[HN Gopher] Google has most of my email because it has all of yo...
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Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)
Author : pabs3
Score : 415 points
Date : 2022-10-23 02:36 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mako.cc)
(TXT) w3m dump (mako.cc)
| NorwegianDude wrote:
| Also take into account that there is also a good amount of people
| using Gmail, without it showing up in the headers of your mail.
|
| Most email is automated, and Google is not a popular provider for
| that, but Google has a huge percentage of human generated emails.
| bagels wrote:
| Let's say theoretically I did a gdpr request to Google to delete
| my emails, do they have to delete the counterparty copy?
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I doubt it. It is not reasonably "your data". If I copy the
| email you sent me to dropbox would be the same sort of thing.
| MereInterest wrote:
| From Article 4 of the GDPR:
|
| > 'personal data' means any information relating to an
| identified or identifiable natural person ('data subject'); an
| identifiable natural person is one who can be identified,
| directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an
| identifier such as a name, an identification number, location
| data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific
| to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic,
| cultural or social identity of that natural person;
|
| As I (entirely non-lawyerly) interpret it, you could not do a
| GDPR request to delete the counterparty emails, because those
| are things written by you, not information about you. However,
| an email in which you state "I broke my leg today." would be
| personal data, because it can be connected to your identity and
| is information relating to you.
| webmobdev wrote:
| I doubt it - when you send an email to someone, they also have
| the rights to store it in their inbox.
| amelius wrote:
| Some companies forbid the use of Gmail by employees. However,
| they should also block them from sending email to @gmail.com
| addresses.
| rbc wrote:
| I'm still operating a personal email service. It's become more
| challenging, using TLS, DKIM, SPF, and anti-spam technologies,
| but I think it is still worth it to keep some measure of control.
| It makes troubleshooting easier when you can see the logs from
| the MTA. I've also become a fan of the OpenBSD smtpd/pf/spamd
| triumvirate for controlling spam. It's effective, without being
| super complicated.
| cglan wrote:
| Having your own email/domain isn't about privacy. Email has
| become essentially the key to almost everything in modern life.
| If I lose access to my email I lose access to basically
| everything I own and it would be a massive hassle to switch
| emails. Banks, schools, apps, etc. Often times these services
| won't even let you change to a new email if you don't have access
| to an existing one. Some use email as 2factor. It's a nightmare.
| Owning your own domain separately is crucial. Who hosts your
| email matters less.
| jesuscript wrote:
| Go through that exercise of ditching that email. You will find
| out the 2-3 things you need absolute plan a/b/c for.
|
| Seriously, reset your email password to something you can never
| remember and write it down and have someone hold it for a month
| (don't tell them what is it, tuck it in an envelope). Let your
| mind run circles around your fears and you'll find out how
| little that email account owns you.
|
| Freezing one credit card will shut off all your frivolous
| subscriptions (Spotify, Netflix, Prime).
|
| You'll call your internet provider because you don't want that
| cut off.
|
| You'll call your bank, brokerage.
|
| You'll remember your bosses contact info, and the one person at
| work you trust.
|
| You'll let the most important people know (could be as few as
| one) that you're off the grid, in your terms. You'll memorize
| their number.
|
| You'll realize all the people you could care less about, or
| they about you, if neither of you ever heard from each other
| again.
|
| Kind of a freeing thing. Then you'll make a new email, and
| you'll never add that much cruft to it ever again.
| ciex wrote:
| I see you are getting a lot of negative comments so wanted to
| let you know I agree this is a good thing. Creating chaos is
| the only way to take away power from digital bureaucracy and
| surveillance systems. Make multiple conflicting linkedin
| profiles in your name, share a WhatsApp account with friends,
| delete and recreate your Instagram profile every year.
| lexandstuff wrote:
| Sounds like an insane inconvenience. Sorry, what was the
| point of doing all this again? Just to prove you can?
| kuramitropolis wrote:
| Nah, just to prove that _you_ can 't.
| thorncorona wrote:
| You don't _have_ to drive a car in the suburbs. It just
| will suck greatly.
| kuramitropolis wrote:
| You don't _have_ to have anything to do at all with car-
| centric suburbs to lead a life that doesn 't suck ;)
| omgomgomgomg wrote:
| I agree, this is why i use a chauffeur.
| LadyCailin wrote:
| Some people are into self flagellation. That's fine. It's
| when they think they're better than you because of it
| that it becomes insufferable.
| kuramitropolis wrote:
| And some people perceive the "conveniences" that the tech
| sector has foisted upon us as little more than socially
| mandated self-flagellation.
| jesuscript wrote:
| Look, it's one thing to say "I cannot live without my
| kids", and have some asshole say "ditch them. Move, adopt
| new ones, you'll see how stupid that attachment is".
|
| You guys are literally acting like e-mail is some
| cornerstone of a life well lived.
|
| I'll agree with the insufferable part though :)
|
| The rest of your comment, I'll just attribute to you
| projecting, which we all do, no one is better.
| danaris wrote:
| _You 're_ the one attaching moral judgements to it.
| Speaking of projecting.
|
| _We 're_ just saying that email is either necessary or a
| _massive_ increase in convenience for engaging in a wide
| array of common digital interactions, including some that
| are _extremely_ hard to get away from (utilities, banks,
| etc), and others that are part of what makes life worth
| living, rather than just subsistence survival (streaming
| services, online games, other luxuries).
|
| Doing without something that's technically possible to
| avoid, but wastes a whole lot of your time and mental
| energy, and does not materially harm you in any way, does
| not make you a better person. Nor does it make you a
| worse person. It's something that's a personal choice.
|
| Smugly presenting yourself as somehow better than us
| because you do without such things _does_ make you a
| worse person.
| jesuscript wrote:
| I think you are just wrong. I simply provided some advice
| to someone who feels they can't do without something that
| is possible to do without (or at least in a much more
| reduced manner).
|
| But I do like the irony, some of you inferred I said "I
| am better than you". The words are written by you -
| "makes you a worse person", which I don't need to make
| any inference on, I know what you said.
|
| I'd give the same advice to anyone that believes they
| can't live without coffee. Whether they drink it or not
| is none of my business, but their exclamation of an
| _impossibility_ is something I might chime in on.
|
| Start the thread again, I picked a specific thing to
| address with the GP. Don't care if he/she uses email, the
| whole world uses email lol.
|
| Just for shits and giggles:
|
| I get a few text alerts from my bank, I check things out
| with the bank app. I read the utility mail (yes the paper
| bill) once a month. No email involved. If I lost my
| email, my bank and electricity would be fine. So would my
| internet. It's not impossible.
|
| Morality seeping into this discussion and holier than
| thou interpretations (casted on to me), are interesting
| and I'll consider everyone's input carefully and adjust
| going forward.
|
| Edit:
|
| I use email.
| jesuscript wrote:
| Yes, and what's your plan when life sucks greatly? Will
| you sit around and die in your suburban home?
|
| Your ass better have a bicycle somewhere.
| jesuscript wrote:
| If it is just an inconvenience, then this exercise is
| unnecessary. This is more for those who believe they cannot
| survive without it (inconvenience vs survival).
| isametry wrote:
| This is a technology equivalent of "purposefully don't drink
| water for several days and see yourself nearly die".
| jesuscript wrote:
| It's all perspective. I think your phone number is more
| like water. If anything happens to your phone, you can
| simply take one physical trip down to your carriers store
| and get a new one with the same number. That's water.
|
| A bunch of email accounts that your whole life is tied down
| to where you can't even get someone on customer service on
| the line 24/7? No, that's Soda.
|
| I'm just saying, this is the diet equivalent of giving up
| sugary drinks and switching to water.
| jhobag wrote:
| It's actually an exercise in True freedom, trying to
| detach your life from all socials/spaces
|
| Remove/minimize socials, move to multiple countries more
| than a couple times a year. form new friend
| groups/communities, learning to min-max essentials
|
| Diet: try fasting, appreciate simple meals after a
| lengthy fast
| jesuscript wrote:
| I'm aware, but the message of was lost on a few in my
| original post.
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| > Then you'll make a new email, and you'll never add that
| much cruft to it ever again.
|
| What cruft are you talking about specifically?
| smaudet wrote:
| More applicable TBH with e.g. Facebook, but I generally
| agree...
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > "Let your mind run circles around your fears and you'll
| find out how little that email account owns you."
|
| This year I have recieved an email from a city councill if a
| city where I no longer live, that were about to sue me for
| underpaying some bill years ago.
|
| If I followed your advise I would be on the hook for serous
| money and headache
| jesuscript wrote:
| That email could have been sitting in your junk folder for
| all you know. Even with access to your account it would
| have been a dumb way to serve someone a summons.
|
| Following my advice or not, email could have still fucked
| you.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| it wasn't a summons, it was a pre-action letter.
|
| I agree its dumb, but they didn't exactly ask my opinion,
| did they?
| jesuscript wrote:
| No, it sucks. A summons usually requires them to serve it
| for-sure somehow (in-person or someone in your home that
| accepts it for you).
|
| They had no idea where you were, so you fell for the pre-
| action letter. They would have never gone through the
| trouble of where-in-America--are-you to sue you.
| YeBanKo wrote:
| What email do you use with domain registrar? I ended up
| switching most if mine domains to google domains simply because
| i find its ui more convenient for me, all eggs in one basket i
| guess. But how do you ensure that you aren't gonna loose access
| to your domain account?
| cube00 wrote:
| Given the way Google locks out accounts with no support or
| appeal I can't think of a worse registrar to use.
|
| I use my ISP's email address with my registrar, if they want
| to keep getting paid each month its in their interests to
| keep that email address working.
| YeBanKo wrote:
| What registrar do you use?
| YeBanKo wrote:
| At this point some government entity should provide a way
| to have an inalienable electronic address. There are strong
| protections for regular mail, that ensure that mail gets
| delivered. Cell carriers are required to port numbers.
| Since email addresses are tied to domain, there should be
| some usps-like service that allows to have an address, that
| can be related to a provider of your choosing. And this
| address is tied to your identity, which you can verify by
| physically visiting usps or dmv if all else fails.
| [deleted]
| ThunderSizzle wrote:
| No thank you. The government doesn't need even more power
| over my life.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > ensure that mail gets delivered
|
| Email is intrinsically an unreliable service, and always
| has been. It's a "best-effort" service. But at least
| email is honest about it up-front, and tries to address
| reliability in the RFCs.
|
| Not that Google cares much about RFCs.
| YeBanKo wrote:
| That was in reference to regular mail. USPS was one of
| the first fed agencies and mail was one of the few
| original functionals of the central government. On top of
| USPS being one of the largest agencies, there is also
| legal protection against tempering with mail and usps has
| its own enforcement branch.
|
| In case of email, it probably should simpler. Gov only
| serves as an address book, essentially. But does minimum
| of tech implementing it. Given how domain MX records
| work, does not seem possible. So i think email relay is
| the closest thing.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| OIC, sorry. It crossed my mind that's what you meant, but
| I said "Nah".
|
| As far as USPS anti-tampering and enforcement goes:
| <hollow laugh>. The postmen robbed me silly, and there
| was no process to get it fixed.
| b3morales wrote:
| > What email do you use with domain registrar?
|
| Using a paid email account that is only for admin purposes is
| the suggestion I have followed, based on
| https://sneak.berlin/20201029/stop-emailing-like-a-rube/
| YeBanKo wrote:
| What registrar do you use?
|
| > Using a paid email account that is only for admin
| purposes is the suggestion I have followed
|
| Good advice, btw. But unattainable for large part of the
| population.
| [deleted]
| cube00 wrote:
| Using your own domain also has advantages in terms of being
| able to use aliases for different websites so (when, not if) an
| address gets leaked you can > /dev/null it.
|
| If you're cheap like me you can give family members their own
| subdomain so everyone can have aliases for the cost of a single
| domain.
|
| It's sad to think back on myself nearly two decades ago when
| Gmail first launched as invitation service and I thought I was
| being smart by not paying for my own domain, little did I know
| how evil Google would turn out to be in terms of locking people
| out of their own accounts with no recourse.
| arglebargle123 wrote:
| Not defending big G here in the slightest but you can do that
| with Gmail aliases too: Someaddr+alias@gmail resolves to
| Someaddr@gmail.
| jasec57322 wrote:
| Most providers now block Gmail addresses containing . or +
| danaris wrote:
| This has not been my experience.
| 400thecat wrote:
| OK, but if the point was to obfuscate your "precious"
| address and use some other "throwaway" address, then this
| does not work. Your email address can be easily
| deconstructed and used for spam
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| > Who hosts your email matters less
|
| With my own domain being hosted by Google Legacy Workspace or
| whatever they call it, I've been wondering about this, and
| wondering if there has there any evidence of Google cutting off
| an entire domain randomly.
|
| To deal with that possibility I've been thinking what the
| easiest and most reliable way of providing a "failover" for my
| domain's mail is.
|
| Has anyone dealt with this successfully?
