"Nobody, from the lowliest spammer to the grand exulted CEO of a massive company, can remove or change the content of an email message they have sent to you."
Unless the message has embedded images linked from the web. Those images are part of the 'content of an email' as far as most people are concerned, but aren't part of the message envelope. So they can be destroyed or replaced by the sender whenever they want.
Do any mail clients aim to deal with this by keeping a permanent copy? (Including the 1x1 tracking pixel content?)
I agree that normal email-to-email might not disappear. But considering that most email users are either using Outlook or Gmail, and both these systems not being forced to use Email protocol when the receiver is using the same network, I'd guess that email isn't that much more reliable than FB messages when it comes to getting deleted.
Yes, but if you dont, you always have the option to download a local copy of your mailbox. This is how I use email. I use fetchmail to deliver mail to a local mailbox on my hard drive. I don't delete it from the online mailbox, in case I want to access it from the web, but I have my local copy in case the online provider either goes away or does something else with it.
Well, right now email doesn't disappear — but under the GDPR anyone can demand that an email server delete any messages he sent (or at least remove his name from them). I think that's a horrible approach, but it appears to be what the GDPR demands.
What if someone's already downloaded email from that server, or forwarded it on to their friends? Seems absurd. Anyone can demand anything. You just tell them it can't be done.
> Nobody, from the lowliest spammer to the grand exulted CEO of a massive company, can remove or change the content of an email message they have sent to you.
No. Unless it is on your own server. And this is an argument against FastMail, and they know it for sure. So why lying so brutally?
> FastMail is a provider you can trust
Rule of thumb: never trust anyone who says you can trust him/her.
If I have an IMAP client, I can fetch my emails and download them locally.
If the Fastmail CEO sent me an email through Fastmail, with very little technical knowledge, I could set up a regular desktop client to download all those emails locally - headers and all. Even the iPhone default Mail app setup helps you do it.
The same is not true of Facebook - those messages belong to Facebook.
The same goes for Hotmail and Gmail of course. I download all my gmail-mail, and then it's mine to keep. Google can't delete that unless they hack my machine. They can delete my account, my emails. But the webmail version offers one extra that downloaded mail doesn't: a reasonable guarantee that the mail is not messed with.
If I've received an email and keep it in the webmail, I cannot change that. A downloaded mail can be edited, unless it's signed with PGP. I can change content, headers, dates. An email in Gmail webmail cannot be changed by me. And while Google can do that, and maybe an excellent hacker can do that, the chance that you're the victim of that as an average Joe is very small.
Is there no way to encrypt or sign e-mail inboxes on the server in such a way that it is tamper-proof?
Most solutions focus on preventing individual e-mails to be read or modified by a 3rd party. Does anyone apply similar techniques to a whole mailbox / account?
Only as long as you host your own mail. If your mail sits on some third party's cloud servers (like fastmail?) they can certainly make your email disappear.
Or use a local client (e.g. I've been using MS Outlook since 2000) and download the emails (I don't leave them on my email server). I prefer to keep massive .pst files (which I backup with CrashPlan - and soon Carbonite) on my machine that having them sitting anywhere outside.
Maybe I'm biased towards FastMail, but I'm kinda glad they made it obvious it was an ad (small lead up as to why, then they hit you with a "use our product instead").
I wouldn't say it's worth linking on HN (except maybe to spark a conversation), but here we are.
Admittedly, actually using the phrase "____ is a ____ you can trust" is pretty tacky at this point.
I use FastMail for my work email and it's ok, but I wish these guys would introduce a few new features from time to time. Why in 2018 do I not have the ability to "Snooze" an email and come back to it at a later date? or add notes to an email that don't get sent to the person I'm conversing with? or consolidate emails from multiple conversations into a single conversation? Yeah FastMail your service is a better alternative to Gmail because I don't have to worry about being locked out of my email one day for no apparent reason, but why aren't you innovating? Email with Fastmail is just as tedious and boring as it was 10 years ago.
tl;dr - less politicised blog posts, more making your service not suck, please.
