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Privacy and Security within email: Is resistance futile?
  • „The times of an anonymous email conversations are long over“.
    What about encryption programms?
    What about PGP? What about end-to-end encryption services offered by services like Countermail, Neomailbox?
    What about OpenVPN? Are all these things of any use?
    What sense does it make to use internet services out oft the US that cannot be forced by the NSA to reveal data, when the interception will take place as soon as the data will use the same pipes which their allies and friends will intercept for them?
    What sense does it make to encrypt the content of your mail when the most important thing which are the Metadatas are being stored and used by their programms for anything they want to do with it?

  • 10 Replies sorted by
  • To be short. If you want to go private, use some rare and custom software that do not use usual protocols.

    Otherwise in all developed countries providers store and track all email (no, not NSA only in US).

    If you will be using PGP or VPN you are automatically added to tracking list (by software). With all data being recorded and stored for years so they can use them as they want.

  • Can you explain "some rare and custom software"?

  • @gameb

    Something that very few people use, usually that is made custom for you, some company, etc. Or made by yourself.

  • @Vitaly_Kiselev That sounds like a major task, how would I create my own encryption protocol that decryptes when it arrives to the other end?

  • @gameb

    LOL. No one ask to do you such thing.

    Just try to look around for something good and rare at same time.

  • Some creative use of encryption and steganography could work. Hide in plain sight.

  • Everything is monitored. Use snail mail.

  • @JAY_T Snailmail is not a bad idea, you write a message by hand and send it to the other end. This way you would not miss the digital speed of emailing. I don't think any spying software could detect and filter the content of a handwritten text, of billions of different handwriting styles. May be yes? I don't know. At least the content would be protected, but we still would have the Metadata recorded. Who, where, when, with whom... in a lot of cases, this is the interesting part of the whole cake.

  • I could probably think of a million ways to encode your stuff and cannot see why others cannot, sorry.

    • Start by snail-mailing your friend a list of something, (say books)..
    • Want something faster than pagenumber/line_number/character_number? try sending a big csv file. Or a runtime database, or.. etc etc etc..