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| Buy Fastmail account (seriously, they should pay us money for
| advertising them so much).
|
| In your DNS/registrar settings add Fastmail as a secondary
| MX, disable DKIM and SPF.
|
| Customize it for your needs (necessary
| mailboxes/addresses/identities etc).
|
| Switch over primary MX to FM (maybe keeping G as a secondary
| for a week).
|
| Somewhat optional, but requires some effort - make G send any
| incoming email to some address not on your domain. You can
| buy some temp domain and slap it to FM too, it doesn't
| matter, except you would have two copies of mails for
| migration time.
|
| After mails start to flow to FM reliably (not from Google)
| remove G. from MX records completely.
|
| At this point you would know if something is wrong if some
| mail would be routed through G. instead of FM (by receiving
| them to that forwading address).
|
| If everything is okay - remove your G. workplace so it has no
| chance to mess things up.
|
| Before that move your mail from G to FM. If it's only
| thousands - even connecting Outlook (and maybe Thunderbird?)
| to both through IMAP and drag and drop mails from one account
| to another would work. If it's millions... clean up it first.
| You don't need news on newest sales from 2014.
|
| PS I'm not moved out from my Gmail account but I culled
| things there HARD. I also moved everything worthy (notably -
| registrars and mail providers) to my personal domain mail
| addresses. If I lose it - it wouldn't be that painful
| anymore.
| stavros wrote:
| > Buy Fastmail account (seriously, they should pay us money
| for advertising them so much).
|
| They _do_ pay us money, that 's what the referral fee is.
| vietvu wrote:
| Now think about it, what will I do when Google suddendly decide
| to ban my email? I don't know, my life is fucked.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| Is it known that domain registrars are better than GMail in
| this regard? Not asking sarcastically, but I had my domain
| taken over by registrar(not released to public, just registrar
| took control of it) after few week of notice when auto renew
| failed to charge my credit card, and my credit card was working
| fine elsewhere. Also many registrar like Namecheap cancelled
| subscription for Russian customers during this invasion. Not to
| mention incidents like [0]
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32470266
| komali2 wrote:
| But what's the alternative? Does SMTP even work without a
| domain? I dipped my toes in this far enough to connect a
| custom domain to a mailbox hosted by bluehost so I don't know
| too much but I always seek to separate from Google et al
| wherever possible. I thought the buck stops at DNS and domain
| registration though, short of like, that gnu internet project
| I vaguely remember, what's the alternative?
| csande17 wrote:
| You can theoretically send email to an IP address directly,
| like someone@[127.0.0.1], but I imagine a lot of the
| programs and websites you'd want to use don't know that.
| And you're still left with the problem of needing to get
| that IP address from someone who can arbitrarily take it
| away from you.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > Does SMTP even work without a domain
|
| It is, but don't expecting people understand what
| komali@13.55.66.77 is a perfectly valid address, nor the
| anti-spam systems or designers of web/mail apps and
| services.
| thinkloop wrote:
| msh wrote:
| Nothings perfect. I think if you use a reputable register
| with support and a paid email host with support you have less
| risk than a gmail where they can lock you out and you cant do
| password recovery because some filter triggered.
|
| I would add two other things. - Prepay the domain for a large
| number of years (10y) to avoid billing issues. - Keep a local
| copy of your email on atleast one machine (either just in a
| desktop client, or do regular exports).
| readsadhours wrote:
| People from the UK that had an .eu domain were unable to
| renew it after brexit.
| Roark66 wrote:
| Is this really a thing? I had a .eu domain for years. I
| only let it go this year(it was on annual renewal) . My
| registered address was and is still in UK and I never had
| any trouble from my registrar(eurodns) about the EU domain.
| Or do they do it based on the payment method? (I might have
| used an EU cc to renew)?
| cranekam wrote:
| Apparently it is true:
|
| https://www.gov.uk/guidance/registering-and-renewing-eu-
| doma...
|
| It seems .eu domains are more or less only available to
| people who live in the EU/EEA, hold EU/EEA citizenship or
| businesses that conduct business in the region.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| And that was always so; it's not "more-or-less", you've
| never been able to have a .eu domain unless you "belong
| to" the EU, for various values of "belong to". Always
| read the T&C.
| drooopy wrote:
| The difference here is that people from the UK voted _for_
| losing the right to renew their .eu domains.
| readsadhours wrote:
| This is irrelevant. Any country in the EU might do the
| same. I would hate to lose my domain because of this.
| drooopy wrote:
| Again, not the same thing. British people didn't lose it.
| Nobody took it away against the public's will. They voted
| in favour of getting rid of it.
| thfuran wrote:
| When was the last time a national vote was unanimous?
| corobo wrote:
| I specifically remember voting against brexit. Guess I
| ticked the wrong box.
| readsadhours wrote:
| As I said before, it does not matter. Before someone had
| an email address and now they don't, and it could happen
| to anyone with an .eu domain. This is what matters. It is
| an unreliable TLD for email addresses that you want to
| last.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| That's what I figured, which is why I never had a .eu
| domain.
| feanaro wrote:
| Not all of them did. Domains shouldn't be related to
| citizenship anyway.
| zaik wrote:
| Then you probably should not buy an .eu domain. The
| registry states very clearly that .eu is in fact tied to
| your citizenship.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| How exactly can you have an infrastructural domain
| decoupled from the nation providing the infrastructure?
| kdtsh wrote:
| This is a good reason to stick to .com and .net
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| Both are risky, but at least you can decouple your address
| from your storage.
|
| If something happens to your gmail, you lose both your
| address and your storage at once.
|
| If it is your domain, you presumably still have access to
| your host (which may just be gmail). And if you lose access
| to your host, at least you can still redirect your domain
| somewhere else.
|
| Nothing is foolproof, but you can split one large dependency
| into two smaller dependencies.
| sonofhans wrote:
| I've used https://www.pairnic.com for ~15 years, and they're
| lovely. I've had domains expire several times, and they've
| never given me grief. They're small enough to give a shit.
| belorn wrote:
| If you change your security model from gmail to a registrar
| you need to redo the risk assessment, or rely on someone else
| to do that risk assessment for your (i.e. base your decision
| on third-party recommendations/best practices).
|
| A free service is covered under very different customer
| protection than a paid product, but your country of origin
| matter as does the country where the registrar is located and
| the country where the registry is located (registry is
| generally the upstream provider of the registrar). It would
| be difficult legal fight when the TLD is .eu, operated by
| Belgium company (EURid), with the domain registered by a
| American company (Namecheap), while you the customer is
| located in Russia. Your bank could also in theory be a forth
| country involved.
|
| If you want legal protection as a domain owner the best
| advice is generally to use a cTLD of your own country with
| registrar located also within your own borders. It naturally
| depend a bit on how stable the country is and how good the
| customer protection laws.
|
| I also strongly recommend against registrars where
| responsibility is on you to renew the domain, rather than
| those that have contracts that run continuously until
| cancellation (who will also bill you if you fail the
| payment). For domain names it is a better model for both the
| customer and registrar, in contrast for a subscription
| service like a news paper. It is a bad default to
| automatically loose the domain name.
| behringer wrote:
| Can I get a recommendation on a service that bills?
| belorn wrote:
| If you live in Sweden, yes. Outside of that area I don't
| know. I can only guess that enforcing bills is something
| that is much harder once you pass national lines.
| yuvalr1 wrote:
| Sounds bad. Is there anything we can do about it? What is the
| most reliable domain registrar?
| SXX wrote:
| So far Gandi was posted as reliable company and over last
| 10 years I had no issues with them. One good feature is
| that you dont have to be owner to renew domain name
| registered with them. So in case you temporary lose access
| to your account you can still pay for domains. They also
| allow to keep credit balance for auto renew.
|
| I really didnt have much of issues to talk about so no idea
| how good is their support at solving them, but at least I
| have peace of mind when it comes to renewal.
| yuvalr1 wrote:
| Thanks! I'll remember them next time I need a domain
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| FWIW I just had a support ticket open with them in the
| last week and they were very responsive and helpful.
| highwaylights wrote:
| I see this advice (that you should use a custom domain) and
| it makes me a bit hesitant in that I'm not sure I necessarily
| trust a registrar more than I trust Google not to allow
| phishing/hijack/deletion.
|
| That said there's really two issues if you seperate out the
| inbox - access to new emails, and access to the historical
| emails you've accumulated. The second can be partially helped
| by downloading all mail + attachments from the server and
| keeping a backup.
|
| The first is more complicated either way you look at it.
| psychphysic wrote:
| I find thinking about the whole thing far too stressful.
|
| Especially now that so many of my photos and documents are
| 'backed up' to Google photos and drive.
|
| Balancing the risk of these black swan events is beyond me.
| Why ever would Google ban me? But they might. Why ever
| would Tutanota mess up my private domain? Or ban me? But
| they might!
| rglullis wrote:
| Now you know why there are still some people that still take
| "web3" seriously. It's the only system where you are not at
| the mercy of some external entity to be always benevolent.
|
| Seriously, ENS and Handshake alone should be enough of a
| reason to silence all of those who keep repeating "but
| blockchain has no real world applications".
| denton-scratch wrote:
| What does Ethereum Name Service have to do with email
| domains?
|
| How does one receive email from e.g. one's bank, at a
| Handshake domain?
|
| The "real world" in which Handshake and ENS are useful
| isn't the world I'm living in.
| LadyCailin wrote:
| I'm not necessarily defending web3, but you're asking the
| wrong question. Your same question could have been asked
| about email in general in the early aughts. But clearly,
| mass adoption happened, and the calculus changed. Sure,
| your statement is strictly correct, but completely
| uninteresting.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| What question did I ask that was "the wrong question"? I
| thought both the questions I put were rhetorical. Let's
| try:
|
| "What does email have to do with email domains?"
|
| "How does one receive email from e.g. one's bank, at an
| email domain?"
|
| No, I don't think my questions could equally have been
| asked about email in the early aughts (nor at any other
| time - those rewritten questions don't make sense).
|
| Mass adoption had already happened by the early aughts;
| email was adopted universally in the corporate world in
| the mid-nineties.
|
| Of course, what is interesting to you is your business.
| rglullis wrote:
| All you need is to have DNS servers reading ENS'
| equivalent of MX records. Failing that, you can even have
| that implemented at the email client or OS level.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Sorry, but that seems to require that my bank and all my
| friends adopt some skanky modified DNS resolver. Is that
| right? How exactly does that benefit them?
|
| And the alternative you're suggesting is that they
| replace their OS, or adopt some mutant mail client? Few
| of my friends have ever used a proper email client _at
| all_. And which alternative OS implements this? And
| again, what incentive do my correspondents have to switch
| OS?
|
| Really, if this is "all I need", it's clearly not a
| proposal that has much to do with the real world.
| rglullis wrote:
| > How exactly does that benefit them?
|
| If your friends wants to access a website that has been
| blocked by some authority, they can with this system.
| With the status quo, they can not.
|
| > replace their OS or adopt some mutant mail client?
|
| No, there is nothing stopping MS or Apple from adding
| this functionality to their own systems. All it would
| take is for them to see increased demand for it.
|
| > not a proposal that has much to do with the real world.
|
| What I am describing is a possible solution for a very
| specific problem, namely the lack of distributed identity
| systems (domain names) that are permissionless and
| censorship-resistant.
|
| You are right that this is not a concern for the majority
| of people "in the real world", but the whole conversation
| started because someone is talking about how many people
| lost access to their emails and domains due to
| abuse/mismanagement/arbitrary rule enforcement from
| different domain registrars.
|
| IOW, if you are okay with the status quo, _good for you_.
| But consider yourself privileged and don 't dismiss the
| complaints of those who are building and asking for
| better alternatives.
| immibis wrote:
| It has its own problems though: what if you lose access to
| your key?
