5 ms·

"There is simply no reason NOT to encrypt anymore Even to people not very interested in protecting their privacy, there is simply no reason anymore to let the s

"There is simply no reason NOT to encrypt anymore Even to people not very interested in protecting their privacy, there is simply no reason anymore to let the spies look into their mailbox while they can have exactly the same product with automatic encryption." Actually, there are good reasons not to: Spam filtering. People have forgotten how bad spam was. It isn't possible to fight spam centrally when all email is encrypted. Pretending that there aren't any downsides isn't the way forward. It's important to be open about the issues at stake, then say what's possible with the tools that can be created.

bojo 11y ago
Maybe spam filtering could be pushed client side? Granted you end up with more email being pushed through the servers, but at least the client can decrypt and mark it as spam locally.
throwawayaway 11y ago
In addition, encrypted backups aren't much use if the key has been lost.
- ben_bai 11y ago
  So you don't lock your front door, because you could lose the key? Don't use passwords because you could forget them? Better don't do backups at all, because a restore will most likely fail anyways. What's next?
  - throwawayaway 11y ago
    Rather, not giving someone the only key to your house if there's a high chance they are going to lose it. It doesn't make sense to encrypt certain things.
venomsnake 11y ago
Is it signed by trusted key. No? Discard. Spam problem is solved. Bonus no cold calling. You could use something like zrtp once for fingerprint verificatiin.
- IkmoIkmo 11y ago
  You can even do that, plus add two things. 1) mail that gets filtered gets an automatic reply 'your email went into the spam folder, here's how to reach me if it's genuine', and 2) any email with say $1 or some threshold you can manually set is accepted into the inbox with a 'paid' label. Things like bitcoin have made it pretty easy to add digital money attachment to email as an anti-spam measure, first proposed as a proof of work system by Cryptographer Adam Back to introduce a cost to sending email, a bit like a computerised form of a captcha, something that doesn't affect normal users but is disastrously expensive for power users like spammers. The combination ensures that 1) spam gets filtered 2) genuine emailers flagged as spammers get notified their email didn't arrive 3) important email can reach the recipient if it's worth enough (say $1, totally undoable for a spammer who'd end up with a cost-per-click on his email campaign of hundreds of dollars instead of cents, completely unworkable on any scale, but financially no problem for when say a stranger wants to send you a genuine email for the first time with a non-trusted key).
- ambicapter 11y ago
  > Bonus no cold calling. Not a bonus. Plenty of relevant emailing gets done 'cold'.
  - 3pt14159 11y ago
    Trust networks can handle that just fine.
  - schoen 11y ago
    Yesterday evening I e-mailed the professor quoted here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10210474 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10210474 about the similarity between his ideas about Hitler's ideology and a short story Borges published in 1946. We had never communicated before; I heard of him for the first time through this press interview. He replied and said the connection was interesting. I wouldn't be that opposed to ideas where people should put money at stake when making new unsolicited contacts, but I think a challenge is that people's wealth varies by many orders of magnitude, the recipient-perceived relevance of what they want to say varies by orders of magnitude, and the correlation between the two is often only moderate (maybe mediated by things like education, social capital, and fame).
belorn 11y ago
Let's imagine a world where spammers has to encrypt their emails. That would initially be a hassle and resource demanding, but it would be used against spammers. The recipient could demand a resource demanding encryption which for a normal server take about a second but if you were to send out millions it would be impractical.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- StavrosK 11y ago
  If that's so easy to do, why don't recipients "demand" some proof-of-work right now? There's also exactly zero overlap between encryption and proof-of-work. I don't see why you phrase it as if encryption makes proof-of-work either possible or easy.
  - gburt 11y ago
    The network effect changes (very expensive) which limit adoption of proof of work also limit adoption of encryption. Assuming encryption is adopted, the vendor(s) involved could simultaneously demand using Hashcash or another email proof of work system. One should seriously estimate and discuss the environmental implications of such a change before working towards it though, I think. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash
Panino 11y ago
Using Spamhaus alone will block (with a very low FP rate) about 99% of spam. Throw in a few other simple techniques and the inbox is pretty clean, all without even looking at the message body. Most spammers haven't caught up to techniques more than a decade old, so I don't expect them to suddenly start encrypting E2E to evade (e.g.) uribls. I've received about 5 spams in the last year (self hosted), and I can live with that.

