[HN Gopher] Fastmail accounts blocked in Russia, here's what we ...
___________________________________________________________________
Fastmail accounts blocked in Russia, here's what we know
Author : andrewshadura
Score : 274 points
Date : 2021-06-09 09:59 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (fastmail.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (fastmail.blog)
| abcd_f wrote:
| Where did all the brouhaha with Russia banning Telegram end?
|
| From what I understand it seems to be operational and rather
| popular there. Did the state give up or did Telegram end up
| "cooperating" with them?
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Telegram started to collaborate with Russia and they let it
| live.
| nszceta wrote:
| Untrue
| threatofrain wrote:
| Where did you obtain confidence for this story?
| vbezhenar wrote:
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-telegram-ban-
| idUSK...
|
| Roskomnadzor said it had acted because the app's Russian
| founder, Pavel Durov, was prepared to cooperate in
| combating terrorism and extremism on the platform.
| meibo wrote:
| Blocking Telegram turned out to be technically unfeasible since
| they fought it by routing data through western cloud providers,
| which the Russian state was unable to block sensibly(you may
| remember stories from back then).
|
| In the end they "stopped trying" and actually embraced using
| Telegram as a propaganda tool nowadays.
| pentagone wrote:
| They played cat and mouse for a while.
| https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9653-russia_vs_telegram_technica...
| saul_goodman wrote:
| I can't say enough good things about Fastmail, been a customer
| for many years now.
| ZoomZoomZoom wrote:
| >We have made the decision to block signups for all IP addresses
| we identify as coming from within Russia. We have also removed
| our app from the Apple and Google app stores for customers in
| Russia.
|
| WTF? Why would you ever do that? You said you have no legal
| presence in Russia, why f*ck over the users? Instead of ignoring
| hostile stupidity you're helping it, this is mind boggling.
| Sorry, I can't "feel good" about your services anymore.
| igammarays wrote:
| To prevent new users from potentially losing access to the
| service later on. Why would you sell a mission critical service
| to a customer you know you cannot support?
| clucas wrote:
| According to their blog post, "If we didn't comply, they stated
| they had the right to block our website (and possibly all data
| transmission) between us and anyone within Russian borders."
|
| They were were going to be blocked anyway. So the two options
| were "Russian users are blocked, and the Russian government
| considers us law-breakers," or "Russian users are blocked, and
| the Russian government does not consider us law-breakers."
|
| Even if there are no direct consequences that the Russian
| government can enforce on Fastmail, I can't imagine why they
| would want to choose option 1. Why do you think they should?
| What good would it do for anyone?
| gpm wrote:
| They might also be aiming to preserve their ability to send
| mail to russian mail servers, and to serve existing russian
| users, and to let new russian users sign up by signing up
| with a IP address outside of russia.
|
| I.e. a choice between "russia is ineffectively blocked by us"
| vs "russia is effectively blocked by the russian government".
| teknopaul wrote:
| yeah remember the block is because they don't have enough
| Russian customers to make complying with local data laws
| worth the cost/effort. They were not banned the were asked
| to obey the law and they weighed up pros and cons. Normal.
| Plenty of US sites refuse to let eu citizens view thier
| content because they don't want to comply with GDPR (which
| I consider a reasonable set of laws that protect me)
| Personally I use Yandex for email so the NSA can't get
| their hands on it and I don't have to continually fight
| changes in terms and conditions that want to sync my
| advertising id with Google or Facebook. Fastmail obeying
| local laws is the correct thing to do. There is no malice
| in the law as it is written, its just data protection
| _from_ the US government.
| ZoomZoomZoom wrote:
| > There is no malice in the law as it is written, its
| just data protection _from_ the US government.
|
| That is absolutely not the reason for this regulation
| existing.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > There is no malice in the law as it is written
|
| Please read what you have wrote now.
|
| Law say go spy after A and B, ESPIONAGE
| sidlls wrote:
| To me it's more disappointing that they actually considered
| meeting the demands of the regulatory body. I'd have simply
| blocked Russia after the loss in court.
|
| Also, why should Fastmail expose itself any further, in any way
| as a target of Russia's corrupt dictatorship? It does suck for
| those Russians impacted. They should turn their ire toward the
| real problem though: their government.
| tzs wrote:
| What if they could meet the regulations without it costing
| too much and without exposing them to risk of compromising
| privacy and security? I don't see why you find it
| disappointing that they checked to see if that was the case
| rather than immediately pulling out.
| ZoomZoomZoom wrote:
| > why should Fastmail expose itself any further
|
| Expose to what exactly? Sanctions, neural-gas attacks or
| nuclear weapons? Does Russia have any legal or technical
| levers which could potentially harm Fastmail business?
| UseStrict wrote:
| I mean, I legitimately wouldn't be surprised if they took
| political prisoners if Fastmail showed up to court to
| fight, or hammer out an agreement. Let alone what they
| would end up having to submit to while operating within the
| country. Russia is known to be pretty hostile towards the
| west.
| mjthompson wrote:
| I thought this too. On the other hand, it does make sense to
| them to publicly claim that the reason they moved out was for
| technical rather than political reasons. It might not make
| themselves a highly attractive target for a retaliatory DDoS
| attack.