|
| The other day someone suggested making real estate NFTs.
| What happens if the "owner" of some real estate loses their
| key?
| rglullis wrote:
| > what if you lose access to your key?
|
| Social recovery:
| https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/11/recovery.html
|
| > The other day someone suggested making real estate
| NFTs.
|
| Looking at the _current implementations_ , it is a
| terrible idea. But it doesn't mean that the problem can
| not be solved.
|
| > What happens if the "owner" of some real estate loses
| their key?
|
| Just spitballing here: take the idea of social recovery
| further to include the current legal institutions _as a
| backup_ instead of the main authority. For example, a
| contract that manages such high-value NFTs could require
| a set of government-sanctioned notaries who would have
| permission to transfer the NFT to any new address. So if
| you are the owner and you lose the key (or you get
| hacked), you could be made whole by presenting some type
| of "real world" legal evidence to the notary.
| simias wrote:
| And that's why web3 frustrates me to no end. Decentralized
| services were common in the "old" internet, web3 just takes
| than and adds a layer of ponzi and speculation on top of
| them.
|
| If bittorent was invented today you'd have to buy into some
| pyramid scheme to use it.
|
| Beyond that having a trusted third party does suck for some
| things, but at least it means that I have a recourse if
| something goes wrong. With cryptocrap I'm one hack away
| from losing my life savings, my domain, the history of all
| my transactions and even my monkey pictures!
| Huh1337 wrote:
| Domains weren't decentralized at any point in history. IP
| address allocation is also managed centrally.
|
| > but at least it means that I have a recourse if
| something goes wrong
|
| Have you actually tried it out? I lost several domains
| through no fault of mine (2 times fault of registrar, 1
| time fault of national TLD manager) and absolutely nobody
| helped me. Even tried suing - in 2 cases (the registrar
| fault) I got small monetary compensation for lost profit
| (so good luck with personal domains) but the domain was
| always lost forever. And when it was the TLD's fault I
| got nothing whatsoever.
| rglullis wrote:
| Tell me how decentralized services allow applications to
| be permissionless, censorship- and sybil-resistant
| without a blockchain. I will make both of us rich.
| coldtea wrote:
| Tells us how blockchain allows applications to be
| permissionless, censorship- and sybil-resistant in any
| way that matters and doesn't conflict with the use of
| said apps.
| rglullis wrote:
| ENS and Handshake are _exact_ examples of that.
| williamtrask wrote:
| Tell me how blockchain makes anything Sybil-resistant and
| I'll bite.
|
| I can create as many Bitcoin/eth/etc wallets as I want.
| Kerbonut wrote:
| Ethereum combats that with the concept of gas. You have
| to pay to play, which is a concept I've heard repeated
| tons of places for ending spam email.
| pdpi wrote:
| Gas doesn't do much for Cybil resistance, it's largely
| meant to stop you from clogging up the network by
| publishing a transaction that executes the busy beaver
| function on some nasty input, or something similarly
| hostile.
| pdpi wrote:
| There's plenty of really good criticisms of
| cryptocurrencies, but that's not one of them.
|
| The whole point of proof of work is Sybil-resistance.
| Because your voting power is tied to your hash rate, you
| can't just conjure up a bunch of voting power by creating
| as many wallets as you want. Ethereum's move to proof of
| stake keeps Sybil resistance but trades the power
| consumption of PoW for some amount of centralisation
| (because you need to hold funds to vote).
| PaulHoule wrote:
| 'Make both of us rich' is exactly what we're afraid of.
| rglullis wrote:
| What are you afraid of, really? People that can make
| innovations?
|
| My point was that the reason that people are doing all
| this work on the blockchain because no other solution has
| been shown to be better. Anyone that says "blockchain is
| not needed for that" should at least provide a better
| solution, or say "I actually prefer to keep the status
| quo".
| jkepler wrote:
| > If bittorent was invented today you'd have to buy into
| some pyramid scheme to use it.
|
| Bitcoin was effectively invented 'today', yet you don't
| have to buy into a pyramid scheme to use it.[1] For
| example, you could simply use it for cross-border
| remittance to avoid paying Western Union's high fees,
| without ever holding bitcoin, by using an app like Strike
| to send dollars from the US to El Salvador (using
| bitcoin's instantaneous lightning network as the payment
| rails behind the scenes)[2]. Or you could prove the
| existence of a digital document at a certain time by
| using Peter Todd's Open Timestamps[3], which simply puts
| a hash or your file into an Op Return on bitcoin's
| blockchain. Or, you could work on developing software or
| providing support or writing tutorials for the bisq
| protocol, get paid for your work with their bisq token
| (which is simply colored bitcoin), and cash out to have
| you national currency dumped in your bank account using
| the bisq software which has been developed and supported
| by a decentralized community with its governance built
| directly on bitcoin.[4]
|
| If you really still think bitcoin is a pyramid scheme,
| there's plenty or ways one could benefit from it without
| having to "buy in" or hold it. But if you put in the time
| and learn, you'll discover bitcoin is innovative
| technology, distinctly separate from the crypto space
| awash with scams and rug-pulls, like the fiat world
| already is.
|
| [1] https://www.lynalden.com/bitcoin-ponzi-scheme/
|
| [2] https://strike.me/
|
| [3] https://opentimestamps.org/
|
| [4] https://bisq.network/
| moffkalast wrote:
| Well you are still at the mercy of whoever's maintaining
| the network, aka some random-ass people all over the world.
| Aside from the few main ones, crypto networks are
| infamously ever changing and you're more likely to register
| a domain on something that won't even exist in 2 years
| because it collapsed completely. Maybe Eth is to big to
| fail now, but maybe it isn't.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| anti-fragility, permission to fail, rapid iteration
|
| basically risk isn't controversial, and it rapidly
| iterates to more and more resilient systems
| moffkalast wrote:
| Well it certainly needs another decade or two of
| iterations before it can replace what we have now, I
| imagine.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I don't think it needs to replace anything, that's not a
| goal to me
|
| I think it needs to be permissionless and autonomous
|
| I think it needs to compete on overhead costs and payment
| style (pay to write once, store and read indefinitely for
| free. compared to a SaaS service)
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| "The problem is you can lose access to your emails at any
| time."
|
| "Use web3 - then when you lose access to all your emails
| it's the system working as intended!"
| rglullis wrote:
| That is the kind of tired, cheap, _wrong_ argument that
| it so easily debunked, but "skeptics" still keep using.
|
| Let me see if you really interested in a healthy debate
| or just proud of your ignorance: do you know that when
| using web3 for _domains_ , you'd still be running the
| email servers that use the traditional protocols? You
| won't be losing any of your messages. You'd still be
| authenticating against a traditional server.
|
| There is nothing about using web3 for domains that would
| lead you to lost access to your data.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| You're right, you won't lose access to your emails,
| you'll lose access to your address, which really is the
| bit that I care more about - losing ability to log into
| sites and services is what really scares me about losing
| my email.
|
| But now the important question - how does a web3 domain
| name solve the domain problem any better than just buying
| a domain, especially considering that "Permission to
| fail" is being touted as a web3 feature?
| rglullis wrote:
| > losing ability to log into sites and services is what
| really scares me about losing my email.
|
| That is also _not_ a problem. Maybe current "login with
| web3" implementations rely only on your primary ENS
| record for authentication, but there is nothing stopping
| a MFA system where the ENS name is only one of the
| factors.
|
| E.g: you could build a system that uses ENS as the first
| factor and a regular PGP client cert as the second. There
| are also "social recovery" systems. Even if you lose your
| keys, you can have a secondary address that can vouch for
| you.
|
| IOW, stop arguing like you are the only one aware of the
| current limitations and that the thousands of people
| working on the space are just stupid. Before spewing
| ignorant arguments, you should learn a thing or two .
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Let me repeat my question:
|
| > how does a web3 domain name solve the domain problem
| any better than just buying a domain?
|
| I don't see how you addressed that. Apparently we would
| need to implement whole new systems? I understand, you
| gotta bring try to bring it into the domain and get
| belligerent to obfuscate the answers to simple questions,
| but I don't see how this addresses my concern.
|
| > stop arguing like you are the only one aware of the
| current limitations and that the thousands of people
| working on the space
|
| Ah, ok, so this is all in theory. Simpler answer would be
| "it isn't, but maybe one day it is." Thanks, I read
| between the lines and answered my own question!
|
| > Before spewing ignorant arguments, you should learn a
| thing or two.
|
| Am I being blockchain negged?
| rglullis wrote:
| > how does a web3 domain name solve the domain problem
| any better than just buying a domain?
|
| Was that your question? The answer is simple: once you
| lease (ENS only works with leases, just like traditional
| domain registrars, so I'll void the term "buy") a web3
| domain, there is no one that can _unilaterally_ take it
| away from you.
|
| > Ah, ok, so this is all in theory.
|
| Not exactly. It's possible, but impractical. If you are
| willing to accept the really poor UX and the lack of
| general adoption, you could build such a system today.
| pbronez wrote:
| Can you point me to a blog post that explains how to use
| web3 name assignment technologies, in combination with
| MFA, to own and manage a domain that is robust to DNS
| provider shenanigans, crypto hacks I can't anticipate or
| understand, and targeted harassment?
|
| This is a genuine question. I'm in the market for new
| tools to manage my personal and business domains.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| when you get to the System Design interview, they'll be
| expecting a different model of application than your
| design written here
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I don't think I'm going to want the job where "use web3"
| is an acceptable element of my system design.
| moffkalast wrote:
| You'd think so but those types of jobs pay twice as much
| haha.
| woodruffw wrote:
| "Permission to fail" is a desirable property in a
| research setting, not a global name service. This
| justification is in tension with the one offered above,
| and there's been no evidence so far that "web3" is
| becoming _more_ resilient instead of _less_ resilient.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Not all products are suited for all market participants.
| Figure out where you are on the gradient and act
| accordingly.
|
| Ethereum Name Service was launched in May 2017, there are
| many name service competitors.
|
| > and there's been no evidence so far that "web3" is
| becoming more resilient instead of less resilient.
|
| based on? some frequency of a type of headline you saw?
| quantified against..... anything?
| woodruffw wrote:
| This is a cop-out: of course there are people with absurd
| risk or reliability profiles, for whom just about
| anything might be suitable. The entire point of systems
| like DNS are that they're universal substrates that don't
| require any exceptional selection. Economies and
| ecosystems are built on reliable and universal
| substrates.
|
| My perception of resiliency is based on this[1], which
| has reliably increased in volume and quantity by year.
|
| [1]: https://web3isgoinggreat.com/
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I think it isn't doing great at consumer confidence, I
| don't think it needs to exist for that
|
| https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=earningfarm-exploited-
| for-9...
|
| An exploiter's bug bounty on a still functioning yield
| farm that flash loaned itself, getting frontrun by a MEV
| searcher because the exploiter didn't hide their
| transaction directly with a block producer via bribery?
| That sentence wasn't possible a year ago. And now we all
| know not to design a smart contract powering a farm that
| way. I don't view that as failure. A regulatory sandbox
| would have deliberated for 5 years before allowing a
| launch and still never found that problem, resulting in a
| following multi year pause, committee report, and
| disbanding. I view this much faster higher iterative
| version as a win.
| superkuh wrote:
| Handshake was co-founded by the guy claiming to be a Korean
| prince who attacked (and killed) freenode and was very
| abusive to the open source projects formerly there. I
| wouldn't touch it. He is extremely litigative. ref:
| http://www.hashedpost.com/2018/11/hashed-people-handshake-
| co...
|
| The first part of his attack on Freenode was his attempt to
| push his Handshake cryptocurrency on the users there. It
| escalated quickly after this failed. ref:
| https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2018/08/02/handshake-
| reveal...
| Enhex wrote:
| a better alternative to email is to use public key
| cryptography for authentication
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Public Key Cryptography isn't an alternative to email.
| Public keys aren't a convenient way to refer to
| addressees, and PK algorithms are a very inefficient way
| of sending messages, which is why they are generally used
| to send the key for a symmetrically-encrypted
| transmission.
| latexr wrote:
| > It's the only system where you are not at the mercy of
| some external entity to be always benevolent.
|
| Until the owners of the network run away after extracting
| all the value they can, or they decide to fork it because
| it's in their best interest, or they end it because it's
| not as profitable as they wanted, or your exchange decides
| to halt trading so they don't lose money, or, or, or.
