Lavabit founder has stopped using email

18 respostas [Última entrada]
Alij
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Joined: 05/07/2012
Mangy Dog

I am a member!

I am a translator!

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hack and hack
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Alij
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Joined: 05/07/2012

Not sure about this but that's ok https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-place_artifact

hack and hack
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Joined: 04/02/2015

Well, on a second thought (not even sure there was a first one), I agree that catapulting mailmen or other non-flying messengers (like dolphins) has very few advantages. Specially regarding privacy. Oh well :)

more seriously, if a pro is advising not to use emails, that's attention grabbing.
Yet, I'm not going to stop using it for personal use. I won't choose a US-based provider though.

pizzaiolo
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Joined: 03/12/2015

Scary stuff ):

tomlukeywood
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Joined: 12/05/2014

am i right in thinking as long as your email is encrypted
it dosent matter how you send it?
gmail hotmail lavabit it etc

lembas
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Joined: 05/13/2010

That's really only half of the story as you're still leaking metadata. (who, when, how often...)

pizzaiolo
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Joined: 03/12/2015

Yeah, and remember: metadata is so informative that the US uses it to assassinate unidentified people.

hack and hack
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Which could mean that it gives the possible location at a given time. Or whom one's discussing with.
(I'm not implying that it's meaningless at all, btw.)

Legimet
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Joined: 12/10/2013

Even something as simple as your phone's power usage can be used to determine your location: http://www.wired.com/2015/02/powerspy-phone-tracking/

hack and hack
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Joined: 04/02/2015

Wow, cool! And assholish at the same time...
Very very smart though. Thanks for the link Legimet :)

tdlnx

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Joined: 04/09/2014

That's why the best option is to run your own personal email server. It's not free, but it's very inexpensive.

hack and hack
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Joined: 04/02/2015

A personal mail server seems tempting indeed.
One of the downsides (letting it on at all times) is actually a moot point since it can run most of the year (with some hardware preventing temporary power outage). A webmail can be a replacement when in vacation for example. Also for professional mail exchanges.

On the other hand, while setting it up with the proper security seems to be hard work, maintenance can be a pain in the ass.

Last, communicating with other webails (gmails etc) make them have a copy of your mails anyway.
Encryption you might say? Many won't bother with it since it's a bit technical to setup. But this could be done with most people.

Maybe I'm missing other issues, but overall, if maintenance isn't that horrible, it could be really cool.

Mampir
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Joined: 12/16/2009

You don't really need to worry about power outages and uptime much. Mail servers keep on trying to send messages until they reach their destinations. They usually do this for server days. If a message doesn't reach for several days, they notify back the sender, so no messages are lost.

The default for Exim on Trisquel, a widely used mail server, is to try sending a message for 5 days before giving up and sending it back to the sender.

Also, at least here in Sofia, Bulgaria, when there's a power outage typically the Internet also goes down. That's because usually ISP devices are also powered locally and they don't have power backups, so they stop when there's a power outage. So you having a power backup may not help you at all for your server uptime. You just have to make sure your system is configured to power on automatically when power comes.

Mangy Dog

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I am a translator!

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hack and hack
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J'en veux un !!!
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/shut-up-and-take-my-money

Surprisingly, this episode is about spying devices.

mYself
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Joined: 01/18/2012

Sorry for posting into such an old thread, but today I accidentally found this video when searching for Blackphone on YouTube. I recall somebody have asked why the Lavabit founder stopped using email, and this video contains the answer:

NO EMAIL IS SAFE - Ladar Levison and Lavabit - YouTube

northernarcher
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Joined: 12/24/2014

Tor + GPG + sever in a country called Not America is the way to go. Running your own server is okay, but very very very few people can or will do that. Ideally, a system without severs in the first place would be best. Distributed systems. Right now the only thing established like that is i2p-bote. Bitmessage exists but it has problems and is not done yet.