| duxup wrote:
| I can understand Fastmail wanting to be in compliance with the
| law... or just not do business there.
|
| Making a whole effort of operating in Russia, being blocked,
| and trying to work around that seems like a potentially endless
| effort. Meanwhile you're offering a service to your customers
| that would be pretty spotty considering all the hassle going
| on.
| patrakov wrote:
| It is not about compliance (existing accounts are kept, and
| decision to prevent signups is made purely on the basis of
| the IP address and not e.g. the country that issued the
| credit card). It is about avoiding the promised blocking of
| outgoing mail from Western users of FastMail to Russian users
| of any other mail provider.
| duxup wrote:
| Well compliance and "avoiding the promised blocking" are
| same at this point.
| patrakov wrote:
| You may also want to watch my FOSDEM 2020 talk, "Software
| distribution: new points of failure (In a censored world)".
| It is about cases when governments block legitimate services
| due to nothing bad done by the said services, only because of
| their bad neighbors.
|
| https://archive.fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/sdnpof/
| varispeed wrote:
| Soon similar will be happening because of the EU's TERREG -
| only difference is that even if you block EU IP addresses, the
| law is still going to apply if you have a "significant" EU user
| base. This means companies who want to opt out will have to
| request proof of citizenship of all their users to establish
| how "significant" is their user base and then either terminate
| the accounts or set up a legal presence in the EU with a
| censorship officer.
| patrakov wrote:
| This is not a difference. The Russian law also talks about
| Russian users, not IP addresses.
| UseStrict wrote:
| I don't think it's up to Fastmail to fix the nonsense coming
| out of the Kremlin. The Russian government wants them to
| basically compromise their service to comply with their spying
| needs, Fastmail simply opted out. I think they chose a
| reasonable option.
| ZoomZoomZoom wrote:
| They didn't comply, which is perfectly reasonable. But they
| should have stopped at that. I don't know what "fixing"
| you're talking about.
| longcommonname wrote:
| We recently did a similar thing at the company I work for
| in response to similar pressures.
|
| The effort to make that change was significantly less than
| the continual effort required to deal with the pressures.
| From a cost perspective their decision makes sense, from a
| customer perspective less so.
| ZoomZoomZoom wrote:
| Again, what pressures?
| clucas wrote:
| I think you are underestimating the trouble a nation-
| state can make for a foreign company, especially if that
| foreign company continues to leave itself exposed by
| doing business in that nation-state.
|
| I don't know the exact ins and outs of how courts will
| enforce foreign judgements (I'm sure it's very case-by-
| case), but saying "we cut off signups from people in that
| country" is surely a very strong prophylactic against
| such a judgement being enforced.
|
| And on a more petty level, Russia could make serious
| trouble for any Russian expats employed by Fastmail (or
| their relatives still living in Russia). Cutting off
| signups makes this at least marginally less likely.
| evmt wrote:
| In Russia using a VPN has been a necessity for a while already. I
| think most people here who even know about Fastmail use one
| already.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I wonder if the fastmail protocol could be hidden in AWS-like
| data streams to take an approach like telegram. If they try to
| block it, they shut down their entire digital business
| infrastructure.
|
| I have been looking for an alternative to Gmail, does anyone have
| recommendations? Fastmail? Proton mail?
|
| What put me over the edge is my young friend had a heart attack,
| went to the hospital and (during recovery) logged into his Gmail
| account using a laptop there; this triggered some security thing
| that permanently locked him out of his account.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| > I wonder if the fastmail protocol could be hidden in AWS-like
| data streams to take an approach like telegram. If they try to
| block it, they shut down their entire digital business
| infrastructure.
|
| As long as server name sent in cleartext in SNI, blocking any
| website is trivial. Telegram uses a different approach with
| multitude of proxy servers and dynamic proxy changes via
| Apple/Google push messages. It's not applicable to an ordinary
| website.
|
| If/when encrypted SNI is widely implemented, it might work.
| patrakov wrote:
| > If/when encrypted SNI is widely implemented, it might work.
|
| No. China is already blocking all connections with encrypted
| SNI. If such services become popular or make the encrypted
| SNI mandatory, then the choice will be to either install a
| government MITM certificate or not use the internet at all.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| My point is that right now Russia does not have to choose
| between blocking entire CDN or allowing all websites.
| Unencrypted SNI allows to selectively block some websites
| while keeping CDN for other websites untouched.
|
| Russia's situation is far from China, AFAIK.
| ivrrimum wrote:
| I have my own Digital Ocean droplet and have a docker_mailer
| smt server. Super easy to setup + you dont rely on big tech for
| basic email service.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| I've been using fastmail for years and I love it.
| Sylamore wrote:
| I've been a paying customer for a few years (since Dreamhost
| shutdown catch-all support) and when I 1st migrated I tripped
| over a bug in their IMAP implementation that made thousands of
| messages disappear from my mailbox. Their support identified
| the bug and pushed a code fix into production in less than 24
| hours, which immediately resolved my issue.