| rglullis wrote:
| - Ethereum has no "owners". ENS is fully decentralized.
| There is no "they" to fork anything.
|
| - There is no need to have exchanges involved in that.
|
| - ENS has a token, but is not required for people who
| just want to buy a domain (they use ETH)
|
| Quit the senseless FUD
| [deleted]
| ajross wrote:
| > There is no "they" to fork anything.
|
| They _literally_ forked it just last month!
| rglullis wrote:
| Who is "they" here?
| ajross wrote:
| The "they" you denied existed, of course. Look, the frame
| of your argument here is "the blockchain won't ever
| unilaterally make decisions you don't like like a big
| centralized tech company". And they do, and have,
| multiple times in the past. And lots of people didn't
| like that, in each case.
| rglullis wrote:
| No. You are talking about three different groups and you
| calling both by the same "they":
|
| - One "they" is the Ethereum developers making new
| developments and _proposing_ changes to the "main"
| blockchain.
|
| - The other "they" is the thousands of people who are
| developing and using applications that can be used by the
| most people, and care (mostly) about having one
| blockchain where they can reach the most people.
|
| - The third "they" are the ones running the nodes and
| making sure that the network is functional.
|
| What I am saying is that none of these groups can
| unilaterally decide the course of the blockchain. Your
| confusion does not make my statement wrong.
| cma wrote:
| > Ethereum Executes Blockchain Hard Fork to Return DAO
| Funds
|
| > https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2016/07/20/ethereum-
| executes-b...
| rglullis wrote:
| I keep forgetting that people don't really read the whole
| thread before jumping into the comment box.
|
| Please, read
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33306409, then come
| back with some better argument.
| ajross wrote:
| You're splitting hairs. Sure, your carefully constructed
| "microtheys" don't have the power you fear. But _someone
| does_ [1]. And they act. And have.
|
| [1] As currently constructed, it (probably) requires a
| 51% attack by staked ETH owners. There's a lot more
| wealth concentration on the blockchain than you think
| there is, this isn't a lot of actual people!
| rglullis wrote:
| > someone does.
|
| Who?! Give it a name, or set of names.
|
| I'm all for healthy skepticism, but you are far from it.
|
| > There's a lot more wealth concentration on the
| blockchain
|
| First, with Ethereum you need 67% of the staked ETH to
| make an attack on the network.
|
| Second, stakers do not have power to change consensus
| rules. They are not able to dictate how people transact
| (not without losing their take) and they are not able to
| change transactions.
|
| Third, do you understand that _even_ if one single entity
| had that much power to launch an attack of the network,
| it would not be in their interest to do so? If the
| network got to be controlled by any single entity, the
| other people would simply lose confidence on it, they
| would stop using it and then all of the staked token
| would lose its value.
| ajross wrote:
| > Third, do you understand that even if one single entity
| had that much power to launch an attack of the network,
| it would not be in their interest to do so?
|
| If that were true, then why was the Ethereum network
| attacked and forked last month?
|
| I think what's happening here is that you've confusing
| "blockchain consensus" with "not evil", because you trust
| the giant faceless organization making decisions about
| the future of your activity in their system to act in
| something approximating your personal interests.
|
| Just like people trust Google and Microsoft with their
| email. Get it now?
|
| As to which entities are "really" more trustworthy, I'll
| just drop this link and flee:
| https://web3isgoinggreat.com/
| rglullis wrote:
| > Ethereum network attacked and forked last month
|
| What?!
|
| What attack are you referring about? What fork are you
| talking about?
|
| Please, provide _actual_ information instead of throwing
| around sites that are clearly just helping you to confirm
| your biases.
|
| > you've (sic) confusing "blockchain consensus" with "not
| evil" because you trust the giant faceless organization
| making decisions
|
| Not really. The thing that I care about is self-
| sovereignty. I do not want to _depend_ on a system where
| any single entity or institution (whether is a big
| corporation or a government) can have this type of
| control over me and that leave without choice.
|
| But it seems that it doesn't really matter what I think
| though, you already have made your mind and you are not
| interested in a healthy discussion. Have a good one.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > There is no "they" to fork anything.
|
| What? ENS is BSD licensed. Anyone can 'fork' it at any
| time.
| jkepler wrote:
| If a project _is_ actually decentralized, you can 't
| simply fork the code to fork the community. In truly
| decentralized systems, the consensus rules define whether
| one is into the system or not.
|
| The big problem here is that most of the systems in
| crypto are really startups run by a small group of
| founders. Very few of these projects are really
| decentralized.
| detaro wrote:
| That's clearly not what forking means in this context.
| You can't make the existing "instance" run different
| code, and it's users don't have to care if you run your
| own modified copy.
| T0Bi wrote:
| > What? ENS is BSD licensed. Anyone can 'fork' it at any
| time.
|
| Forking a blockchain and forking a repository are
| completely different things. The comment was talking
| about the former.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > Ethereum has no "owners". ENS is fully decentralized.
| There is no "they" to fork anything.
|
| I think "They" once forked Ethereum to prevent DAO
| losses.
| rglullis wrote:
| No. The "They" that did the fork only managed to do it
| because there was a _majority consensus_ agreement to
| switch to the forked chain. If the majority refused to
| follow, there forked chain would have died or become a
| thing for the minority. Just like EthPOW vs ETH POS.
|
| Seriously, why is it that every discussion about crypto
| has the same bullshit talking points? Do you guys have a
| list of "standard basic list of BS arguments that I will
| throw at the discussion just to see it sticks"? Is it
| ignorance? Is it malice?
| latexr wrote:
| > The "They" that did the fork only managed to do it
| because there was a majority consensus agreement to
| switch to the forked chain.
|
| A majority you may not agree with. So you're still at the
| mercy of external entities, contradicting your original
| point.
|
| > Seriously, why is it that every discussion about crypto
| has the same bullshit talking points?
|
| Because proponents keep repeating the same debunked
| invalid talking points. Like saying anything they
| disagree with is FUD. That expression has become the
| Godwin's law of blockchain discussions: it doesn't
| advance the conversation, it's just shorthand for "I
| angrily disagree with you".
| rglullis wrote:
| > So you're still at the mercy of external entities
|
| The people that didn't agree with the "DAO fork"
| continued on the original chain. None of them were forced
| to follow the majority. This is a huge important
| difference.
| latexr wrote:
| > None of them were forced to follow the majority. This
| is a huge important difference.
|
| Quite the contrary, it's a meaningless difference. Most
| systems have that feature.
|
| Imagine everyone in your friends circle uses Signal. Then
| they decide to change to WhatsApp but you and one other
| refuse to do so. No one forces you to follow the
| majority, you simply deal with the consequences of not
| doing so. For example, you may have less of a voice in
| the decision of where to go to dinner together because
| you're not part of the main conversation.
| rglullis wrote:
| You are (once again?) changing the actors and the power
| relationships between them and pretending it doesn't
| matter.
|
| It's one thing to have "your friends" moving from one
| network to another. It's a completely different thing to
| have a network where there is an owner who can kick you
| out unilaterally.
|
| None of the people that are using Ethereum Classic are
| disallowed to ever use ETH if they so want. They haven't
| been censored to continue participating in that network.
| It's just that to participate they must accept that the
| consensus of truth has changed.
| OrangeMonkey wrote:
| Noone is out to get you. The world is not trying to "FUD"
| their way to your own demise.
|
| Its just... noone wants to hear people hawking their pedo
| pesos constantly and how "WEB3 (powered by pedo pesos)
| will help us all!".
|
| Its tiring. I'm over it. Most of us are. We wish you no
| ill will or harm, heck most of us hope you all wake up,
| but in the meantime we don't want to hear it.
| rglullis wrote:
| I believe you are taking me for someone who cares about
| token prices or see crypto as an "investment". You could
| not be any farther from the truth.
| jkepler wrote:
| Don't attribute to malice what could simply be ignorance.
| Right now, people need to pit in some serious time
| (upwards of 100 hours minimum) learning about true
| decentralized open technologies like bitcoin _, so I
| think uninformed ignorance is far more likely than malice
| in almost all cases... unless the uninformed person
| stands to profit from his or her ignorance.
|
| _ I 'm not sure Ethereum is anywhere near as
| decentralized and bitcoin, because the Ethereum
| foundation and the large stakeholders (now that they have
| the miners the boot) appear to wield a huge amount of
| power.
| Jommi wrote:
| you're confusing web3 with crypto here. This is a very
| common mistake.
|
| There is no centralized "owner". You can become part of
| the network just like anyone else. No single party can do
| anything you describe.
|
| You also seem to being centralized exchanges to the
| discussion - they have no relevance here. Trading can be
| done in a decentralized fashion as well.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| >>you're confusing web3 with crypto here. This is a very
| common mistake.
|
| It's certainly one I'm making. If we take crypto /
| blockchain out, what _IS_ "web3", and how is it better to
| web 1.0?
| rglullis wrote:
| It's a problem of most buzzwords, there is no formal
| definition and it largely depends on context.
|
| If I were to give you my attempt of an definition, it
| would be: the main idea behind "web3" is to have systems
| where no single entity can gate-keep users. It's not
| supposed to be "better than web 1.0", but mostly to be a
| contrast with the "walled garden" platforms and social
| networks that defined "web 2.0".
|
| So, by that definition, social media services powered by
| ActivityPub that allow communication between different
| services are a step _towards_ web3 compared with the
| "web 2.0" social networks like Facebook or Twitter.
| Messaging protocols that Matrix, XMPP are a step
| _towards_ web3 in comparison with basically any messenger
| protocol that is controlled by Big Tech, etc. Content
| distribution based on systems like IPFS are a step
| towards web3 in comparison with traditional websites.
|
| The main thing is these systems still have central points
| where users can be controlled or censored. An user of
| Mastodon (or any federated service) can be kicked out by
| the server admin and will have no recourse to get access
| back.
|
| To be fully permissionless, a distributed system needs to
| be able to reach consensus without having to appeal to
| any central authority. "Consensus" here means basically
| anything about the "state" of the distributed system: was
| this message really sent by Alice to Bob? If Charlie
| wants to buy an e-book from David, how can we verify if
| Charlie has sent the payment to David, and how can David
| prove that Charlie now has access to the e-book file?
| This is the part where blockchain helps.
| mmcnl wrote:
| Web 3 introduces new problems because of decentralization.
| It's not a solution, it's an alternative.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| It's not that it has no applications, it's that almost all
| applications it's suggested for wouldn't actually be
| improved by having a persistent history, write-only,
| distributed data backing. Until someone writes a blockchain
| protocol that allows data to be purged by an individual in
| a way that _forces_ everyone else 's records to update
| accordingly (i.e. to comply with laws around PII) web3
| isn't a solution, it just makes the problem harder.
| delusional wrote:
| For the sake of argument, let's say that all email was
| hosted on ENS. Let's say that _somebody_ , doesn't matter
| who, went ahead and forked the chain into ENS'. We now have
| two disconnected chains, ENS and ENS'. If I were to buy a
| domain on ENS', i would not also own the domain on ENS, so
| someone else buys that. Who now receives the mail sent to
| that domain?
|
| If your choice in any way depends on the configuration of
| the mail server then your decentralized system has
| accomplished absolutely nothing, because the mail provider
| is still the gatekeeper.
| rglullis wrote:
| That has so many misunderstandings about how internet
| protocols and cryptography works, I don't even know where
| to start responding.
| delusional wrote:
| Give it a shot.
| rglullis wrote:
| > If your choice in any way depends on the configuration
| of the mail server then your decentralized system has
| accomplished absolutely nothing, because the mail
| provider is still the gatekeeper.
|
| This is a strawman. If you are talking about a
| decentralized system, you don't _need_ the mail provider
| to send the message for you. Your email application would
| (and should) be able to resolve the IP address of the
| destination server for you, and it would (and should) be
| able to verify that the end server is who the sender
| expects it to be.
|
| So, what would happen is that if you are on ENS', your
| view of the network would follow the consensus
| established by the ENS' chain. If you try to send a
| message to an email server that is on ENS, they would
| fail to provide a valid confirmation that they can
| respond for the IP address that you _think_ they are on.
| It would be akin to failing a DNSSEC query.
| fHr wrote:
| Ofcourse it could be part of the solution but just slapping
| current available solutions onto this problem won't solve
| it. It could be part of a solution I agree but in it's
| current state I rather not complicate this further with a
| technology in it's infancy.
