing home.

Post reply on HN