8 ms·

What If Your Emails Never Went to Gmail and Twitter Couldn't See Your Tweets?

173 points by kmfrk 15y ago

nextstep 15y ago
I like the sentiment of this idea, but sadly I think that this will be doomed to failure. It is unfortunate (but understandable) that the browser plugin is required even to read messages or posts by people using Privly. Crypto solutions need to be dead simple to be widely adopted. If users have to download extra software on top of what they already expect, then people like my parents will probably not use this.
- dclowd9901 15y ago
  I'm not sure what the adoption or usage rates are for it, but a very popular Pinterest has its bookmarklet. This implementation couldn't be far removed from that.
- spung 15y ago
  I think people who don't have the extension/plugin installed would be able to click the link to view the content from Privly's servers
p0ckets 15y ago
The issue of changing your email/tweet after posting is easily resolved by posting a hash of the email/tweet along with the link.
- wmf 15y ago
  People who want to change stuff after the fact won't post hashes.
EGreg 15y ago
This is actually rather cool, but we are far ahead of this at Qbix. We actually patented (sigh, hate the game not the playa) a way to have social networking integrated into websites with instant personalization and social context, but with total privacy and control over your data. And the stuff here is just one part of it. If you want to experience it for yourself as we roll out, download the "Groups" app on iPhone.
- _exec 15y ago
  Patent number? Pending or approved?
  - EGreg 15y ago
    Sorry I should have said "patent application". We don't have a patent yet. I am guessing this was downvoted because it says we applied for a patent. I feel ya, downvoters :P If it makes you feel any better, we simply need the patent because many investors ask about IP and "barriers to entry" and because we may want to license it to a company like Google, which respects patents, to get an additional revenue stream enabling us to not need to sell more shares of the company, which makes all of our current stakeholders' holdings more valuable :)
AdamFernandez 15y ago
I don't think this is a matter of forcing users to choose between modern technology and privacy. Based on their current revenue models, some of the companies may cease to exist if they can't mine user data for advertising revenue. Then again, Facebook and Twitter could charge users with an agreement that their data won't be used, and they will see no advertisements. I wonder how many users would choose this alternative. It is doubtful many would. So with these 'choices', would privly just shut down companies that use this data as a basis for revenue if widely adopted? Would this be a real positive for users?
- wmf 15y ago
  Yes, there is a social contract in Web 2.0 that these services are being provided in exchange for data mining. If you post nothing but encrypted blobs you are breaking the contract and you should expect your account to be closed. This service is actually worse than the previous ones because instead of mooching off other sites to host the data they actually host it themselves. There's no business model to pay for their hosting.
  - seanmcgregor 15y ago
    (let me take my Privly hat off and put on my Machine Learning Researcher hat) Facebook needs users far more than access to users' private communications. Their "like" button and the demographic data they collect is more valuable than crawling messages between users. Privly could slightly impact the efficiency of advertising, but it won't shut down advertising as a business model. AdBlock poses a bigger risk for that. (Privly hat back on) Our biggest challenge to legitimacy is interfacing with the web in a way that is private and allows sites like Facebook to "news feed" something only if the user reading the news feed can read the content. This is why we need to work towards a standard where both Facebook et al and Privacy can coexist. There are many options in this area, with differing amounts of privacy, but it is ultimately up to the posting user to post and the host site to decide what to do with it.
    - wmf 15y ago
      But if something like Privly was "done right", wouldn't everything — friends, profiles, likes, etc. — be encrypted? I think anything that really provides privacy would be too parasitic to Facebook; that's why I prefer a "clean break" approach like Diaspora/Appleseed/OneSocialWeb. Time will tell, I guess.
jmspring 15y ago
There have been similar ideas over the last few years -- encrypt in the browser before posting. A couple of private email services encrypted in javascript before posting the message. You then needed to share your key/password. An interesting idea, but one that comes and goes -- be it due to usability, lack of popular need/interest, etc.
- tommi 15y ago
  Yes, it kind of goes against the idea of sharing when you are limiting your post visibility to only a handful of people in your network. Not all of your friends are going to install addons to every browser they use and maintain yet another network of trust. Reminds me of http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt
- amirmc 15y ago
  > "I think Privly is best viewed as an argument in code. It's an attempt to expand the philosophical and technical terrain on which the privacy debate is playing out." I think debates on privacy (and even what it means to have a digital identity) are important and things like privly help push this forward. I'm not convinced by the implementation but I'm glad they made something.
  - seanmcgregor 15y ago
    Thanks, and with help, our implementation will monotonically increase in convincingness.
- zmmmmm 15y ago
  Encrypted email has been around and built into email clients by default forever and nobody uses it. Even just signing emails gets quizzical responses every now from people I send to (why do all your emails have a weird attachment?). The mere need give decryption keys to your contacts by a back channel has been sadly enough to push it over the edge of usability. People prefer total lack of security to even the most minor inconvenience. It's sobering and worth deep contemplation by anyone thinking about solving this issue.