| eli wrote:
| Yes. Not all registrars are equally well run, but google
| accounts get closed for unclear reasons with no appeals all
| the time.
| KolmogorovComp wrote:
| To reduce that risk you can always use multiple domains from
| separate registrars that redirect to the same address.
|
| Especially if you can use service X to restore access on
| service Y (which is often the case), make sure those use
| independent domains.
|
| As often increased security comes at the expense of
| convenience and cost, but it can be worth it.
| owl57 wrote:
| Yep. For the last month, I have been exclusively giving out
| GMail as "my personal email" instead of <personal domain>.ru,
| but it was more of an emotional thing. Thinking of it, I
| genuinely don't know which of these is less reliable in the
| long run for a Russian citizen: GMail, Russian registrar or a
| foreign registrar for <personal domain>.<some other TLD>.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| And everyone in the UK with .eu addresses suddenly had to
| switch or find addresses abroad to use a couple of years
| ago.
| pmontra wrote:
| Anybody can read my email, it's cleartext after all. ISP,
| registar, etc. I pay for my email as part of my yearly domain
| fee: 2 domains (personal and self employed work), 2
| registars. I download them over POP3, store them locally in
| Thunderbird, backup them locally (encrypted disk) and
| remotely (duplicity, can't even remember, too early in the
| morning.) This protects me against some attacks, not against
| everything. The only online services I really care about are
| banks. Everything else is disposable. I call my customers,
| give them a new Google and AWS account, that's it. Or ask
| them to create an account for me until I sort out the
| problem. Protecting against state level actors is a different
| thing. No plans for that. After all they can knock my door
| and deal with me in person.
| jesterson wrote:
| How your registrar can read your email?
| pmontra wrote:
| They are the ones that also run the SMTP and POP3 / IMAP
| servers for my domains. Selling a few GB mailbox together
| with a domain is pretty common.
| cranekam wrote:
| The registrar could only read email if they also accept
| mail for the domain in question.
| sneak wrote:
| I get far more email from machines (that don't send via Google)
| than I do gmail users.
| bigbacaloa wrote:
| One should regard all one's emails as (at least potentially)
| public documents.
| ls15 wrote:
| I consider all my emails confidential, but I acknowledge the
| fact that nefarious players may gain access to my emails.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| A year after Snowden.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| _" >I have run my own email server which I use for all of my non-
| work correspondence. I do so to keep autonomy, control, and
| privacy over my email"_
|
| if you want to retain control or privacy over correspondence,
| email is a horrible medium because by design anything can be
| forwarded, shared and copy&pasted trivially and this is done all
| the time. One guy is enough to leak an entire email chain. Good
| rule for email is, treat writing email as if you're speaking
| publicly.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > Good rule for email is, treat writing email as if you're
| speaking publicly.
|
| ...and if you treat it that way, then it's not a "horrible
| medium" (for "publicly", I would prefer to substitute "on the
| record").
|
| If you don't like email, that's cool; there are plenty of other
| messaging services you can use instead. But:
|
| - Your bank doesn't use them
|
| - Your friends don't use them
|
| - They are usually proprietary and opaque
|
| - You might lose your account, with no recourse
|
| Email is the universal baseline, the single communications
| channel that nearly everyone has access to.
| TillE wrote:
| > - Your friends don't use them
|
| Nobody under like 40 uses email for personal communication.
|
| Yeah it's a legacy medium for stuff like your bank, maybe
| it's the least terrible option for B2B communication, but
| email _has_ largely been replaced already.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| It's the default: you need an email to make all those other
| accounts. Everyone has an email (assuming they have
| internet at all). Not everyone has a goofacetwat account,
| or whatever the newest thing is.
| drivebycomment wrote:
| There is no way to retain or control privacy when you send some
| information to another person regardless of the medium - email
| or paper or verbal even - you lose control no matter what,
| since the counter party can now share the same information
| however they see fit.
| Timwi wrote:
| What medium are you thinking of where messages can't be copy &
| pasted?
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| I think this is everywhere. In India, people in the departments,
| especially the Governments usually ask, "What is your Gmail?"
| Almost everyone uses Gmail here and it is extremely rare to find
| their own custom domain.
|
| I'm actually surprised that the Government Departments do not
| have a service that takes care of these! They will fine Google
| but almost all of the government email IDs are Gmail.
|
| I was one of those that distributed hundreds if not thousands of
| Gmail invites when it started. However, since 2010-ish, I left
| Gmail to be just for Newsletters, and the ones that I'm not
| serious about. I'm always reminded that a day will come when I
| will just have no access, lock out and be done with it.
|
| I had used my name's domain and had used the web hosting provided
| email service and I felt nice using the likes of
| `webmaster@brajeshwar.com` (early 2000s). Then I got a shorter
| domain with our family domain and is, now, powered by Google
| Workspace (with a plan to move to the competitors soon before the
| yearly plan expires). I had so many domains under the Google
| Suite free version since its beta. I did upgraded my primary
| domain to the paid version, when I had few mail delivery issues
| so I can talk to a person and that was also the time I realize I
| cannot go back. That was almost/about 10 years ago.
| dingaling wrote:
| I was entering my e-mail address on booking.com recently (
| format bookingcom@domain.tld ) and it thoughtfully suggested
| I'd made a typo, didn't I mean bookingcom@gmail.com?
| skbly7 wrote:
| > almost all of the government email IDs are Gmail.
|
| I think you are mistaken.
|
| Majority of the emails are on government server:
| https://email.gov.in/
|
| They used to be on 3rd party provider till a few years back
| (but still never on Gmail).
| pkz wrote:
| It would be interesting to know how many of government agencies
| use Google email services? Is the email interaction between
| citizen and state now predominantly in the hands of a foreign
| third party?
| bboygravity wrote:
| In Netherlands: not just the government, also pretty much
| every major business and even Universities (Groningen comes
| to mind). And not just Google, but also Microsoft (Teams,
| Outlook, etc).
|
| I've often wondered whether that is the real main reason why
| so little innovation comes out of Europe vs the US:
| everything of economic, academic and geopolitical importance
| in Europe is streamed straight to the US and the sender is
| paying for the service of having valuable information
| leakable.
|
| Source: Snowden.
| angulardragon03 wrote:
| Groningen is an outlier in using Google Workspace for email
| iirc. Most of the Dutch universities I came into contact
| with (including the one I used to attend) were deep into
| on-prem Exchange, with some moving to O365.
| tryptophan wrote:
| I find it utterly astounding that not a single government has
| started an email service yet for its citizens, with all the
| legal protections of actual mail and such.
|
| They wouldn't even need to run it, just create a legal category
| like "This account is officially registered to X and serves as
| a legal email account" that companies can apply for if they
| meet some standards.
| crazygringo wrote:
| First, why would they when they don't need to because private
| companies already provide it for free?
|
| Second, the government is now on the hook for not just
| failures and outages but all security and privacy breaches.
|
| So it's basically all risk and no reward. It makes sense
| governments wouldn't want to touch that.
| Gud wrote:
| I started using my own domain names 20 years or so ago. I let
| gandi.net host my mail and from what I know they haven't been
| involved in any privacy related scandals. I use rsync.net for my
| backups. I avoid the American internet conglomerates software and
| services like the plague.
| webmobdev wrote:
| And that's why services like Tutanota (https://tutanota.com/) and
| Proton Mail (http://protonmail.com/) offer the option to send
| password protected / encrypted email to third-party. This can be
| used to prevent Google or Microsoft from spying on your emails as
| the actual email is never sent to their server. Yes, sharing
| passwords beforehand can be a pain. But even if you SMS / message
| them the password, or just put hint to it in the subject - " _the
| pass is your phone number "_ or _" the pass is your fathers
| name"_ - it still creates an additional barrier for Google or
| Microsoft bots to index your email. While we may not be able to
| do this for every email, we certainly can do this for personal
| emails. This process also creates awareness in your social
| network, when they ask you why you are using such convoluted
| methods to send them email.
| coffee2022 wrote:
| - These domains sound weird (for average Joe) - Even if they
| office 5GB for they average Joe will try - BTW, I bet they
| cannot do proper customer service if they have a 10th of the
| google's customers - We at a German scientific institution got
| email services from a Berlin based (privacy first, eco-
| friendly) provider (starting with letter M-). We had
| significant issues with SSO, email-sync (in outlook), password
| resets were painful (as these were emailed to the admins in
| plain-text - seemingly someone manually reset it at the
| provider), No 2FA, calendar-sync worked awful in iPhones.
| SanjayMehta wrote:
| My main email is hosted on a local provider.
|
| All my junk mails are hosted by google.
| ls15 wrote:
| What if Google discontinues Gmail next week, like they did with
| so many other services?
|
| Are you prepared?
| UberFly wrote:
| Yes, I use fastmail and my own domain.
| dexterdog wrote:
| Gmail makes way too much money for them
| ciphol wrote:
| In all honesty, I think that would lead to some form of
| nationalization of Gmail to force it to continue as a service.
| Approximately half of Americans use Gmail and that is "too big
| to fail".
| juunpp wrote:
| I have actually been receiving much spam from gmail addresses
| lately and have considered banning the domain altogether.
|
| > I was surprised to find out that my friend Peter Eckersley -- a
| very privacy conscious person who is Technology Projects Director
| at the EFF -- used Gmail
|
| I find that the EFF does this more often than not, like how they
| also criticize Amazon for giving police warrant-less access to
| Ring cameras... and then stream their online gatherings live on
| Twitch. I find their messaging sometimes does not tie well with
| their actions.
| yabatopia wrote:
| > I have actually been receiving much spam from gmail addresses
| lately and have considered banning the domain altogether.
|
| For some accounts I block all Gmail usernames ending with a
| number: from _0@gmail.com to_ 9@gmail.com. The only exceptions
| are addresses that I have added to my whitelist. A bit drastic,
| but it did wonders to my mailbox.
| namrog84 wrote:
| Looking thru my personal spam vs legit emails. I see no
| indication that there is more spam from ends with number than
| not. But I'm probably biased.
| prashantsengar wrote:
| Personally, I know very few people who don't have a digit at
| the end of their email address.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Spamassassin seems to have a default rule that freemail
| addresses ending in a digit get 3.0 added to the spam-score.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _I find their messaging sometimes does not tie well with their
| actions._
|
| Not everybody can be RMS. As an EFF supporter, I don't want
| them to waste my donations by withdrawing from the world and
| handicapping themselves unnecessarily.
| ekianjo wrote:
| you dont want them to live by their principles? if they dont,
| who will?
| arrrg wrote:
| Is boycotting Amazon a principle they even have?
|
| Using ring cameras for their offices would be not adhering
| to their principles.
|
| The eff doesn't strike me as the "you did something bad so
| now I boycott you" kind of organization.
| andrepd wrote:
| Yawn. That's a classic "you say we can improve society? yet you
| participate in society, curious". Yes they use Twitch because
| millions of people are there and they need to reach a wide
| audience.
| juunpp wrote:
| You don't even know what you're talking about. Their
| gatherings don't address "millions", but are typically just a
| hundred or so guys, mostly other donors. This could be hosted
| fine on an alternative like BBB.
|
| Writing lazy and uninformed comments like yours on HN
| certainly is a classic though.
| fastball wrote:
| That last point doesn't sound very hypocritical to me. There is
| a difference between a feed that is meant to be public and one
| that is not.
| javajosh wrote:
| _> police warrant-less access to Ring cameras... and then
| stream their online gatherings live on Twitch_
|
| Streaming a public event on twitch vs on-demand warrentless
| police access to on-prem cameras? Am I missing something or are
| these two things not just not in the neighborhood, they are on
| different planets.
| jjulius wrote:
| >Am I missing something or are these two things not just not
| in the neighborhood, they are on different planets.
|
| Amazon owns Twitch. I think OP is highlighting that the EFF
| speaks out against Amazon's privacy practices while
| simultaneously supporting Amazon financially.
|
| Edit: "I think..."
| juunpp wrote:
| jjulius, I did not state that they were helping them
| financially, though I also had not thought of that. I think
| Twitch does not display ads on non-profits streams (is this
| right?), but it's also extra visitors at the end of the
| day.
|
| My comment was more along the general line of criticizing
| something verbally, but then taking actions that, in my
| view, undermine that same message. Contrast this with the
| FSF, for example, which is feverishly uncompromising about
| its values.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| You can be against something and still find yourself having
| to use things you complain about.