|
| Gmail on the other hand keeps kicking my devices out of being
| able to log in and activating a security lock down, and the
| closest thing to support I can get about it is a webpage that
| implies that can only happen if my devices are hacked.
| hexa22 wrote:
| Fastmail seems to be the best provider currently. Have only
| been using them for a bit but had no issues.
| Maxburn wrote:
| Around fifteen years for me, fastmail is great.
| hansel_der wrote:
| > I wonder if the fastmail protocol could be hidden in AWS-like
| data streams
|
| this reads funnily non-techy
|
| i mean web-mail exists or are you reffering to some imap/smtp-
| in-http?
|
| should be good as long as it is ssl-encrypted and runs over
| tcp-port 443, no?
| utucuro wrote:
| Fastmail created the JMAP Standard, published by IETF. Take a
| look here: https://jmap.io/
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| Web mail can replace IMAP/POP, but you're still going to need
| an SMTP server to receive email. Or is there some sort of
| widely supported SMTP over HTTP protocol that I'm unaware of?
| kube-system wrote:
| Webmail replaces both IMAP/POP and SMTP for the connection
| between the user and the mail service they are using. The
| connection between you and a webmail provider is just a
| simple HTTP/S web application. It's the connection between
| your mail service and the recipient's mail server that will
| use traditional mail protocols.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| I am aware of that, but you're missing my point. Webmail
| needs SMTP (while it doesn't necessarily need IMAP/POP).
| So there is bound to be an SMTP server somewhere that
| cannot be hidden in HTTP traffic, which is what I think
| hansel_der was implying.
| beprogrammed wrote:
| Well fastmail's servers are not in Russia, so they can
| just keep using SMTP without issue, it would only be the
| client in Russia who would need to tunnel his traffic to
| fastmail.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| You're forgetting the SMTP server on the other end. If
| Fastmail SMTP servers can no longer relay messages
| from/to Russian SMTP servers, then Fastmail is no longer
| a viable email service for Russians communicating with
| each other, unless all of them were using foreign based
| email services.
| beprogrammed wrote:
| I am not forgetting anything. It is indeed true that
| fastmail is broken for Russians in Russia. And trying to
| tunnel out to fastmail just to mail back in to Russia
| makes little sense.
|
| Also broke are all Russian email users who have to send
| to or receive from the free worlds fastmail accounts.
| Would seem this is just Russia damaging Russians.
| czottmann wrote:
| There's German mail provider Mailbox. https://mailbox.org/en/
| They tick a lot of good boxes for me.
| rychco wrote:
| I started using fastmail about 6 months ago and have really
| enjoyed it so far. My only concern is whether they'll be around
| long term (10-20+ years) because it's quickly become my default
| email for important stuff.
| distances wrote:
| Others commented about your own domain. It's straightforward
| to set up, costs maybe $7 a year. You may want to look into
| it.
|
| Additional bonus: use all kinds of addresses you want
| (me@shadyservice.domain.com) for easy blocking if an address
| leaks.
| melesian wrote:
| I've had my Fastmail account for over 20 years. It's an
| employee-owned company with first class ethics and a first
| class service. An absolute beacon of integrity. It's too bad
| these qualities aren't more in demand. Make sure you use a
| Yubikey. An honourable service provider isn't enough.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| You can always get your own domain and only give out email
| addresses from that. But my prediction is that Fastmail will
| outlast GMail.
| beprogrammed wrote:
| A bold prediction to be sure.
|
| I hope you're right!
| wgm wrote:
| I started using fastmail about a year ago. They've been
| around since the late 1990s so I feel good about their
| longevity.
| rychco wrote:
| I wasn't aware of that. That's very reassuring.
| Shacklz wrote:
| I'm a very happy customer of protonmail. They're consistently
| extending their offering (VPN, Calendar, Drive is up next),
| their pricing seems fair, albeit not exactly cheap, but to be
| honest though, I almost consider this to be a feature - I'm
| perfectly okay with paying good cash for something as important
| as mail.
|
| Their UI was somewhat lackluster but they recently released a
| completely overhauled version (just a few days ago), which
| seems kinda nice so far.
|
| All in all, I can only recommend it. That being said, I'm
| mostly only receiving mail and rarely ever sending out any, so
| YMMV.
| [deleted]
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| Fastmail offers a VPN? I can't find anything about that.
| cascom wrote:
| ProtonMail does
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| My bad
| _joel wrote:
| Devil's advocate, wouldn't keeping the two using seperate
| providers be better? Not 'crossing the streams' so to
| speak
| cascom wrote:
| I have and like ProtonMail - but until it supports calendar
| in its iOS app it's an incomplete solution / non-starter.
| ByteWelder wrote:
| As a former ProtonMail customer (for several months) and
| current Fastmail one (~ 4 years): If you have more than 2
| domain names, you'll pay 30 EUR/month for your ProtonMail
| account. I think that's ridiculous. The 5 alias limit for the
| "Plus" tier is also too limited in my opinion.
| Ly5846N929Rm6bb wrote:
| I don't know how well all the features match up but you can
| use as many domains as you want on Migadu for $19/year.
