Lavabit shut down due to U.S. government
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An Android smartphone could run a mail server, as it has a Linux kernel and it's possible to run a full GNU system in a chroot environment on there. However, it would be a poor choice for a server, as its IP address changes all the time. If you keep it at home attached to your personal WiFi network, then that's fine, but as soon as you take it out and use it on the cell network, it will have a different IP address, and emails will not reach it. Similarly if you use it on another WiFi network, if it goes out of range, runs out of charge, etc.
You can use your phone to access the mail on your home server, no problem. I use the default android mail client to connect to my server and read and send emails. However, although it could be run as a server, in most use cases it wouldn't be reliable enough.
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Hello.
Thanks for the reply =)
I was expecting it would give me some trouble =P
I don't understand however why the IP will change all the time. I never let the battery die and I could keep it using always 2g only. Would it still change IP on its own, like when I move from one area to another? I will try and have a look at that, and if I can find a way to keep the IP, it could maybe be a solution...
Anyway, thanks and I hope you will get the tut out soon =)
Lloydsmart, I'm very glad to hear that, you are awesome.
Not only you will be helping to the community but also you will be improving the documentation in Trisquel.
Thank you for being here with us.
i've found on wikipedia this post regarding relations between lavabit and edward snowden...
http://archive.is/Rckue
well, i agree with lloydsmart that the best option is to run your own email server, but unfortunately many people just are not able or willing to work on this.
i found myself using the services of autistici/inventati, a very interesting and engaged group based on italy:
https://www.inventati.org
it is possible to run most of its servies with tor.
posteo.de provides 2GB email accounts, charging 1EUR per month. no ads, secure mail transport where possible. they store user data as few as possible. payments are separated from account data. when sending the payment via analog mail, you can have it completely annonymous.
just another option
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What would probably be ideal is a pre-configured solution that could largely auto-configure itself. I think the ideal solution would probably be a small $50-100 device that you could simply plug-in to a router and then enter a generic-random name (printed on it) into the browser. After a few questions it would then test whether or not it would work on your ISP's systems and auto-configure it. If not then it might pass through a free VPN service or similar (ideally that service would be located in a country which protects both its citizens and foreigners alike).
That said hosting mail yourself is probably a good idea from a privacy legal point of view. The way the US law works emails stored on provider's servers for more than a certain period of time have a lower threshold requirement for government snooping. Regardless of who hosts your email it is best to configure it such that email is downloaded and deleted from the server.
This makes it much less convenient for users although it's the only way to really retain some sort of legal protection.
Free devices like that are extremely disirable. It would be something I could point my friends/family to and say, "Just buy that and you'll have free e-mail/chat/whatever." helping free software compete with the proprietary market. That kind of device is/was the idea behind Freedombox, wasn't it?
It still is. The FreedomBox project recently delivered a 0.1 version.
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I think it has/had similar goals. Yes. I'm not sure how automatic it is in practice. I'd also be concerned about it being kept up to date from a security patches stand point. Keeping something up to date really requires a significant number of developers and packagers. Something I'm doubtful the project has.
That said I am very tempted to buy a freedombox at some point.
Just to add the comment that the US law advocate for users of GNU/Linux, Groklaw has had to close down because of the changes in respect of email - which is how most of its business was done - remember them? they were involved in the longstanding SCO/Linux affair.
FWIW http://it.slashdot.org/story/13/10/15/1959223/lavabit-briefly-allowing-users-to-recover-their-data
72 hour window already started
Tonight I quite randomly decided to see how far I can get fiddling with hosting a mail server on my computer. In addition to some other docs, tutorials, and howtos, I found this walkthrough at centos.org that seems fairly comprehensive using postfix and dovecot: http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/postfix
I haven't done the whole thing yet, but it seems to me that it includes all the steps to getting a basic mail system up and running.