Snooze is a really weird way of trying to shove stuff in your inbox... Out of your inbox for some reason. You come back to an email later... by still finding it in your inbox.
And there's no good standards compliant way to implement that, so it'd mess up third party clients. This is why Gmail is such a broken experience if you aren't using Gmail's own proprietary Google-blessed apps.
[+] [-] rahimnathwani|8 years ago|reply
"Nobody, from the lowliest spammer to the grand exulted CEO of a massive company, can remove or change the content of an email message they have sent to you."
Unless the message has embedded images linked from the web. Those images are part of the 'content of an email' as far as most people are concerned, but aren't part of the message envelope. So they can be destroyed or replaced by the sender whenever they want.
Do any mail clients aim to deal with this by keeping a permanent copy? (Including the 1x1 tracking pixel content?)
[+] [-] p49k|8 years ago|reply
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/gmail...
[+] [-] jwilk|8 years ago|reply
Tangentially related LWN article:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15478546
[+] [-] Crosseye_Jack|8 years ago|reply
Ok, one of the major points was that the email had yet to be opened/downloaded but still that email disappeared from an inbox.
[+] [-] erikb|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] evilmoo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emodendroket|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ams6110|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eadmund|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icedchai|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trinkletingas|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] juskrey|8 years ago|reply
> Nobody, from the lowliest spammer to the grand exulted CEO of a massive company, can remove or change the content of an email message they have sent to you.
No. Unless it is on your own server. And this is an argument against FastMail, and they know it for sure. So why lying so brutally?
> FastMail is a provider you can trust
Rule of thumb: never trust anyone who says you can trust him/her.
[+] [-] legostormtroopr|8 years ago|reply
If the Fastmail CEO sent me an email through Fastmail, with very little technical knowledge, I could set up a regular desktop client to download all those emails locally - headers and all. Even the iPhone default Mail app setup helps you do it.
The same is not true of Facebook - those messages belong to Facebook.
[+] [-] manuelmagic|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hollander|8 years ago|reply
If I've received an email and keep it in the webmail, I cannot change that. A downloaded mail can be edited, unless it's signed with PGP. I can change content, headers, dates. An email in Gmail webmail cannot be changed by me. And while Google can do that, and maybe an excellent hacker can do that, the chance that you're the victim of that as an average Joe is very small.
[+] [-] micheljansen|8 years ago|reply
Most solutions focus on preventing individual e-mails to be read or modified by a 3rd party. Does anyone apply similar techniques to a whole mailbox / account?
[+] [-] erikb|8 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/sgYpGBGDsuE?t=2m2s
[+] [-] retrogradeorbit|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HenryBemis|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dasanman|8 years ago|reply
Really? I mean who writes such a thing literally. It has to be indirect!
[+] [-] epicide|8 years ago|reply
I wouldn't say it's worth linking on HN (except maybe to spark a conversation), but here we are.
Admittedly, actually using the phrase "____ is a ____ you can trust" is pretty tacky at this point.
[+] [-] rdl|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grandpoobah|8 years ago|reply
I use FastMail for my work email and it's ok, but I wish these guys would introduce a few new features from time to time. Why in 2018 do I not have the ability to "Snooze" an email and come back to it at a later date? or add notes to an email that don't get sent to the person I'm conversing with? or consolidate emails from multiple conversations into a single conversation? Yeah FastMail your service is a better alternative to Gmail because I don't have to worry about being locked out of my email one day for no apparent reason, but why aren't you innovating? Email with Fastmail is just as tedious and boring as it was 10 years ago.
tl;dr - less politicised blog posts, more making your service not suck, please.
[+] [-] stonogo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ocdtrekkie|8 years ago|reply
And there's no good standards compliant way to implement that, so it'd mess up third party clients. This is why Gmail is such a broken experience if you aren't using Gmail's own proprietary Google-blessed apps.
[+] [-] myhf|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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