| reaperducer wrote:
| According to the blog post, ProtonMail and others are in this
| boat, too.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| FastMail customer. +1, nothing but good things to say. They
| even championed the new JMAP standard.
| declnz wrote:
| Long-time (edit: 15+ years) customer of Fastmail, have only
| praise for them.
|
| For me it's a service that just gets out of the way and I get
| on with life, not worrying about who's mining emails etc.
| horlux wrote:
| migadu is a really option
| gpm wrote:
| Second this
|
| Assuming "really [good] option"
| justusthane wrote:
| +1 for Fastmail. I've been happy for several years.
|
| I wrote about my experience switching off of Gmail with some
| tips here if it's helpful: https://www.justus.ws/tech/how-to-
| ditch-gmail/
| arihant wrote:
| For your concern, Zoho is a great option. Very reliable
| support. I got locked out once and they were able to help me
| get back my account really fast.
| RealStickman_ wrote:
| I've been using Protonmail for some time and started paying for
| it about one year ago. I mainly switched to the paid plan to
| get access to their Protonmail Bridge for use with a local
| email client and that has worked well so far.
| ojame wrote:
| I've had a paid account with Fastmail for probably going on 8
| years I'd say. It's been a fantastically reliable service and
| the odd (perhaps 3 or 4 times) I've needed to reach out to
| support it's always prompt and a real conversation.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| Nice to hear about the support. I haven't had to use it.
|
| I'm a 2 or 3 year customer, bringing my own domain. Love
| being able to send and receive from *@mydomain.com for the
| entry level price ($50/year, I believe). App works great on
| both Android and iOS and doesn't drain my battery.
| yarcob wrote:
| I'm also a happy Fastmail customer. They actually offer
| customer support (at least they did a couple of years ago
| when I needed it).
|
| I had an issue with Fastmail where I accidentally deleted a
| bunch of emails, and with help from their support I was able
| to restore them from their backup quickly.
|
| Contrast that to Gmail, where thousands of messages suddenly
| disappeared from the inbox, and the only support option was a
| forum with dozens of other users asking for solutions to the
| same problem.
| kmonsen wrote:
| Gmail is required by law to really delete things the user
| deletes. There are guarantees around how quickly it will be
| done.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| > Gmail is required by law to really delete things the
| user deletes.
|
| This is not universally the case and the opposite is
| actually stated in their privacy policy and data
| retention agreements as it relates to financial
| transaction information (which likely needs to be
| retained for tax purposes).
|
| While Google likely pays it safe and complies mostly with
| CCPA/GDPR 'rights to be forgotten' for the rest of the
| US, and a good chunk of the world there's no legal
| requirement outside of the contractual agreements
| provided in paid Workspaces on when they need to purge
| this data.
|
| Current privacy policy: https://www.gstatic.com/policies/
| privacy/pdf/20210204/3jla0x... Data retention policy:
| https://policies.google.com/technologies/retention
| farisjarrah wrote:
| I've had the same good experience as you. As another
| datapoint, they really do live up to their name. Everytime
| I test sending myself emails, I almost always get the email
| to my fastmail address 30-90 seconds faster then Gmail.
| Also gmail tends to disapear messages if they're not from a
| super uber reputable email provider, which sucks sometimes.
| Fastmail will always deliver my emails if I am playing with
| a local postfix server or something like that.
| stevehawk wrote:
| i have a gmail account that duplicates/forwards to my
| fastmail and somehow fastmail shows the forwarded email
| waaaaaay before gmail even tells me i got the original. i
| giggle every time.
| O_H_E wrote:
| > from _their_ backup quickly.
|
| Wow, that is something
| [deleted]
| explorigin wrote:
| Try Infomaniak (https://www.infomaniak.com/en/hosting/web-and-
| mail/mail-host...). I've been using them for years. Solid
| platform, not 5-eyes, good webmail experience, cheaper than
| fastmail.
| mfsch wrote:
| Just be aware that they require a phone number to sign up
| (can't remember if it's Swiss numbers only) and if their
| security systems trigger, they ask you to upload your
| government-issued ID.
| throwawaystress wrote:
| I'm also a Fastmail user (for the past 5 years or so), but I'm
| considering switching to iCloud, given the announcement it'll
| start supporting custom domains. Fastmail is pricey ($50/month
| for the non-lite tier), whereas iCloud is $1/month for 50 GB.
| squiggleblaz wrote:
| Fastmail has three current tiers: Basic, Standard and
| Professional. Basic is $3/user/month, Standard is
| $5/user/month and Professional is $9/user/month. None of them
| are remotely close to $50/month for ordinary single users.
| You would need 10 users to get to $50/month for the Standard
| "non-lite tier" plan.
|
| Perhaps the user has confused fastmail with another service
| or they might have some legacy plan which is more expensive
| than it needs to be. (I think I have a legacy plan...)
| innocenat wrote:
| Isn't most legacy plan less expensive? I have legacy plan
| that's basically the current Standard plan but at $45/yr.
| newscracker wrote:
| Could you link to the iCloud announcement that says it'll
| start supporting custom domains? I saw that it will support
| disposable addresses, but didn't notice anything about custom
| domains.
