Skiff mail encrypted and simple?

[TenFour]

Hadn't heard of this service until today. Looks like they have a pretty robust free version with 10GB of storage. https://skiff.com/

Seem to have plenty of funding, though everytime I read the word "decentralized" I think of crypto and NFT scams. Hopefully this isn't another one. https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/30/sk...ed-workspaces/

[ioneja]

First I've heard of it too. Thanks for the heads up on this. Looks like it has good potential from my first quick view.

[janusz]

One of their offerings: IPFS stands for the Interplanetary File System. Modesty isn't skiff's main feature

[TenFour]

Here's an article on Skiff email: https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/17/2...-email-privacy

[emoore]

I searched their web site and didn't find any mention of support for exporting contacts or email. Just lots of stuff about web3 protocol layers and ways to import from competitors. My best guess is you need to use commands for the mutable file system to do that.

[janusz]

Originally Posted by emoore

I searched their web site and didn't find any mention of support for exporting contacts or email.

Why should they make it easy to migrate to a competitor?

[Fenman]

It also doesn't say, as far as I can see, which are the other planets involved: https://www.thefreedictionary.com/interplanetary

[ioneja]

I signed up for an account to test them out and it's very simple at this point, but shows some potential. It's a long way to good functionality from what I can see so far though. Their "decentralized" collaborative workspaces/document editor is actually more interesting to me at this point.

However, after reading through their privacy policy, terms of service, and acceptable use policy, I was pretty surprised to see how much information they collect about you, considering they are marketing themselves as a "privacy" oriented service. This was disappointing to say the least, but it's obviously still better than Google, etc.

What alarms me in a broader sense is this recent movement by Silicon Valley types and venture capital firms to take over, co-opt and/or rebrand the idea of what "privacy" means in cloud infrastructure. They casually throw around the terms end-to-end encryption, cryptocurrency, open source, etc... and when you read their privacy policy, it is anything but. I expect we'll be seeing more and more of these kind of services that wrestle with the fundamental meaning of "privacy" and twist it into a slick polished package that uses all the right catch phrases, but is actually far from "private."

So I'm highly skeptical of this service in terms of real "privacy" based on their own published policies (which are quite invasive and contradictory compared to some other "privacy" oriented providers IMO). Add that to their venture capital trajectory, terrible jurisdiction, international data transfer clause, etc., and despite all their assurances, best intentions, and marketing... it's kind of a slick San Francisco/Silicon Valley version of "privacy" that I wouldn't want to use for anything important.

Anyway, I signed up for a free account and will keep an eye on it, and I appreciate TenFour for posting about it, but for anything that I consider more "private" (and BTW 100% true "privacy" doesn't exist), I'll definitely skip it.

[SideshowBob]

Originally Posted by janusz

One of their offerings: IPFS stands for the Interplanetary File System. Modesty isn't skiff's main feature

It doesn't look like Skiff has much to do with it other then using it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterP...ry_File_System

[dantheman]

Just discovered Skiff yesterday.

Was surprised to see the first post about it here by TenFour, on the same day it was officially launched:

https://skiff.com/blog/mail-launch

IPFS is also incorporated into Brave browser as an option (which is how i discovered this new email service).