6 ms·

How can one trust someone with their email account. I believe that is just a weird thing to do no matter whether it was not such a threat before. But your email

How can one trust someone with their email account. I believe that is just a weird thing to do no matter whether it was not such a threat before. But your email is something personal.

forgottenpass 9y ago
Because the world is hard. People don't don't understand the implementation details well enough to intuit where the boundaries of possibility lie. They don't understand how morally bankrupt the valley is to know "tech" doesn't have a single shard of the restraint that would be necessary to create ethical boundaries.
- FussyZeus 9y ago
  To be fair, people don't know because they are constantly told by slick products, pretty interfaces and "easy" stuff that tech isn't hard. It's all just magic. Magic stopped working? Call tech support. I mean seriously, if you own a car, there's a certain level of competence that is expected from the owner, even if it's just the basic stuff like putting the gas pump in the right spot, making sure to get the oil changed regularly, keeping an eye on the various dials and gauges to make sure your engine isn't on fire. There are no such expectancies in a smart phone, they just sell you the thing at a steep subsidy and send you on your merry way, and I find this interesting because you can do far more damage to your life or someone elses with a smartphone than a car.
  - d33 9y ago
    > you can do far more damage to your life or someone elses with a smartphone than a car. Could you elaborate? I find it difficult to imagine how one kills somebody using a smartphone, while with a car it's pretty obvious.
    - FussyZeus 9y ago
      I can't remember her name, but it wasn't long ago someone tweeted an incredibly stupid joke about AIDS in Africa, and by the time their plane landed they'd lost their job and had been publicly disgraced so thoroughly they were unemployed for something like 9 months. I should've been more specific, obviously a car will do more physical damage but I'm talking less about actually hurting someone and more about ruining someone's life.
      - wolfgke 9y ago
        > but it wasn't long ago someone tweeted an incredibly stupid joke about AIDS in Africa, and by the time their plane landed they'd lost their job and had been publicly disgraced so thoroughly they were unemployed for something like 9 months. The mistake in my opinion rather lies in doing such a strong reaction on a bad joke.
        FussyZeus 9y ago
        Well yeah and if you're t-boned by a drunk driver the mistake is the person driving drunk, not you going for a taco bell run. Unfortunately your spine is still shattered regardless of who actually was making mistakes.
      - snerbles 9y ago
        The case of Justine Sacco. A magical combination of a single bad joke and outrage culture. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-t... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2955322/Justine-Sacco-reveals-destroyed-life-racist-tweet-trip-Africa.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2955322/Justine-Sa...
        FussyZeus 9y ago
        Right. Now whether the reaction was too much or not enough is up to the reader, but what is clear is that simply sending a tweet like that can have ramifications for the literal remainder of your life, she's never going to be completely decoupled from telling that stupid joke as long as she lives and probably a decent time after that, too. I find it disturbing that so many people seem to think Twitter and Facebook and the rest are just places to dump whatever thought runs through your brains as though nobody but the people you want to see it will ever see it. But again, that's what things like Facebook advertise as, and that's the type of content Twitter encourages.
kardos 9y ago
> How can one trust someone with their email account. Wait until you hear about mint.com.... ;)
- cheath 9y ago
  Anything in particular that they are doing with their user data? I am curious.
  - kardos 9y ago
    I don't know. What is their business model? Intuit paid $170M for them, so they're certainly angling to recover at least that much through some monetization strategy. I think it's fantasy to believe that they wouldn't sell your detailed transaction history. It looks like JPMorgan Chase has muscled their way to an exception on that [1], a strong indication that selling data is their MO. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mint.com#Controversial_practices https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mint.com#Controversial_practic...
  - stinkytaco 9y ago
    They are in the most lucrative advertising business: finance. Every time my credit card fee pops up on my account, they show an ad for credit cards with no fee. Insurance, investing, loans, etc, etc. All of the most expensive adwords on Google and they have treasure trove of data on it. Since I strongly suspect that data's going to get sold by my bank, credit card company, insurance broker, loan provider and so on, the convenience of mint outweighs its disadvantages to me.
vmateixeira 9y ago
> But your email is something personal Tell that to your email provider..
- ionised 9y ago
  I do. They don't advertise to me and they let me encrypt my mail incoming, at rest and between my mail client and their servers.
qudat 9y ago
You're trusting any free provider of email with your data ... I think it's unrealistic to expect everyone to host their own email servers.
- alasdair_ 9y ago
  >I think it's unrealistic to expect everyone to host their own email servers. It's surprisingly more difficult than it used to be. Trying to get your server reputation just right so that gmail won't flag you as spam is much tougher than it was in the past, for example. Speaking of spam - there is so much of it that something like gmail filters out. I still send from gmail, although I use a personally-hosted (and aggressively firewalled/ monitored) box for receiving mail for things like password resets.
germinalphrase 9y ago
When setting up my own email server is as easy as downloading and launching Firefox then it might happen. As is, I don't think it's so simple.
- JohnnyConatus 9y ago
  Truthy. But That plan didn't even work out for Firefox.
  - newsat13 9y ago
    What didn't work out for Firefox? Firefox is used by millions last I checked.
- educar 9y ago
  You should try cloudron.io

How can one trust someone with their email account. I believe that is just a weird thing to do no matter whether it was not such a threat before. But your email is something personal.

forgottenpass 9y ago

Because the world is hard. People don't don't understand the implementation details well enough to intuit where the boundaries of possibility lie. They don't understand how morally bankrupt the valley is to know "tech" doesn't have a single shard of the restraint that would be necessary to create ethical boundaries.