| dustyharddrive wrote:
| https://www.macrumors.com/2021/06/08/icloud-mail-custom-
| doma... - it wasn't discussed in the keynote but it showed
| up on the iOS 15 new features page
| tilolebo wrote:
| More like $5/month. Or $50/year
| farski wrote:
| I don't think Fastmail has any plans that are $50/month
| asnelt wrote:
| I moved from fastmail to Runbox many years ago. The Runbox
| service is very reliable and all the servers are outside of the
| US.
| a3n wrote:
| I've been a very enthusiastic fastmail customer for N years. (I
| don't remember timelines very well, but N is large.)
| toss1 wrote:
| Very happy customer of kolabnow
|
| Checked out both protonmail & fastmail among others, ended up
| selecting kolabnow, no regrets.
| ashton314 wrote:
| Fastmail has been nothing but awesome. Currently using PO Box,
| which is a a sub-company or something. I get all the Fastmail
| features and it's been awesome. So happy to fork over my money
| for such a reliable service.
| genghizkhan wrote:
| I'll put in a recommendation for MXroute (mxroute.com). They're
| geared towards slightly more technical users, ime, but there's
| practically no limits (apart from rate of outgoing mail).
| Unlimited domains, unlimited aliases, unlimited accounts, even.
| The entire service uses DirectAdmin as a management UI so it's
| pretty easy to use. They've even got plans geared towards
| resellers. The owner/sysad is an ex-Digital Ocean guy who's
| obsessed with mail delivery, so you're not likely to face any
| issues delivering to practically anyone.
|
| I shifted over from Fastmail (who are amazing, don't get me
| wrong) because I got a good Black Friday deal.
| donkarma wrote:
| That lifetime plan is tempting
| newscracker wrote:
| Go to the lowendtalk.com forums and you'd probably find
| threads with even cheaper plans. They come with certain
| limitations, but are good for some people.
| [deleted]
| hamilyon2 wrote:
| Roskomnadzor themselves is not likely to block smtp or even imap
| traffic to fastmail in Russia.
| ilammy wrote:
| Wait a minute. Why would Fastmail preemptively block Russian IPs
| if they don't have any legally vulnerable presence in Russia?
| Just to deny Roskomnadzor the joy? There is Russian proverb that
| aptly describes such behavior: "nazlo mame otmorozhu ushi" (cut
| off your nose to spite your face).
|
| > _What you can do if you 're affected_
|
| > - _Talk to Roskomsvoboda: a digital rights advocacy
| organization._
|
| I like when private companies tell their customers what politics
| they should engage in.
| detritus wrote:
| O/T
|
| > There is Russian proverb that aptly describes such behavior:
| "nazlo mame otmorozhu ushi" (cut off your nose to spite your
| face).
|
| Curious to finally learn its origin, I had a Google -
| particularly as the phrase popped into mind this morning on my
| walk to work.
|
| It Doesn't appear to be of Russian origin, per se. Certainly,
| It was something I heard a fair few times coming out of the
| mouths of Scottish family when I was younger.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_off_the_nose_to_spite_...
| andrewshadura wrote:
| The Russian phrase has a different literal meaning though.
| 'I'm going to freeze my eats to spite my mum' which refers to
| mothers insisting their kids wear warm hats in winter.
| boruto wrote:
| Ears*
|
| For anyone thinking what is eats in Russian.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > I like when private companies tell their customers what
| politics they should engage in.
|
| Well, if they can't provide a service or are having problems
| doing so for legal reason, it's only sensible to ask their
| customers to lobby for a better legal framework if they wish to
| receive that service. It's a problem (IMO) if what they ask for
| is unrelated to their business, but quite a few people would
| disagree with that, as well; especially if they fight for
| something they deem necessary.
| ZoomZoomZoom wrote:
| > ask their customers to lobby for a better legal framework
|
| Do you understand the absurd level of naivete of this
| position?
| Volundr wrote:
| I genuinely don't. Can you explain it to me?
| ZoomZoomZoom wrote:
| First of all, you're a service operator, political
| activity of your customers is not your business.
|
| Secondly, lobbying doesn't exist in countries with no
| political representation. The only political activity
| available in such countries are activism (not of the
| bureaucratic type) and sabotage, all severely punishable.
| nbabitskiy wrote:
| We don't have political representation, but very much
| have lobbying. Sabotage of telegram is not punishable at
| all. This is straight nonsense.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > First of all, you're a service operator, political
| activity of your customers is not your business.
|
| Yes, but they're not asking about it. They're just saying
| "we can't provide this service for this reason; if you
| want to use this, we need help with this law". I don't
| see anything unreasonable there. Of course, one could go
| the Google way and say "No service for you, no reason
| why, your questions will be ignored", but I think this is
| quite an unreasonable demand. It's not like someone is
| forced to lobby for you, they just say why and what to
| change.
|
| > Secondly, lobbying doesn't exist in countries with no
| political representation. The only political activity
| available in such countries are activism (not of the
| bureaucratic type) and sabotage, all severely punishable.
