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With Google email hosting you just have to worry about a few hundred people who can read all your email, their data retention policies, and who can subpoena you

by seiji 16y ago

With Google email hosting you just have to worry about a few hundred people who can read all your email, their data retention policies, and who can subpoena your private communications. (conspiracy theory: Google gives the public one text box on a webpage to search the Internet. Do you think they don't have a text box on an internal webpage to search all of Gmail? Do you think facebook doesn't have one internal webpage capable of searching all private communications? Facebook used to advertise "spy on your friends!" as an employment perk.)

davidw 16y ago
> Do you think they don't have a text box on an internal webpage to search all of Gmail? That kind of thing would leak out sooner or later.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  Google had a rogue sysadmin that was apparently able to access user data with ease a short time ago. It might not be as easy as a textbox to search all of Gmail but your gmail data store appears to be wide open to a fairly large number of google employees.
maukdaddy 16y ago
and who can subpoena your private communications. Hate to break it to you, but that same subpoena can just as easily allow your house, office, or datacenter to be raided. Your data is just as susceptible to lawful intercept at Google as it is your private premises.
- mike-cardwell 16y ago
  When self hosting, you can make sure that deleted email has actually been deleted. You have control over how long logs are kept. You have control over whether or not to use encrypted filesystems.
- lambda 16y ago
  It is much easier for one over-broad subpoena or search warrant to reveal your private data if it's hosted on Google than if it's hosted on your own server. If everyone keeps their own data on their own machines, then they would need to subpoena or get a search warrant for each individual person, rather than a broad one attempting to fish for information. Furthermore, you can fight a subpoena. Do you trust Google to fight a subpoena on your behalf? How would they even know whether or not they should; how would they be able to tell if the subpoena is reasonable or not?

by seiji 16y ago

davidw 16y ago

> Do you think they don't have a text box on an internal webpage to search all of Gmail? That kind of thing would leak out sooner or later.

jacquesm 16y ago
Google had a rogue sysadmin that was apparently able to access user data with ease a short time ago. It might not be as easy as a textbox to search all of Gmail but your gmail data store appears to be wide open to a fairly large number of google employees.

maukdaddy 16y ago

and who can subpoena your private communications. Hate to break it to you, but that same subpoena can just as easily allow your house, office, or datacenter to be raided. Your data is just as susceptible to lawful intercept at Google as it is your private premises.

mike-cardwell 16y ago
When self hosting, you can make sure that deleted email has actually been deleted. You have control over how long logs are kept. You have control over whether or not to use encrypted filesystems.
lambda 16y ago
It is much easier for one over-broad subpoena or search warrant to reveal your private data if it's hosted on Google than if it's hosted on your own server. If everyone keeps their own data on their own machines, then they would need to subpoena or get a search warrant for each individual person, rather than a broad one attempting to fish for information. Furthermore, you can fight a subpoena. Do you trust Google to fight a subpoena on your behalf? How would they even know whether or not they should; how would they be able to tell if the subpoena is reasonable or not?