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Email Comments, Questions and Miscellaneous Share your opinion of the email service you're using. Post general email questions and discussions that don't fit elsewhere. |
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8 Feb 2017, 01:31 PM | #1 |
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Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 143
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Google Must Submit Emails Stored In Foreign Servers To The FBI, US Judge Rules
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8 Feb 2017, 03:25 PM | #2 | |
Ultimate Contributor
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Canada.
Posts: 10,355
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Though I have never really needed privacy, I always considered it to be a basic right. These days I realize that times have changed. If you need privacy 'when you communicate' the best way to ensure that happens, is to use a different medium (to communicate) - a telephone call perhaps. |
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8 Feb 2017, 03:50 PM | #3 | |
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Join Date: Jun 2016
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Well, you can do a lot to maintain your privacy these days. The problem is that the person you must send your message should agree to do the same, and thatīs a big problem. The other part is if you want to give all your data to some companies gaining a profit with it or not. In that case avoid google, facebook and many others. |
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8 Feb 2017, 04:42 PM | #4 | |
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Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Canada.
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ps: I spent quite a lot of time (many years ago) learning how to use PGP and GPG, but no one i knew ever wanted to communicate that way, they all thought that I must be nuts.... |
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8 Feb 2017, 05:02 PM | #5 | |
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Join Date: Jun 2016
Posts: 194
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Yes, thatīs what I mean |
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9 Feb 2017, 12:01 AM | #6 | |
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Join Date: Apr 2008
Posts: 371
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Well, if you're super concerned about private conversations, there's always the option of placing VoIP calls with ZRTP encryption, although of course both ends have to support it, and you have to be using a VoIP provider that does so as well.
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9 Feb 2017, 12:05 AM | #7 | |
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Join Date: Apr 2008
Posts: 371
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Of course, the lack of perfect-forward secrecy in PGP makes it a less-than-ideal solution for proper e-mail privacy anyway in a modern world, but that's another story. Ultimately, however, it just comes down to the fact that most people don't care enough, and therefore there's no market demand for PGP-based solutions. Even S/MIME, which is built into many e-mail clients, doesn't have a widespread enough usage that people can understand it or do anything with it. I spent a couple of years signing all of my outgoing e-mails with an S/MIME X.509 certificate (from a trusted CA no less), and I found it broke more people's mail clients when they received my messages than it solved anything, and I rarely interacted with anybody that I could actually encrypt messages to, as they didn't see the point of getting a key for this purpose, so in the end it was mostly just an exercise in futility. |
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9 Feb 2017, 12:38 AM | #8 | |
The "e" in e-mail
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: EU
Posts: 4,933
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Those who really need privacy/secrecy are prepared to invest in learning proper encryption techniques (among other things....). Not many folks are willing to bother to encrypt "let's meet for lunch tomorrow, usual place, usual time" messages. Last edited by janusz : 9 Feb 2017 at 12:55 AM. Reason: may -> many |
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9 Feb 2017, 12:53 AM | #9 | |
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Join Date: Apr 2008
Posts: 371
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Add to that the number of people who use web-based mail services, where encryption is much more complicated to properly accomplish, and the whole idea is just a non-starter. However, I think there are a lot of people who would happily encrypt their messages if they could do it by pressing a button in their favourite e-mail client even on the web. However, if Microsoft, Apple, or Google asked the majority of their users whether they're prefer more user-friendly encryption compared to just about any other new feature for their e-mail apps, user-friendly encryption would be at the very bottom of the list. |
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9 Feb 2017, 03:44 AM | #10 |
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Join Date: Jun 2016
Posts: 194
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Today most of the people will use Signal or a secret chat in Telegram to send private data instead of using email with pgp. I also used a lot gpg in the past but it's difficult today, only with some friends sharing very private or sensitive information, not with the "common people".
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9 Feb 2017, 06:16 AM | #11 |
The "e" in e-mail
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: EU
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Do they correctly compare public key fingerprints in order to verify the identity of other Signal users??
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9 Feb 2017, 08:25 AM | #12 |
Master of the @
Join Date: Feb 2017
Location: USA
Posts: 1,683
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Most people care zilch about privacy online or in email, except when it comes to possibly losing money. Or, I should say they "think they care zilch" about privacy. Using a modicum of care with your choice of password, 2FA, what you click on, and what you visit on the web and I suspect most of us are 95% of the way towards being as safe as we expect to be in our online communications. People rant a lot about email privacy, but what about the days when everyone sent paper letters around with all sorts of private information that could be easily snatched by anyone without any skill, or the old phone system of landlines where you could be tapped and you would never know? The truly bad guys have lots of ways to protect their communications, while the rest of us are more worried about scammers trying to steal our banking information.
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9 Feb 2017, 02:04 PM | #13 | |
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Join Date: Jun 2016
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10 Feb 2017, 12:37 AM | #14 | |
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Join Date: Apr 2008
Posts: 371
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To put is simply, the average person would undoubtedly have a problem with their friends, colleagues, or neighbours reading their personal e-mail messages. On the other hand, the idea of some dude at Google or the NSA that they've never met (and probably never will meet) just doesn't bother people as it's just too nebulous and to be fair will probably have no impact on them at all. |
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