logoalt Hacker News

jorviyesterday at 10:00 PM2 repliesview on HN

As Fastmail themselves have pointed out many times, e-mail is inherently a multi-party activity with both parties holding a copy of the e-mails. Aside from the microscopic amount of people GPGing their e-mail and sending it over good servers, your e-mail is as private as the other party treats it. Which isn't very much. And you can't do anything about that.

You want private and / or anonymous communications? Don't use e-mail.


Replies

frereubutoday at 10:42 AM

Fair point, but my desire is for "good enough" rather than perfect. I know my emails go into other systems, it's more about feeling that my inbox is hosted by a company solely based in a jurisdiction where it can't be compelled to do anything by the US government. It's also a matter of principle - I want to move as much of my infrastructure as I can away from US-based services because I don't trust things not to get worse there.

0xbadcafebeeyesterday at 11:01 PM

The bigger issue isn't a privacy one, it's a security one. For many people, if you can get access to their email box, you can account-reset your way into any other account they own. So if an authoritarian state compromises your account (because they control the servers), there goes your everything