|
| Folks still eat food _even though_ they are aghast at how
| farm workers are exploited in the world.
|
| You can support robust public transportation yet drive a
| car due to poor-to-no public transit.
|
| Sometimes, facebook is the best place to organize
| demonstrations against facebook.
|
| Just because you have complaints about the world doesn't
| mean that you don't live in it and need to use it as
| designed. If you don't, how else do you expect to change
| it?
| themitigating wrote:
| I think the food example doesn't work because it's not
| optional.
| fsflover wrote:
| For EFF, communicating with a relevant audience is not
| optional either.
| themitigating wrote:
| There are alternatives to the method. Come on
| fsflover wrote:
| Could you perhaps be more specific?
| juunpp wrote:
| I get your point, but I still think they could go out of
| their way a bit more to use alternatives that align with
| their values.
| eropple wrote:
| Are you offering to pay for them to host their own
| streaming solution and volunteering to handle technical
| support for users who have trouble with it?
|
| This gotcha-game is tiring. People don't have to like
| Amazon to realize that they and YouTube are the only
| practical game in town for free live streaming.
| [deleted]
| pabs3 wrote:
| Debian manages to do global streaming for DebConf every
| year using only libre software and VMs running Debian at
| cloud providers. Seems like this is their setup using
| ansible:
|
| https://debconf-video-
| team.pages.debian.net/ansible/simple_s...
| eropple wrote:
| DebConf does host their own HLS streams. (They use
| video.js, which was started by the cofounders of my
| former employer Mux; I'm pretty familiar with it.)
|
| I don't intend to suggest that it's impossible by any
| means; I've done it recently for a project of my own. But
| it's _work_ , and it's expensive work, and it becomes a
| question of quality of experience. They make compromises
| to do their own hosting; bandwidth is always a little bit
| scarce and DebConf's live streams are 2Mbps @ 720p as a
| max rendition. For their audience, that might be fine.
| For others, it's not, and a good way to drive viewers
| away. I don't have an intuition as to whether the EFF's
| target audience feels that way, but their overlap with
| the free-software set isn't complete and wanting their
| live streams to look roughly competitive with everybody
| else's isn't unreasonable; how you look and the
| reliability/QoE of your stream does impact credibility.
|
| The second tine of the fork is user accessibility. "It's
| just Twitch, everybody uses this" is a powerful argument
| for that accessibility if, unlike DebConf, you can't
| reasonably expect everybody to read a man page if there
| are problems.
| Conan_Kudo wrote:
| DebConf videos are mirrored to YouTube as well:
| https://www.youtube.com/c/DebConfVideos
|
| I've never watched it live because discovering the
| DebConf streams is extremely difficult. I've primarily
| watched the videos from YouTube.
| pabs3 wrote:
| Hmm, my memory tells me there was just a web page you
| could visit to watch them, plus links if you wanted to
| watch in an external media player. Post-conference you
| can look through the schedule to watch individual talks.
| [deleted]
| juunpp wrote:
| Well, I have been a donor for a long time, so yes,
| technically I am paying them.
|
| And your second statement is false; other orgs have
| successfully had online gatherings on BBB, for example.
| eropple wrote:
| "Online gatherings" as in 1:M live streams, or "online
| gatherings" as in "pack everyone into a WebRTC room and
| hope it holds"? Because Twitch and YouTube do the former
| and I don't see anything in BBB that natively emits HLS
| or DASH. I see plugins that will talk to an RTMP server,
| but that leaves a very long row to hoe.
|
| 1:M live streaming is very, very difficult to get right--
| it's is why video providers can charge so much for
| private video in the first place.
| juunpp wrote:
| Basically 1:M, or N:M with N << M.
|
| It works relatively well on a beefy BBB instance. Jitsi
| from my experience craps out on low-bandwidth scenarios,
| but I've attended BBB meetings of respectable size with
| no issue.
| eropple wrote:
| WebRTC as currently implemented has very hard and by its
| nature has very low audience caps. There's a reason why
| WebRTC-to-HLS gateways exist; WebRTC by itself isn't
| substitutable, and if you're going to act like this I'd
| think there's a pretty significant onus upon you to
| provide something substitutable.
|
| The substitutable thing is "another content provider that
| does HLS or equivalent", and we're back where we started,
| because doing so independently, as discussed in another
| subthread, either costs _a lot_ of money or comes with
| compromising tradeoffs, as well as a support burden that
| somebody has to pay for and do.
|
| Independent web video is mostly awful. The best answers
| are bad ones. Sorry.
| smaudet wrote:
| Its not really the streaming persay its this is TV
| broadcast tech running over IP.
|
| Its a networking problem, not a software issue. You will
| have to change the format or be independently wealthy to
| compete, 1:M will always by nature be a matter of
| outsized resources on the transmit versus receive side.
| eropple wrote:
| You are absolutely correct.
|
| It's one of the reasons why these days I'm bearish on the
| future of independently-run video. The numbers are
| aggressively bad. People use YouTube and Twitch because
| they _have to_ , not because they _want to_.
| svnt wrote:
| Not to be pedantic but because you have a good point, and
| I would want to know if it were me: persay should be per
| se.
| maxbond wrote:
| That isn't supporting Amazon financially, that's meeting
| people where they live in a world you don't control.
|
| This is like saying I'm a hypocrite for using crosswalks if
| I also believe that our cities shouldn't be dominated by
| cars. If it's true, it's not true in a way that's
| interesting or useful. It doesn't suggest my views are
| insincere or without merit. Maybe my views do suck, and
| maybe the EFF sucks too, but you're going to have to do
| more work to establish that than pointing out that we're
| imperfect beings living in a world that may thwart our
| intentions. You'll actually have to engage with the
| substance of the argument and the facts in dispute, and
| make the case that there's a deficiency there.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| urthor wrote:
| EFF is mostly funded by Google and co, and mostly advocates
| for policies _such that they do not hurt Google and co_.
|
| This involves advocating for good things, like opposing the
| FBI lead mandatory encryption backdoor. And... the opposite.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Source?
| juunpp wrote:
| I don't think it's true. For 2020, >75% come from
| individuals; corporate is only a tiny fraction:
|
| https://www.eff.org/files/annual-report/2020/index.html
| Tagbert wrote:
| It's pretty hard to distinguish spam accounts by domain. They
| skip domains regularly. Much more often than actual humans. If
| your spam filters are only able to filter by domain you might
| want to find some more sophisticated filters.
| bombcar wrote:
| He's saying the @gmail.com domain is useless to him, because
| it he gets so much spam from it.
|
| I could certainly see that being the case, and if you can
| block the whole domain and whitelist the few contacts you
| actually have, it probably could work decently well.
| juunpp wrote:
| Yep, exactly.
|
| I was also wondering if I am the only one seeing this. Very
| large uptick of @gmail.com spam in my inbox.
| bombcar wrote:
| My filters apparently are catching it pretty well, but
| 32/203 on my work email are gmail spams.
|
| I think they're focusing on it because so many systems
| have hard-coded rules to let gmail through because "it is
| email".
| narag wrote:
| I experienced it maybe a couple of months ago. Then it
| went away. Since so many use gmail, it's only logical for
| the spammers to focus on playing gmail filters and one
| obvious factor would be using a gmail address as the
| source.
| duxup wrote:
| I remember when I was horrified that apps would ask for (or
| not...) all my contacts.
|
| But then I realized most people on my contacts probably wouldn't
| say no so someone could easily use that information to
| guesstimate my contacts by using everyone else's contacts.
| taneq wrote:
| Did that realisation make you less horrified?
| toxicFork wrote:
| > To suspect your own mortality is to know the beginning of
| terror, to learn irrefutably that you are mortal is to know
| the end of terror.
|
| Frank Herbert
|
| /s/mortality/your information is all over the internet/
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I wonder how much classified data is stored in random
| spreadsheets on O365 secured by basic auth.
| asim wrote:
| The discussion around email continues to come up time and time
| again. It yields significant power, it's your online identity
| effectively, used to access, communicate and unlock everything.
| We all have some level of discomfort with someone else owning the
| infrastructure for this having seen what happens if you get
| locked out. What is the answer? Is it really self hosting? Such a
| subpar experience. Consumers can't be expected to do that. Maybe
| it's about moving to something else with backwards compatibility
| with email but a system you can never be shut out of. If you're
| stuck with a @gmail.com domain, it's tough, but maybe the switch
| would be worth it in time.
|
| Maybe it's like rent vs buy in real estate. There's no beating
| owning your own home. Costs more but no one can kick you out
| unless you stop paying your mortgage. You own it, it's your
| address, it holds all your possessions. But you don't build the
| house, someone else does, you just pay for it.
| lowwave wrote:
| > Costs more but no one can kick you out unless you stop paying
| your mortgage.
|
| that. depends. You can host it cheaply if shared with family
| members, may be cheaper than paying for email provider.
| asim wrote:
| Well this leads to my next question. Community led
| infrastructure. Why is it not a thing? I think that's social
| housing in the real world. Why does it not exist for digital
| services? I know we open source things but nothing is run by
| a community. A potential outcome is to run email as a
| community.
| sedeki wrote:
| How would that contractually work in practice? Can you give
| an example of what you mean?
| asim wrote:
| I mean it's like any real world thing, potentially non
| profit. A group of people elected to run public services
| for everyone else which people pay a fair amount to use.
| Something that's constantly reviewed, where new members
| can join and others can move on.
| sakawa wrote:
| Yes, on a small scale, but they do exist! Just look up at
| Riseup, Disroot weho.st, or Autistici/Inventati.
| asim wrote:
| Thanks for pointing those out. I think it could be done
| on a larger scale but only with buy in from the community
| and starting with one or two specific services e.g email
| or app infrastructure.
| austhin wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/news
| mro_name wrote:
| this bothers me a lot. That bystanders can read my cleartext
| email is one thing. But that somebody hords and data-mines a huge
| quantity of them is a bit creepy to say the least, isn't it?
|
| I would bounce gmail if my email provider offered that option.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Email is one technology with two quite different use cases: reply
| and noreply. The former is the sending and receiving of regular
| correspondence. The latter is the identity stuff and is the
| majority of my traffic: things like bills, receipts, tickets,
| reminders, security alerts, login confirmations, etc.
|
| In 2022 I'm more worried about an unregulated company
| monopolising the noreply part. It's an enormous part of my life.
| mro_name wrote:
| what is the thing with gmail in 2022 other than lock in?
| jeffbee wrote:
| Price? Best-in-class search? Availability?