FussyZeus 9y ago
To be fair, people don't know because they are constantly told by slick products, pretty interfaces and "easy" stuff that tech isn't hard. It's all just magic. Magic stopped working? Call tech support. I mean seriously, if you own a car, there's a certain level of competence that is expected from the owner, even if it's just the basic stuff like putting the gas pump in the right spot, making sure to get the oil changed regularly, keeping an eye on the various dials and gauges to make sure your engine isn't on fire. There are no such expectancies in a smart phone, they just sell you the thing at a steep subsidy and send you on your merry way, and I find this interesting because you can do far more damage to your life or someone elses with a smartphone than a car.
- d33 9y ago
  > you can do far more damage to your life or someone elses with a smartphone than a car. Could you elaborate? I find it difficult to imagine how one kills somebody using a smartphone, while with a car it's pretty obvious.
  - FussyZeus 9y ago
    I can't remember her name, but it wasn't long ago someone tweeted an incredibly stupid joke about AIDS in Africa, and by the time their plane landed they'd lost their job and had been publicly disgraced so thoroughly they were unemployed for something like 9 months. I should've been more specific, obviously a car will do more physical damage but I'm talking less about actually hurting someone and more about ruining someone's life.
    - wolfgke 9y ago
      > but it wasn't long ago someone tweeted an incredibly stupid joke about AIDS in Africa, and by the time their plane landed they'd lost their job and had been publicly disgraced so thoroughly they were unemployed for something like 9 months. The mistake in my opinion rather lies in doing such a strong reaction on a bad joke.
      - FussyZeus 9y ago
        Well yeah and if you're t-boned by a drunk driver the mistake is the person driving drunk, not you going for a taco bell run. Unfortunately your spine is still shattered regardless of who actually was making mistakes.
    - snerbles 9y ago
      The case of Justine Sacco. A magical combination of a single bad joke and outrage culture. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-t... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2955322/Justine-Sacco-reveals-destroyed-life-racist-tweet-trip-Africa.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2955322/Justine-Sa...
      - FussyZeus 9y ago
        Right. Now whether the reaction was too much or not enough is up to the reader, but what is clear is that simply sending a tweet like that can have ramifications for the literal remainder of your life, she's never going to be completely decoupled from telling that stupid joke as long as she lives and probably a decent time after that, too. I find it disturbing that so many people seem to think Twitter and Facebook and the rest are just places to dump whatever thought runs through your brains as though nobody but the people you want to see it will ever see it. But again, that's what things like Facebook advertise as, and that's the type of content Twitter encourages.

kardos 9y ago

> How can one trust someone with their email account. Wait until you hear about mint.com.... ;)

cheath 9y ago
Anything in particular that they are doing with their user data? I am curious.
- kardos 9y ago
  I don't know. What is their business model? Intuit paid $170M for them, so they're certainly angling to recover at least that much through some monetization strategy. I think it's fantasy to believe that they wouldn't sell your detailed transaction history. It looks like JPMorgan Chase has muscled their way to an exception on that [1], a strong indication that selling data is their MO. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mint.com#Controversial_practices https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mint.com#Controversial_practic...
- stinkytaco 9y ago
  They are in the most lucrative advertising business: finance. Every time my credit card fee pops up on my account, they show an ad for credit cards with no fee. Insurance, investing, loans, etc, etc. All of the most expensive adwords on Google and they have treasure trove of data on it. Since I strongly suspect that data's going to get sold by my bank, credit card company, insurance broker, loan provider and so on, the convenience of mint outweighs its disadvantages to me.

vmateixeira 9y ago

> But your email is something personal Tell that to your email provider..

ionised 9y ago
I do. They don't advertise to me and they let me encrypt my mail incoming, at rest and between my mail client and their servers.

qudat 9y ago

You're trusting any free provider of email with your data ... I think it's unrealistic to expect everyone to host their own email servers.

alasdair_ 9y ago
>I think it's unrealistic to expect everyone to host their own email servers. It's surprisingly more difficult than it used to be. Trying to get your server reputation just right so that gmail won't flag you as spam is much tougher than it was in the past, for example. Speaking of spam - there is so much of it that something like gmail filters out. I still send from gmail, although I use a personally-hosted (and aggressively firewalled/ monitored) box for receiving mail for things like password resets.

germinalphrase 9y ago

When setting up my own email server is as easy as downloading and launching Firefox then it might happen. As is, I don't think it's so simple.

JohnnyConatus 9y ago
Truthy. But That plan didn't even work out for Firefox.
- newsat13 9y ago
  What didn't work out for Firefox? Firefox is used by millions last I checked.
educar 9y ago
You should try cloudron.io