bojo 11y ago

Maybe spam filtering could be pushed client side? Granted you end up with more email being pushed through the servers, but at least the client can decrypt and mark it as spam locally.

throwawayaway 11y ago

In addition, encrypted backups aren't much use if the key has been lost.

ben_bai 11y ago
So you don't lock your front door, because you could lose the key? Don't use passwords because you could forget them? Better don't do backups at all, because a restore will most likely fail anyways. What's next?
- throwawayaway 11y ago
  Rather, not giving someone the only key to your house if there's a high chance they are going to lose it. It doesn't make sense to encrypt certain things.

venomsnake 11y ago

Is it signed by trusted key. No? Discard. Spam problem is solved. Bonus no cold calling. You could use something like zrtp once for fingerprint verificatiin.

IkmoIkmo 11y ago
You can even do that, plus add two things. 1) mail that gets filtered gets an automatic reply 'your email went into the spam folder, here's how to reach me if it's genuine', and 2) any email with say $1 or some threshold you can manually set is accepted into the inbox with a 'paid' label. Things like bitcoin have made it pretty easy to add digital money attachment to email as an anti-spam measure, first proposed as a proof of work system by Cryptographer Adam Back to introduce a cost to sending email, a bit like a computerised form of a captcha, something that doesn't affect normal users but is disastrously expensive for power users like spammers. The combination ensures that 1) spam gets filtered 2) genuine emailers flagged as spammers get notified their email didn't arrive 3) important email can reach the recipient if it's worth enough (say $1, totally undoable for a spammer who'd end up with a cost-per-click on his email campaign of hundreds of dollars instead of cents, completely unworkable on any scale, but financially no problem for when say a stranger wants to send you a genuine email for the first time with a non-trusted key).
ambicapter 11y ago
> Bonus no cold calling. Not a bonus. Plenty of relevant emailing gets done 'cold'.
- 3pt14159 11y ago
  Trust networks can handle that just fine.
- schoen 11y ago
  Yesterday evening I e-mailed the professor quoted here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10210474 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10210474 about the similarity between his ideas about Hitler's ideology and a short story Borges published in 1946. We had never communicated before; I heard of him for the first time through this press interview. He replied and said the connection was interesting. I wouldn't be that opposed to ideas where people should put money at stake when making new unsolicited contacts, but I think a challenge is that people's wealth varies by many orders of magnitude, the recipient-perceived relevance of what they want to say varies by orders of magnitude, and the correlation between the two is often only moderate (maybe mediated by things like education, social capital, and fame).

belorn 11y ago

Let's imagine a world where spammers has to encrypt their emails. That would initially be a hassle and resource demanding, but it would be used against spammers. The recipient could demand a resource demanding encryption which for a normal server take about a second but if you were to send out millions it would be impractical.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
StavrosK 11y ago
If that's so easy to do, why don't recipients "demand" some proof-of-work right now? There's also exactly zero overlap between encryption and proof-of-work. I don't see why you phrase it as if encryption makes proof-of-work either possible or easy.
- gburt 11y ago
  The network effect changes (very expensive) which limit adoption of proof of work also limit adoption of encryption. Assuming encryption is adopted, the vendor(s) involved could simultaneously demand using Hashcash or another email proof of work system. One should seriously estimate and discuss the environmental implications of such a change before working towards it though, I think. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash

Panino 11y ago

Using Spamhaus alone will block (with a very low FP rate) about 99% of spam. Throw in a few other simple techniques and the inbox is pretty clean, all without even looking at the message body. Most spammers haven't caught up to techniques more than a decade old, so I don't expect them to suddenly start encrypting E2E to evade (e.g.) uribls. I've received about 5 spams in the last year (self hosted), and I can live with that.