|
| Lobbying was meant in the farthest sense in my original
| comment. Still, I don't see why they should not name a
| reason and/or course of action despite this. "We can't
| service you, come cry with us in the corner" is really
| not something to put on your website.
| ZoomZoomZoom wrote:
| > if you want to use this, we need help with this law
|
| It's reasonable to say this, but not reasonable to expect
| this to happen. Knowing this won't happen but still
| asking for this just paints you clueless.
|
| > We can't service you
|
| They can, they just decided not to.
| kojoru wrote:
| > block signups for all IP addresses we identify as coming from
| within Russia
|
| I think they hope that this way they will not be blocked and
| thus the existing customers can keep connecting indefinitely.
| saba2008 wrote:
| >Just to deny Roskomnadzor the joy?
|
| No, to minimize damage by calming down proverbial monkey with a
| grenade.
|
| Webmail, imap & registration blocking is trivial to avoid. MX
| servers ending up in some blocklist might cause much more
| problems.
| ilammy wrote:
| Understandable from this point of view -- with Internet being
| a shared resource -- but a strange concession nevertheless.
| Every participant of the Internet would end up blocking
| Russia to reduce the chance of some Russian official doing
| something stupid, hoping that they see website/email/torrents
| inaccessible and go bother someone else.
|
| Oh well, that's what politics and power games are all about.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| A sufficiently powerful state actor can find ways to penalize
| you, harm your company, or make the lives of principals or
| employees terrible even if you don't think you have a legally
| vulnerable presence in their jurisdiction. Just ask the USA!
|
| I would imagine their lawyers recommended it. I too would be
| curious to see the legal memo, but I'm not surprised that a
| company would take this course, it does not seem unreasonable
| to me.
| hvis wrote:
| > I like when private companies tell their customers what
| politics they should engage in.
|
| They didn't tell you you should do it. Just that there aren't
| many other options.
| deeblering4 wrote:
| I highly recommend scheduling a regular mbsync job to keep a
| local copy of your emails in sync with the imap server.
|
| With this it's easy to pick up and move to a different provider
| or recover from outages, account closure, etc.
|
| If you couple this with your own domain your email will be very
| portable.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| I use a traditional local email client: macOS's Mail.app. It
| stores a copy of every email.
|
| What's the point of using mbsync?
| tweetle_beetle wrote:
| Are there any pros/cons to using mbsync over imapsync out of
| curiosity? Only ask as I've seen imapsync recommended in many
| places.
|
| https://imapsync.lamiral.info/
| spinax wrote:
| I pay for a second inexpensive mailbox at Mailfence and sync
| the contents of the Fastmail account to a _subfolder_ of the
| Mailfence account. There is rate-limiting involved, so my
| config is dialed down on "pipelinedepth" to ensure I don't hit
| that problem (you can easily overrun the Mailfence side pushing
| too much too fast). The cron runs via a unique user account on
| a cloud server every 4 hours using unique passwords (see
| below).
|
| cron runner's ~/.mbsyncrc # Source
| IMAPAccount imap-src-account Host imap.fastmail.com
| Port 993 User <user@domain.com> PassCmd "cat
| <redacted>/.secure/psrc" SSLType IMAPS
| SystemCertificates yes PipeLineDepth 1
| # Dest IMAPAccount imap-dest-account Host
| imap.mailfence.com Port 993 User <username>
| PassCmd "cat <redacted>/.secure/pdst" SSLType IMAPS
| SystemCertificates yes PipeLineDepth 1
| # Source map IMAPStore imap-src Account imap-
| src-account # Dest map IMAPStore imap-
| dest Account imap-dest-account #
| Transfer options Channel mailsync Master :imap-
| src: Slave :imap-dest:SubFolder/ Sync Pull
| Create Slave Remove Slave Patterns *
| CopyArrivalDate yes
|
| Note: use the Fastmail option to set up a READ ONLY IMAP user
| password! (it's a really cool feature of Fastmail that many
| others do not support) Mailfence also has per-service
| passwords, set one up for IMAP as well. Do not use your main
| login passwords if you can avoid it - $0.02.
| gnull wrote:
| For anyone reading mbsync(1) and getting confused now: they
| have renamed Master-Slave into Far-Near in the latest
| versions.
| deeblering4 wrote:
| Nice idea to copy between imap accounts, I might set that up
| in addition to my local backups.
|
| How do you like mailfence overall?
| spinax wrote:
| It seems just fine? As it's my secondary account it's
| mostly SMTP idle so I can't give an honest opinion about
| delivery (like emails from your bank) but it seems to be
| doing very well as a service. Like Fastmail, they have a
| detailed domain setup wizard to ensure all your DNS for
| SPF/DKIM/dmarc etc. is all properly configured for best
| results. I have no complaints for what I use it for,
| really. I do wish that I had finer grained app password
| control like Fastmail but it's not a deal killer.
|
| I went with Fastmail as my primary due to the enhanced
| feature set and crazily enough - the Notes and Files
| feature in their mobile app. I can take a picture, toss it
| into that folder and get it on my desktop quicker than
| finding a USB cable or running a foldersync - the Notes are
| similar, I replaced Google Keep by just using the Fastmail
| Notes functionality.