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| I tried to move away from the legacy free Google Apps thingy
| when they threatened to force everyone to pay business rates
| and even though Gmail isn't what it once was, the competition
| isn't great either. The one that everyone keeps raving about is
| located in Australia (which has non-existing data protection
| laws), most privacy-focused ones are cumbersome and annoying
| (limited functionality, no IMAP, only our own apps, etc.), the
| big commercial ones are expensive (this is for family), and a
| few were half broken (IMAP should work but never did etc.) ...
| I found a single one from Europe that came reasonably close to
| Gmail, but then Google decided to keep their Google Apps thingy
| free for non-commercial use, and I'm happy I don't have to
| worry about those email accounts for at least a couple more
| years. Gmail works well in all respects, is well-supported
| everywhere, and since I'm using my own domain I retain the
| option of switching if need be. I don't think I have a single
| person I actually exchange emails with that wouldn't leak them
| to Google anyway, so why bother.
| dav43 wrote:
| Unpopular on HN, but I just don't see a problem with Google
| having my email, for what they provide me. Almost unlimited
| uptime, global redundancy, best search experience, storage all
| for free. I'm ok with the trade off for now.
|
| Its just not worth the hassle.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Isn't the point of the article that as a non-user of gmail you
| can't opt out of giving google all your email? It's nice that
| you get a service for providing your emails to google, but what
| do I get?
| judge2020 wrote:
| I mean this is a fact of life for pretty much everything. You
| can't opt out of USD if you want to participate in the global
| economy. You can't opt out of barcode scanners if you want to
| purchase groceries. People will augment open standards with
| proprietary, 100% dependent processes either because they're
| easier to work with or they same you money, and often that
| means customers in turn must interact with those proprietary
| systems to get anything done.
| presentation wrote:
| Idk the ability to reliably communicate with a large segment
| of the world population?
| tmalsburg2 wrote:
| I exchange e-mails with people who don't use Gmail and it's
| pretty reliable. Let's not pretend that Google is the only
| company who knows how to run a mail server. In fact I have
| more problems with e-mails coming from Gmail accounts (low
| quality text/pain, broken threads, etc.).
| Bakary wrote:
| Why can't we mobilize for the ability to reliably
| communicate, AND avoid monopolistic privacy-eroding
| nonsense?
| badkitty99 wrote:
| MrJohz wrote:
| I mean, that's the whole point of communications though,
| isn't it? If I tell you something, you can do that you like
| with that information - tell someone else, hand it to a state
| government, publish it in a paper, or just upload it to the
| servers of a corporation that I dislike. If you don't trust
| what other people are doing with your data, you can freely
| choose not to give them your data - albeit perhaps by giving
| up some of your communication methods and making your life
| somewhat more complex.
| Bakary wrote:
| What made me switch from Gmail is stories of people losing
| their entire account overnight with no possible appeal process
| due to an algorithm deciding there was suspicious activity.
| ajross wrote:
| > What made me switch from Gmail is stories
|
| Yeah, pretty much. Anecdata is the bane of everything big. In
| a country of 330M people, you'll have a horrific murder every
| week. You have a billion email users, someone's going to have
| trouble.
|
| You do realize that, realistically, it's probably more likely
| that Fastmail will fail, or you'll accidentally lose control
| of your own domain (or have it stolen) than that Google or
| Microsoft or Yahoo will "lose your account overnight". There
| are "stories" about startups failing and domain troubles too.
| thfuran wrote:
| That there are occasional errors in flagging accounts is
| one thing. That there's absolutely no recourse is another.
| Why would I want to do business with a company that works
| like that?
| Bakary wrote:
| It's not the only reason, though. Just the thing that
| solidified the decision to leave. I just came to realize
| that I was depending on a shady entity for everything. The
| service I ended up paying for (which is similar to
| fastmail) can end up failing of course, but it'll take a
| while and I can always switch to something else once they
| go into administration. In comparison, I have no idea when
| or where Google might switch me off, especially since I do
| a lot of Android and Aurora store tinkering over various
| devices.
|
| Even if Gmail was 100% reliable it would still make sense
| to not give them everything about my life. Besides, I also
| get much needed extra email features out of the change.
| geraldyo wrote:
| Do you happen to have any actual cases you can point me to? I
| see this all the time in HN but it's never beyond "a buddy of
| mine said that he didn't do anything wrong and somehow they
| got locked out forever with no recourse".
|
| Or it's someone saying that happened to themselves, and then
| they say they never did anything bad with their gmail. Which
| may or may not be true?
| jerieljan wrote:
| One good case I can think of is Crinacle. Very popular for
| his audio measurements site and does YouTube.
|
| His Google account got flagged for something suspicious,
| Google had it shut down and without good explanations. He
| can't even get help through YouTube support and while the
| old channel remains, the Google account behind it appears
| disabled today. The only choice he had was to file a
| request that lead to nowhere and he basically had to start
| with a new account and channel.
|
| He explained his experience about it in this video here:
| https://youtu.be/Jn1b3DztWnc?t=83
| sumedh wrote:
| > His Google account got flagged for something
| suspicious,
|
| Was that because of his gmail or Youtube?
| pixl97 wrote:
| Does it matter?
|
| Get banned from one google service for whatever reason
| (and you may never know why), banned from them all.
| Karunamon wrote:
| That is just it, they never tell you
| rsync wrote:
| "The only choice he had was to file a request that lead
| to nowhere and he basically had to start with a new
| account and channel."
|
| Incorrect.
|
| Yes, that was, indeed, the only choice he had _that was
| free, and from his living room_ , but he did have other
| choices.
|
| Specifically: serving google with proper legal papers
| from his own lawyers that require responses. That costs
| google money. The money just keeps adding up and
| eventually a real person who has decision authority will
| look _closely_ at the issue and fix the issue.
|
| Assuming, of course, that the banning was improper -
| which I think we are all stipulating here ...
| yoru-sulfur wrote:
| This was the incident that made me switch off of Gmail:
| https://www.thegamer.com/markiplier-fans-google-account-
| ban-...
|
| > Unfortunately, and for reasons that are still unclear,
| this triggered YouTube's auto-detect system for spam.
| Hundreds of accounts in Mark's 'community' have been
| banned. ... Being banned from your YouTube account is one
| thing; ... However, these fans' Google accounts were
| banned, meaning they lost access to their emails, ...
|
| The accounts may have eventually been reinstated, but to me
| it showed a willingness to ban an entire google account
| from a minor infraction in some individual service, which I
| was just not comfortable taking the risk on.
|
| Not exactly the same as what you're responding to, but very
| similar.
| jjcon wrote:
| I got locked out of my Gmail for a few years because I
| moved internationally and Google decided it just didn't
| like my new ip. I had access to the recovery email and
| would even get, "someone attempted to sign in emails." But
| Google just wouldn't let me in at all. I contacted support
| and they were no help at all. I tried to vpn back to normal
| locations but at that point I was flagged or something. I
| would try every few months after I gave up. About 3 years
| later it just magically let me in and I got all my stuff
| back. Still have no actual idea why it happened.
| YeBanKo wrote:
| This happened to me, except I never got my account back.
| esskay wrote:
| Here's a hypothetical (although as of right now admittedly VERY
| unlikely scenario):
|
| It's 2035. Google has continued a worldwide decline with the
| invention of several highly accurate AI drive search systems
| deeply integrated into technology. Their video streaming
| service, which started declinging in the mis 2020s has just
| closed down following years of losses.
|
| To try and regain its financial footing Alphabet has decided to
| slimline its offerings, closing several loss making services,
| including Gmail.
|
| Most users of Gmail have been using it for close to decates,
| and are only given a couple of months notice that they'll lose
| their email addresses that they've relied on for thousands of
| online services, banks, businesses, etc. With no secondary
| account recovery process, billions of online accounts will
| become inaccessible for millions of users across the world.
|
| ----
|
| Sensationalist? Absolutely - but you get the picture. Relying
| on a free 3rd party email address vs paying ~$10/year for at
| very least your own domain with free forwarding to a basic free
| gmail account is worth it.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| I would still 100% go with Gmail.
|
| I avoid 15 years of headaches and cost and only have to spend
| a few days of work transferring emails to a new provider?
| Sign me up.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Not to mention, it seems Gmail is the overwhelming choice
| for pretty much everyone; over 75% of users on my service
| have a Gmail email. If Google did actually sunset Gmail I'm
| sure every website would implement an email change system
| pretty quick to make sure their own users aren't left out
| on in the cold, unable to log in post-shutdown.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| I think even further than that, governments would just
| subsidize it.
| dav43 wrote:
| When they start sliding down that slippery slope I'll act,
| but until then the service vs. cost is balanced enough for
| me.
| open-source-ux wrote:
| The popularity of ChromeOS in US schools means millions of kids
| require Gmail accounts (since ChromeOS requires sign-in the OS to
| full use).
|
| It's probably true to say that almost every school kid in the US
| has been captured by Google's embrace.
|
| The 'tech community' have little to say on the matter. In fact,
| developers are more likely to _defend_ Google rather than
| question unprecedented levels of data collection.
| hagen2022 wrote:
| The issue is that there are no proper replacements for Gmail.
| Too many people (whether opensource fellows or privacy or both)
| suggest do not use it but there are NO good answers. One cannot
| expect a local shop or university to host email services 24x7
| AND provide world-class security. This is like excel/word/ppt
| becoming a default file format and use of MS office. Sure
| libreoffice works but when everyone is using MS products - one
| has no chance but to use MS.
|
| hn always loves fastmail but I bet they cant run a billion
| logins.
|
| No local govt or company has the employees to manage such good
| features.
|
| (Example; I tried once to use apple email, calendar for 20
| people. Too many sync problems. When asked in Apple forums they
| often told me Apple infra is designed for families and not for
| 20 people)
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > One cannot expect a local shop or university to host email
| services 24x7 AND provide world-class security.
|
| You're right! That doesn't mean you have to rely on The Borg.
| I rely on my ISP (admittedly an unusually good ISP); I pay
| them for mail service, a fiver a month, on my own domain.
| There are many dedicated commercial email providers that are
| reliable and secure, such as Fastmail (I've never tried
| Fastmail).
| UberFly wrote:
| A lot of schools use variants of Microsoft 365 as well. Not any
| better.
| SXX wrote:
| AFAIK you can have Google Account with your own email without
| using GMail. Isnt such account work for ChromeOS?
|
| From what I can tell they are fully featured accounts with only
| mail service being missing. Am I wrong?
| texaslonghorn5 wrote:
| This is false, most schools are using active directory SSO
| which happens to use Google for Education but could easily be
| migrated. In fact, many places have Microsoft 365 and Google
| working at the same time under the same SSO. Yes they are using
| "Gmail accounts" but that's a far cry from @gmail.com accounts.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Is the fact that the sender and receiver of an email both have a
| copy surprising?
|
| IIRC, no emails from Hillary Clinton's server, for example, were
| ever leaked from the server, but the public saw them because one
| of her regular correspondents had his email compromised.
| UberFly wrote:
| That we know of. If I remember, she hired some random 3rd party
| company from Denver to manager her servers. They of course
| didn't have any kind of security clearance.
| sumedh wrote:
| > IIRC, no emails from Hillary Clinton's server, for example,
| were ever leaked from the server,
|
| How do you know that. I dont want to make political comments on
| HN but her server was insecure at some time (aka no encryption)
| and then accessing the emails on her blackberry in foreign
| countries.
| pronik wrote:
| The same goes for contacts by the way: you can be as careful as
| you wish keeping your phone number and address and e-mail address
| private, as long as you are friends with me and I keep my Google
| Contacts up to date, Google has that data. And I don't think this
| is avoidable, unless you consider complete isolation from human
| contact desireable.
| recursv_thnkng wrote:
| I noticed this with Tiktok. I put in my number into my profile
| and got friend suggestions for nearly my entire contact list
| despite not giving access to it.
| durnygbur wrote:
| Google has most of my contacts and personal info because it has
| all of yours.
| Samon wrote:
| For me, owning my own email domain is far more about control than
| privacy. I currently use some MX and SMTP trickery to forward all
| of my email to Gmail, effectively using Gmail as my 'email
| client' - but because the domain is mine, I can change that
| without too much headache, unlike if I were just using an
| @gmail.com address.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Also about cost? You could use proton, but gmail is free I
| guess.
| defaultcompany wrote:
| You don't own a domain name you rent it. If you ever forget to
| renew it or you are unable to renew it for some reason then it
| becomes available for anyone else to register. At that point
| the new owner can receive all your email and potentially access
| any accounts which use that email as 2FA. I'm not saying you
| should never do this but it's not a silver bullet.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| yep cos of Covid namecheap sold my domain to a squatter who
| now wants $10k for something i've renewed for years for $12.
|
| That was so shitty coming back round to reality and
| everything broken. Still upset about it. To this day I have
| no idea why the card didn't pay as always.
| kirktrue wrote:
| > cos of Covid namecheap sold my domain to a squatter
|
| Can you elaborate? As a Namecheap customer, this is
| concerning.
| texaslonghorn5 wrote:
| I'm not sure if this was added after your comment, but in
| the second line of their post jamiek88 said
|
| > To this day I have no idea why the card didn't pay as
| always.
|
| One can infer that the credit card did not auto-pay, the
| domain expired, and Namecheap immediately resold the
| domain to a squatter rather than first reaching out to
| jamiek88 to confirm that the non-renewal was intentional.
| jkepler wrote:
| Pay a bit more annually to a reputable DNS company. For
| example, I initially whet with GoDaddy, until about ten
| years ago when I read that they were shutting down
| people's domains simply upon a "we're investigating
| thisbperson, kill their domain" letter from the US
| Marshals (a Federal police force). Around the same time I
| heard about easyDNS in Canada, and discovered that they
| will only ever seize one of their customer's domains if
| they receive proper papers from a court---i.e. a search
| warrant. I like that they're committed to rule of law
| rather than politically motivated deplatforming.
| [deleted]
| texaslonghorn5 wrote:
| I'm not jamiek88, I was just summarizing events, did you
| mean to reply to me?
