4 ms·

You don't email your lawyer. You ask Alphabet to do it for you (gmail). Want to send a mail from home, as should be the norm? First, you need to get through

You don't email your lawyer. You ask Alphabet to do it for you (gmail). Want to send a mail from home, as should be the norm? First, you need to get through your ISP's firewall. Many block the outgoing SMTP port, and there is nothing you can do about it. Others forbid you to use that port by contract. Some offer an SMTP relay to compensate, but then you're no longer sending your own email. Plus, they often limit you to 40 emails per day or so, and can spy on you, TLS or no. Once your mail is sent, it has to pass through spam filters, and they all blacklist residential IP addresses.

bonzini 10y ago
And Gmail complies to privacy laws indeed. They can scan content automatically to show ads, but they cannot sell a list of people that you exchanged email with, at least not without your consent.
- loup-vaillant 10y ago
  > They can scan content automatically to show ads This is even worse than manually spying on people: automation gives leverage. Now all we have to do is repurpose these targeted ad engine to deduce things other than buying preferences. Sure, they have their surface ethic (and Alphabet's employees have their actual ethic), but the tools they have in place for total surveillance is downright chilling.
extra88 10y ago
> You don't email your lawyer. You ask Alphabet to do it for you (gmail). I don't know what point you're trying to make. Are you assuming everyone uses Google's webmail interface or their apps? Maybe those blur the lines of classic Internet email delivery but when I use Mail.app to send an email, I am the one doing the emailing, not the Google SMTP server acting as a mail transfer agent (MTA). > Many block the outgoing SMTP port Comcast doesn't, Time Warner doesn't, Verizon doesn't. My hunch is the large majority of U.S. residential ISP customers can connect to an SMTP server other than their ISP's.
- sedachv 10y ago
  > but when I use Mail.app to send an email, I am the one doing the emailing, not the Google SMTP server acting as a mail transfer agent (MTA) You seem to be confusing the MSA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_submission_agent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_submission_agent) and the MTA. If today your MUA (Mail.app) tried to connect to the destination mail host via SMTP directly it would get rejected. Some early MUAs did actually do that, but today almost all email gets relayed via an MSA and one or more MTAs.
  - extra88 10y ago
    As the Wikipedia article says, "Many MTAs perform the function of an MSA as well." I was looking at the article about MTAs [0], in which the diagram does not bother showing the sending MUA connecting to a distinct MSA. My MUA would not be rejected by the destination host if the recipient uses the same host as me. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_transfer_agent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_transfer_agent
    - sedachv 10y ago
      > My MUA would not be rejected by the destination host if the recipient uses the same host as me. Your MUA would be rejected if it acted as an MTA and connected on port 25 without authenticating. "Using the same host as me" is the case because the mail server knows that it is "your host" because your MUA is connecting to your email server's MSA using SMTP AUTH on port 587 or 465.
      - extra88 10y ago
        Well now you're moving goalposts, qualifying connections by port and authentication. I'm sure what you write is true of most ISPs and major email service providers but there are still SMTP servers in the world that don't require all MUAs to make authenticated connections; there's at least one at my university.
        10y ago

bonzini 10y ago

And Gmail complies to privacy laws indeed. They can scan content automatically to show ads, but they cannot sell a list of people that you exchanged email with, at least not without your consent.

loup-vaillant 10y ago
> They can scan content automatically to show ads This is even worse than manually spying on people: automation gives leverage. Now all we have to do is repurpose these targeted ad engine to deduce things other than buying preferences. Sure, they have their surface ethic (and Alphabet's employees have their actual ethic), but the tools they have in place for total surveillance is downright chilling.

extra88 10y ago

> You don't email your lawyer. You ask Alphabet to do it for you (gmail). I don't know what point you're trying to make. Are you assuming everyone uses Google's webmail interface or their apps? Maybe those blur the lines of classic Internet email delivery but when I use Mail.app to send an email, I am the one doing the emailing, not the Google SMTP server acting as a mail transfer agent (MTA). > Many block the outgoing SMTP port Comcast doesn't, Time Warner doesn't, Verizon doesn't. My hunch is the large majority of U.S. residential ISP customers can connect to an SMTP server other than their ISP's.

sedachv 10y ago
> but when I use Mail.app to send an email, I am the one doing the emailing, not the Google SMTP server acting as a mail transfer agent (MTA) You seem to be confusing the MSA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_submission_agent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_submission_agent) and the MTA. If today your MUA (Mail.app) tried to connect to the destination mail host via SMTP directly it would get rejected. Some early MUAs did actually do that, but today almost all email gets relayed via an MSA and one or more MTAs.
- extra88 10y ago
  As the Wikipedia article says, "Many MTAs perform the function of an MSA as well." I was looking at the article about MTAs [0], in which the diagram does not bother showing the sending MUA connecting to a distinct MSA. My MUA would not be rejected by the destination host if the recipient uses the same host as me. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_transfer_agent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_transfer_agent
  - sedachv 10y ago
    > My MUA would not be rejected by the destination host if the recipient uses the same host as me. Your MUA would be rejected if it acted as an MTA and connected on port 25 without authenticating. "Using the same host as me" is the case because the mail server knows that it is "your host" because your MUA is connecting to your email server's MSA using SMTP AUTH on port 587 or 465.
    - extra88 10y ago
      Well now you're moving goalposts, qualifying connections by port and authentication. I'm sure what you write is true of most ISPs and major email service providers but there are still SMTP servers in the world that don't require all MUAs to make authenticated connections; there's at least one at my university.
      - 10y ago