| hnaccount_rng wrote:
| How do you sync back your local copy of the IMAP database? I
| had the problem of a misconfiguration in my email rules
| deleting everything older than 28 days. Not a _big_ problem due
| to backups, but I didn't manage to restore those as any local
| restore got deleted as soon as the sync with the IMAP server
| started
| deeblering4 wrote:
| mbsync supports syncing in both directions. In my case I have
| an hourly cron that syncs imap -> local.
|
| And then if something goes wrong I make a copy of my backup,
| and invert the configuration to sync local -> imap.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| Maybe it helps to copy the messages into a new IMAP folder
| before resyncing.
| kenniskrag wrote:
| I have these problemes too. In my case there is no unique
| identifer if you abort a restore and move the files again
| in the "folder", which leads to duplicated emails.
| notslow wrote:
| Fastmail +1 . I have had an active Fastmail account for at least
| 20 years. It provides the perfect amount of features for me,
| without the creepiness.
| 93po wrote:
| I wish their notes and calendar were better. I emailed them
| asking if they were ever going to improve notes, they said no.
| I've been a customer for 5+ years despite the bad notes
| stickfigure wrote:
| Why are they doing the government's work for them, and blocking
| Russia? Let the Russian government do the blocking. It's not your
| job to enforce authoritarianism, and no country west of Belarus
| is going to extradite you for providing email.
| patrakov wrote:
| > Why are they doing the government's work for them, and
| blocking Russia?
|
| In order to avoid outgoing mail to Russian mail providers from
| being blocked.
|
| I.e., if the government blocks them, then BOTH Russian and
| Western users suffer (Russians because they can't access the
| service without technical tricks, and both because they can't
| send mail to Russian users of other mail providers). If they
| block Russian user signups themselves or can otherwise kinda-
| sorta-legitimately claim that they don't have Russian users,
| then only Russian users who don't have a VPN suffer from being
| unable to access the service.
| mnw21cam wrote:
| Stopping people signing up in the first place means that in a
| few months' time when the government actually starts blocking,
| they don't get a load of angry customers demanding their money
| back.
| daxelrod wrote:
| Presumably, they and their lawyers believe they are subject to
| Russian jurisdiction. Why else would they have challenged an
| order from the Russian government in Russian court?
| TX0098812 wrote:
| The open internet was a nice idea, but people with power tend to
| find a reason to use it.
| ansgri wrote:
| I wonder if it will affect the mail exchange, or only client
| access?
| yarcob wrote:
| According to the article, it sounds like Fastspring themselves
| blocked customers with Russian IP addresses from signing up,
| and removed their app from Russian app stores.
|
| I'd hope that even if the Russian authorities would block
| Fastmail, that they would only block their web servers and
| maybe their IMAP servers, but not their SMTP servers. The
| latter would impact a lot more people in Russia.
| strogonoff wrote:
| Anecdotally, Fastmail seemed to already be blocking Russian
| sign-ups 4 years ago. I know at least one non-user who
| couldn't sign up around that time because of this issue.
| Either IP or (more likely) billing address was the issue, if
| I recall correctly.
|
| Alternatively, their sign-up form was broken for all users at
| that time, but I hope they've better SREs than that.
| mulander wrote:
| The article touches on new signups being blocked, what happens to
| the current paying users in the region? Are they also blocked?
| How is fastmail helping them move/supporting them in this
| situation?
|
| I am a fastmail customer in a different region (Poland). I am
| however looking closely at this as who knows, maybe I will be on
| the receiving end in the future?
| OJFord wrote:
| Sounds like that could just get them in more trouble?
|
| Such customers are probably on their own - but the article does
| spell out what they've done, so hints at the solution: VPN to
| outside Russia in order to sort out moving. (Or stay with
| Fastmail and accept that you need the VPN to use email, I
| suppose.) The CEO does often comment on Fastmail submissions
| here (brongondwana) but I suppose maybe not in this (lawyers
| involved) case.
| mulander wrote:
| Well, I would expect them to address this issue specifically
| as that is one of the selling points of fastmail. You can get
| banned on Google for nothing and not being able to reach a
| person with your data held hostage. Now, this is a comparable
| situation where data is held hostage unless the customers in
| Russia have a way to access and retrieve whatever is stored
| on their accounts.
|
| On top of that there is a question of billing and refunds in
| the case of long-term plans being paid up front (eg. one year
| subscription).
| grumple wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > As of the time of publication, there are no changes to other
| accounts, and email flow in and out of Russia has not been
| blocked, but we will continue to monitor the situation.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of the Russian government, I
| think that their general goal is sensible and we'll see more and
| more of this from all countries.
|
| By their general goal I mean " _the Russian media regulation
| body, the Roskomnadzor, demanded that Fastmail comply with
| Russian data laws. This is because Russia has a national goal of
| controlling the flow of information within their borders._ "
| (from the blog).
|
| A company may not have any presence in a country but if they have
| customers there it's not unreasonable for that country to expect
| that its data laws should apply to the company's relation with
| those customers (and as it happens that's what the GDPR stipulate
| as well)
| tyingq wrote:
| That was my reaction as well, though I still don't like it.