| abiloe wrote:
| > Namecheap immediately resold the domain to a squatter
|
| No I don't see how their post allows one to infer that
| Namecheap "immediately" resold the domain. Their policy
| is a 30 day grace period, and within that 30 days the
| domain should become non functional, so if you're
| actively using it then you would know something is up.
|
| Sounds like jamiek88 was squatting on a somewhat
| desirable domain and is just sad they couldn't follow
| some basic instructions.
|
| I have no idea what the "because of COVID" thing is
| about.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| defaultcompany wrote:
| I took it to mean that they got COVID and were out of
| commission long enough that the domain was sold by the
| time they "came back round to reality".
| int_19h wrote:
| Making sure that your domain registration is always current
| is not a difficult thing, though. You can register for fairly
| long periods of time, and set up multiple alerts to manually
| renew long before it expires.
| switch007 wrote:
| My register doesn't allow registrations longer than 1 year.
| Their reason: " We've found that longer registration
| periods lead to a higher chance of customers losing or
| forgetting their account details or missing notifications
| and ultimately letting their domains expire due to outdated
| contact information or expired credit card details."
|
| I'm wondering whether that's valid and if I should find a
| new registrar...
| imhoguy wrote:
| That is made up reason. Extension periods depend on TLD
| providers. I've just checked and e.g. OVH lets me renew
| .com domain until 2030. You max our renewal now, then
| setup some "domains housekeeping" day in your yearly
| calendar to puth the expiration date every year. Pity I
| can't do that with some proven and basic hosting to
| prepaid a few years ahead.
| abiloe wrote:
| > My register doesn't allow registrations longer than 1
| year.
|
| Ummm.. then maybe get a better registar? It's not like
| there aren't many to choose from.
| switch007 wrote:
| I think you missed the last part of my comment.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| To register a domain, you must provide an existing email
| address (not at that domain, of course). True story: I
| registered a domain with email from openmailbox.org. That email
| provider has closed, and my domain went puff with it.
| jwalton wrote:
| How do your have your outgoing mail configured? Up until
| recently Gmail would let you send email from another domain,
| but they seem to have shut this down.
| Tagbert wrote:
| I have my domain hosted on a service that provides web
| hosting and email. I configured Gmail to pickup that email
| and merge with my gmail mails. I can choose to send as either
| my gmail address or my personal domain address. I just tried
| it now and it worked just fine.
| kazinator wrote:
| Unless the e-mail you send is either encrypted with something
| like PGP or whatever, or else you send it directly from your
| machine your friend's SMTP server, using TLS, then the operator
| of any SMTP forwarding host in between could have your e-mail,
| not to mention someone just snooping traffic.
|
| Speaking of encrypted e-mail, if you send _that_ to a gmail user,
| then Google only has the fact that that user received an e-mail
| of a certain size from you on a certain date. People who are
| paranoid about which data warehouse has their mail should be
| using encryption.
| upofadown wrote:
| >...or else you send it directly from your machine your
| friend's SMTP server, using TLS, ...
|
| That is normally what happens these days. Intermediate email
| forwarding is so rare as to be non-existent. Only a small
| percentage of email is sent unencrypted between servers[1].
|
| Agreed that email should be encrypted and, perhaps more
| importantly, signed...
|
| [1] https://articles.59.ca/doku.php?id=pgpfan:starttls
| kazinator wrote:
| > _Intermediate email forwarding is so rare as to be non-
| existent._
|
| Where did you get this belief? Almost no e-mail user who uses
| a client to send SMTP right from their PC or mobile device
| can send directly to their destination, because they don't
| have a static IP address with e-mail reputation.
|
| Directly to the destination meaning: looking up the MX record
| for the domain of target e-mail address, and contacting that
| host.
|
| People who self-host such e-mail receiving hosts will
| _themselves_ drop the connection from such a user, if they
| implement RBL-based anti-spam measures.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| From the perspective of yours truly (and probably not anyone
| else), there is a relatively simple solution to this problem. I
| have experimented with running SMTP peer-to-peer instead of peer-
| to-<third_party_intermediary>-to-peer. While I first did this
| using L2, before Wiregaurd, Tailscale or Headscale existed,^1 I
| see no reason it could not be done using today's popular L3
| software. One approach is the sender and recipient each run their
| own SMTP server on an overlay network. Each network might have
| its own interface, /dev/tap[0-100] being one option. Is this
| perfect in every way. No. Nothing meets that standard. Does it
| work reliably. Yes. That is good enough for me. That it works is
| not surprising since the early internet did not have
| itermediaries like Google and the early mail RFCs had no
| conception of third party email providers let alone "webmail",
| now dominated by "Gmail". Needs of "users" do differ and
| intermediaries might serve a useful purpose for some, even those
| who can make a conscious choice. Personally I have no need to be
| able to email every address on the planet let alone allow them to
| email me! More practically, I can more easily maintain smaller
| lists of potential senders and recipients, i.e., "networks", each
| one a separate network interface. Again, needs will differ based
| on the user.
|
| Third party email for personal use is like using a PO Box despite
| have private property, a house, and an address. There is no
| reason that everyone cannot have their own mailbox on their own
| property. Even more, instead of the post office managine these PO
| Boxes, email uses a private entity that is trying to sell
| advertising services, and/or brokering direct email marketing.
| Both systems, snail mail and email, have been largely co-opted by
| the potential for direct mail marketing, so-called "junk mail".
| Even if one never sees any junk in their inbox (thanks to
| "filters"), the junk mail senders are still influencing the
| system. The continued enablement and presence of those junk
| senders, who are still sending _massive_ quantities of junk with
| the help of Big Email, is why third party email providers, like
| Gmail, block residential IP addresses. You own property, a house
| and an address but you cannot have your won mailbox. That is how
| third party email provision works.
|
| 1. Heck, one could probably use a "lightning" network too but
| folks today want to use peer-to-peer overlay networks for
| "crypto" exclusively, not messaging or any other useful activity.
| Go figure. This whole means of using networks without third party
| intermediaries is as old as computer networks themselves. Gamers
| have long used LANs and overlay networks for communication, since
| before the internet became popular. Arguably, we could think of
| everything we do on the internet as a "game" that justifies use
| of overlays.
| MrPatan wrote:
| Unencrypted email is not private, never has been, never will be.
|
| The real problem is handing over your digital identity to Google,
| not the content of emails.
| brnt wrote:
| What I dislike is that email addresses have become the primary
| key of online identity. Many services don't even have usernames
| anymore. I still think that government should furnish something
| like an online postal address. Protected with gov issued
| hardware keys (U2F?), white listing for recipients maybe. To be
| used only for gov business, banking, gas, water, etc. If those
| things are essential to life, and in turn depend heavily on
| email (here they do for sure), they should not be handled by
| fickle Big Tech.
| Tepix wrote:
| Nowdays, even unencrypted email can be private, thanks to
| opportunistic encryption.
|
| Not when you're using Gmail of course.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Opportunistic encryption only encrypts mail transport between
| mail servers. Both the sending and receiving servers can read
| the plaintext.
| ggm wrote:
| google/gmail is also one of the principal agents which declares
| by fiat "your own domain self-run mail is spam because I think
| its spam" which then propagates to other mail providers.
|
| SPF/DKIM no matter: if they decide it's spammy, un-doing this
| decision is appeal to a star chamber you cannot interact with
| directly.
| imhoguy wrote:
| > which then propagates to other mail providers
|
| Have you checked your mail server is configured properly and it
| doesn't act as open relay?
|
| > SPF/DKIM no matter
|
| SPF/DKIM is not enough, I needed DMARC and DNS PTR. You need
| static IP from some serious hosting, make sure IP is not black
| listed, dynamic home ISP addresses are out of question. Also
| register with Outlook SNDS
| https://sendersupport.olc.protection.outlook.com/snds/ , and
| Google FBL https://postmaster.google.com/ .
|
| It is a lot of hops but I have done it once a few years ago and
| now it all works fine for me, got 100% delivery for small
| traffic.
| jeffbee wrote:
| By what mechanism do you believe this information "propagates"
| to other mail operators?
| ggm wrote:
| Aside from the sharing of RBL lists, the reflexive bouncing
| of mails? SMTP error codes rejecting delivery transitively?
| Maybe I'm wrong and there is no information sharing here? Not
| impossible or implausible. Does Macys tell Gimbels?
|
| Another effect here is volume. That's non communicating
| between the big players but would inevitably lead to similar
| outcomes if they rank domains by volume/score weights.
|
| Hosting a small mail domain in Google is a good way not to
| get marked bad it seems. Postini filtering on your gsuite
| user side is an added bonus. I've yet to withdraw a domain
| from gsuite so I don't know how long it stays "acceptable"
| But I do know Gmail is one of the principal "not an
| acceptable sender" paths. As to how that flows or informs
| o365 or any other player, I may be making a bridge too far.
| [deleted]
| jmbwell wrote:
| Major vendors have realized this as well, and are putting less
| information in their emails as a result.
|
| If you're my customer and a Gmail user and I send you order
| details, financial/credit info, any number of things I might know
| about you that Google might not know already, Google learns that
| about you from me.
|
| Instead, I'm going to send you an email that prompts you to come
| back to my site or app to get your tracking number or flight info
| or whatever.
|
| It might not be some other communication service that kills
| email, but rather apps and push notifications trying to
| outmaneuver Google.
| namrog84 wrote:
| I never thought about it like that. I've always considered it
| inconvenient to not have my order details in my email history
| when I do a search of all emails looking for when I bought a
| thing or something. Especially if I dont remember where or
| what.
|
| I do appreciate the privacy that can come with that. However I
| think I still prefer being able to search my email history for
| receipts and other info. Or at least opt into receipt coming in
| email.
|
| I'm too lazy to catalog things manually but I do on occasion
| want to search for things a little easier.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I don't know what you're talking about. I get order
| confirmations from retail stores all the time with full details
| of my order, every item listed in full detail, last 4 digits of
| credit card used, etc.
|
| I see no change in this over time, nor do I know why companies
| would even care that an e-mail provider (including Google)
| would be able to read that information. I don't think this
| phenomenon exists at all.
|
| The only thing I can imagine you referring to is companies
| having the tracking link open to their own page rather than
| directly to UPS/FedEx etc., but that's for totally separate
| reasons that you can see from Narvar's marketing.
| ffpip wrote:
| > I see no change in this over time, nor do I know why
| companies would even care that an e-mail provider (including
| Google) would be able to read that information. I don't think
| this phenomenon exists at all.
|
| https://thehustle.co/09032020-amazon-order-confirmations/
|
| https://www.macobserver.com/link/amazon-no-longer-
| including-...
| crazygringo wrote:
| Thanks, but so as far as I can tell from that, Amazon is
| the only company to have made this change, and it's pure
| speculation as to why.
|
| I just checked my e-mails, and Target and Wal-Mart still
| include an itemized list in your order confirmation e-mail.
| So does Best Buy, J. Crew, GAP, Shopify, eBay, and
| literally every other store I order from.
|
| So a single company made this change, and nobody knows why?
| That's not a phenomenon or trend.
| [deleted]
| elchangri wrote:
| This is analogous to Ok Google / Siri ubiquity. Nobody can escape
| getting their voice scanned because people nearby have them
| turned on.
| bushbaba wrote:
| The US should use the current market decline to split up Google.
| Splitting it up would allow for more competition and overall
| improve the tech sector.
|
| Ideally you'd see the government force a split up Youtube, Cloud,
| Search, and their Ad Exchange into separate companies.
| einpoklum wrote:
| If the US government does this, you can be pretty sure it'll
| keep taking copies of all email in the split-up Google as well.
| rvba wrote:
| As if they arent doing this allready
| sumedh wrote:
| > Ideally you'd see the government force a split up Youtube,
| Cloud, Search, and their Ad Exchange into separate companies.
|
| Google will argue that keeping these services in one company
| gives free access to consumers. How can the US govt prove that
| it harms consumers?
| thfuran wrote:
| I'd much prefer the standard of "harms competition" except in
| cases of natural monopoly.
| anticensor wrote:
| I would rather like to see Google stripped from for-profit
| status. How Google earns its money does not really allow
| decoupling Search from Ads.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10229928 - Sept 2015 (53
| comments)
|
| _Google Has Most of My Email Because It Has All of Yours_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7731022 - May 2014 (103
| comments)
| NewEntryHN wrote:
| Most of my emails are from services, not people, so I guess
| Mandrill (and the likes) has most of my emails.
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