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ioneja · 19 Aug 2020, 01:20 AM

P.S. And actually, something else bugged me about their statement -- I'm obviously overthinking this! -- such as the line about the "attack launched against Tutanota Saturday night was mitigated after several hours..." along with "connectivity remained intermittent for some users with two more short downtimes Sunday and Monday night."

To me, that's sugarcoating the whole situation that unfolded. Words matter. "Several hours," for example, could be interpreted as many things, but it was at least 10-11 hours by my count, maybe more. "Several" could indeed mean "10" if you stretch the connotation, but why not just say "10?" And then "two more short downtimes" was also sugarcoating it. What happened in those other downtimes IMO was not "short." Not to mention the geo bias of their statement... "Saturday night" is only Saturday night for Germany. They've got a global userbase, their Saturday night is someone else's peak critical email time. They should mention actual times UTC/GMT.

Not to make a huge deal out of this, but I really don't like services that sugarcoat things or are vague, and I think I have to pull back a little more of my statement that their post was "somewhat decent" as it actually is now reinforcing the concern that they are not being as honest and transparent as they should be. Even the line about being on spam lists was sugarcoated IMO, giving the impression that they were on spam lists only on Sunday and Monday and that they resolved it -- and actually, they are *still* listed in some cases.

Anyway, I'll wrap up my overthinking on this, lol. They should just actually be giving a more realistic, accurate, and transparent accounting, such as, "The attack began approximately at so-and-so GMT/UTC and we were able to mitigate most of it by so-and-so GMT/UTC, and our users experienced approximately 10 hours of downtime during the first wave," etc., etc. Instead it was vague, avoided some key details and meaningful answers to other serious concerns I mentioned, and they then highlighted their "usual" uptime of 99.9% (marketingspeak) and began cheerleading the cause of privacy and that they are stalwart defenders thereof. The whole approach is just too rookie to me. Oh well.

Okay, promise this is my last post on this topic. I have to get back to work!

19 Aug 2020, 01:20 AM	#48
ioneja Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Jul 2011 Posts: 713	P.S. And actually, something else bugged me about their statement -- I'm obviously overthinking this! -- such as the line about the "attack launched against Tutanota Saturday night was mitigated after several hours..." along with "connectivity remained intermittent for some users with two more short downtimes Sunday and Monday night." To me, that's sugarcoating the whole situation that unfolded. Words matter. "Several hours," for example, could be interpreted as many things, but it was at least 10-11 hours by my count, maybe more. "Several" could indeed mean "10" if you stretch the connotation, but why not just say "10?" And then "two more short downtimes" was also sugarcoating it. What happened in those other downtimes IMO was not "short." Not to mention the geo bias of their statement... "Saturday night" is only Saturday night for Germany. They've got a global userbase, their Saturday night is someone else's peak critical email time. They should mention actual times UTC/GMT. Not to make a huge deal out of this, but I really don't like services that sugarcoat things or are vague, and I think I have to pull back a little more of my statement that their post was "somewhat decent" as it actually is now reinforcing the concern that they are not being as honest and transparent as they should be. Even the line about being on spam lists was sugarcoated IMO, giving the impression that they were on spam lists only on Sunday and Monday and that they resolved it -- and actually, they are still listed in some cases. Anyway, I'll wrap up my overthinking on this, lol. They should just actually be giving a more realistic, accurate, and transparent accounting, such as, "The attack began approximately at so-and-so GMT/UTC and we were able to mitigate most of it by so-and-so GMT/UTC, and our users experienced approximately 10 hours of downtime during the first wave," etc., etc. Instead it was vague, avoided some key details and meaningful answers to other serious concerns I mentioned, and they then highlighted their "usual" uptime of 99.9% (marketingspeak) and began cheerleading the cause of privacy and that they are stalwart defenders thereof. The whole approach is just too rookie to me. Oh well. Okay, promise this is my last post on this topic. I have to get back to work!