|
| That is, I don't like that GDPR-like laws can extend to
| actually blocking services. But they already do. I'd prefer
| that they just force "disclosure", like "Yes, I understand my
| email won't be stored in my home country".
| grumple wrote:
| Compliance with legal features of various nations does not
| divorce companies from the responsibility for the results if
| they choose to comply.
|
| Actively participating in oppressive behavior makes companies
| complicit. This is why companies today rightly face criticism
| for use of slave labor, abusive labor, resource exploitation,
| helping governments restrict speech, helping governments breach
| privacy (which results in people actually dying in places like
| Russia). Just because these things are legal to not make them
| right or acceptable to Western exployees, shareholders or
| governments. If Russia demanded that I must take actions that
| would potentially result in deaths from their authoritarian
| regime, like by giving them access to our customer's
| communications, I'd tell them to get bent.
| sigzero wrote:
| Except there was much MORE to it than just that statement.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Actually, GDPR went _way_ beyond that, demanding that every
| website in the world comply with their laws, regardless of
| whether or not you had customers in the EU, unless you count
| somebody reading your personal blog as a "customer."
| rakoo wrote:
| Wrong. GDPR asks that every website comply with their laws
| _for anything that relates to EU_. An italian citizen has to
| agree about it even if they live in Nepal. But a nepalese
| website doesn 't have to care about GDPR as long as they
| don't have a presence in the EU.
|
| The fact that websites put a cookie wall for everyone is the
| strategy of said websites to make everyone think they are
| victims of GDPR, but that is not true. If you don't want to
| put a cookie wall, the easiest option for everyone is to not
| gather personal data.
| tzs wrote:
| Nearly everyone gets GDPR territorial scope wrong and whose
| data it applies to wrong.
|
| Where GDPR applies is covered in Article 3, "Territorial
| scope". In what follows I'm going to use the term
| "processor" to refer to those processing or holding data or
| controlling those who process or hold data. GDPR makes the
| distinction but in most places the same rules apply to
| both.
|
| 1. GDPR applies if the processor is "in the Union",
| regardless of whether or not the processing takes place in
| the Union.
|
| 2. GDPR applies regardless of the location of the processor
| if they are processing the data of people are are in the
| Union if the processing is related to:
|
| (a) the offering of goods or services (paid or free) to
| people in the Union, or
|
| (b) the monitoring of their behavior as far as their
| behavior takes place within the Union.
|
| Some things to note that are often overlooked.
|
| 1. It says "in the Union", not "citizen", not just in
| Article 3 but everywhere in GDPR. An Italian citizen living
| in Nepal is equivalent to a Nepalese citizen living in
| Nepal. (And it goes the other way around, too...a Nepalese
| citizen living in Italy would be equivalent to an Italian
| citizen living in Italy as far as GDPR goes).
|
| 2. If people in the Union come to your website and you
| either offer them goods and services or you monitor
| behavior of theirs that takes place in the Union, then the
| EU considers GDPR to apply.
|
| Whether or not you have to care about that is complicated,
| because even if the EU does not have the power to directly
| enforce it against you, they may have indirect power. For
| example, a place I worked collected tax on online sales of
| digital goods in Europe, even though there was no way the
| EU could make us do so, because our payment processor
| required us to collect taxes of the jurisdiction the
| customer was in.
|
| One of the recitals says that when it comes to offering
| goods and services, what matters is whether you envisage
| offering them. The fact that people in the EU can reach a
| Nepalese website would not be sufficient on its own--what
| the EU would look at is whether the site did things like
| localize to EU languages (that aren't common in Nepal),
| accepted EU currencies, advertised in the EU, and things
| like that.
|
| If you aren't intending to offer goods and services in the
| EU, and aren't doing things EU specific to make it easier
| and more likely that people in the EU will use your goods
| and services, then you probably don't have to worry about
| the 2(a) "offering goods and services" basis for GDPR
| territorial scope.
|
| It's the 2(b) one that is the big worry, monitoring
| behavior that takes place in the Union. As written that is
| pretty open ended. It is not at all obvious what kind of
| behavior is behavior that takes place in the Union. There's
| nothing in the relevant recital about "envisages" with that
| one, so it appears that if you are doing something that
| counts as tracking behavior that takes place wherever the
| visitor is from, then GDPR is something you have to worry
| about if people in the EU can visit your site.
| jtbayly wrote:
| > ...A nepalese website doesn't have to care about GDPR as
| long as they don't have a presence in the EU.
|
| Sure. You don't have to care. But this is blatantly wrong
| according to GDPR.
| rakoo wrote:
| No, because you're not targeting EU citizens and are also
| not operating in the EU.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| > _But a nepalese website doesn 't have to care about GDPR
| as long as they don't have a presence in the EU._
|
| Not really 'presence' but customers in the EU, or simply
| targeting people in the EU.
| varispeed wrote:
| EU TERREG changes the scope so that the location no
| longer matters and it applies to services with
| "significant" user base of EU citizens. It essentially
| mean to opt our from having to support 1hr SLA for
| content removal, services will have to check papers of
| all users to ensure they are not EU citizens.
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