NelsonMinar 15y ago
Everything old is new again. I wonder how many folks reading this article even know how UUCP email worked. Or traditionally decentralized SMTP, for that matter.
- ams6110 15y ago
  Yeah, I was wondering how many people DON'T use a browser to read their email. How does Privly work for them? Or why wouldn't they just use GPG.
  - SoftwareMaven 15y ago
    The problem with GPG is one of key management. The first person who truly solves that well (both reasonably secure and reasonably easy) is going to do well. To date, everybody has failed. (Disclaimer: I am working on solving that and hope we can make it work. :)
    - stephenbez 15y ago
      I worked on a project to make email encryption more user friendly. We handled key exchange through Facebook. You can read more here: http://www.alexlambert.com/_media/waterhouse-wip-chi2009.pdf http://www.alexlambert.com/_media/waterhouse-wip-chi2009.pdf
    - marklindhout 15y ago
      Email encryption is too much of a hassle, yet has enormous potential. I sure hope you succeed! Then I can finally send encrypted emails to my mom. Yay!
    - mike-cardwell 15y ago
      Another problem with using PGP to encrypt mail is that it only secures the message body. It doesn't secure the subject line or other headers. If I send a PGP encrypted email to somebody, their email provider can't read the message body, but what they do know is the email address of the sender, when they sent it, and when it was picked up. If everybody in the World started using PGP to encrypt all email tomorrow, we'd still have massive privacy problems that need addressing. P.S. I use PGP extensively. I sign all of my emails and even my HN profile, and encrypt whenever I can.
ryan_s 15y ago
I guess I don't see the point. The data is stored on their servers where they offer the same "promise" that they won't sell your data either. The only benefit I see is a central location of all data.
- ojilles 15y ago
  s/only benefit/other downside/
  - mratzloff 15y ago
    Time until hacked by some authoritarian government looking to suppress dissent, T-minus...
    - seanmcgregor 15y ago
      Yep, in the long run something will leak out of our servers. The plan is only to store ciphertext.
- tesseractive 15y ago
  Selling your encrypted data seems like a somewhat more difficult proposition for them than the one social networking services usually have.
  - dce 15y ago
    Do you not understand how encryption works, or do I?
    - tesseractive 15y ago
      If they have the ability to decrypt data on their server anytime they want then this whole thing seems utterly pointless. I sincerely hope that's not the case.
      - 15y ago
freshhawk 15y ago
I don't understand why there needs to be a privly server in the loop or what benefit to the users it provides (besides the retroactive editing of an email (that is now unreadable offline) if you read it in a web based email program.) The main use case is handled by a browser extension that handles encryption and decryption of text input/web site snippets. Having all the content hosted on the privly servers but embedded on pages and always editable is interesting I guess but seems unrelated to the encryption stuff. The problem for me is that the encryption portion is interesting while the embedded snippet thing is completely uninteresting to me.
- seanmcgregor 15y ago
  The hosted server is how we plan on financing development since many users will want the level of privacy it can provide, but don't have the technical expertise to manage their own environment. Over time we want to push content into a network of content hosts and P2P, but we have to promise something we can deliver as part of the Kickstarter. Our fundraising effort is more about recruiting devs than it is about raising 10K.
  - freshhawk 15y ago
    I see this as two separate apps though. This is probably because I already had thought about the encryption part and had a mental model of how this would work. One is a browser extension to handle encrypted chunks of text on webpages (and some kind of key management i assume). So I post the ciphertext of my message to twitter and my friends see the plaintext while others see the ciphertext. The second is the snippets of embeddable text hosted somewhere else (p2p, central server, etc) and an extension to auto-embed the special links to this content. Does it make sense to combine these two ideas from the beginning? Because honestly I would volunteer my time to develop the first but have only marginal interest in the second (although it's a cool piece of tech with some interestingly weird use cases). I can see the overlap, but I think the encryption part would be much more useful if it wasn't tied to the snippets stuff. Am I missing something?
    - seanmcgregor 15y ago
codezero 15y ago
If everyone uses GPG in their email we don't have to worry about email being insecure, right? Now we just need to get everyone on board with this extra, third party step.
- seanmcgregor 15y ago
  Our adoption model is to pass through a phase where content is separated into a key hosted by a site like Facebook (on the link), and the encrypted text on a content server like priv.ly. That way it is readable when they click the link, but priv.ly cant see it unless the link is clicked. Over the course of time we will transition away from this model because the ability to read the content without clicking through should be enticing, and we will prompt for installs every time they do click.
- pyre 15y ago
  Usually GPG is used to secure email transmission, and not storage. There are examples out there of storing your email GPG-encrypted, but you would have to leak at least some information to have useful things such as indexing for search on your emails.
  - zobzu 15y ago
    Wah? I use GPG to encrypt data all the time. For example all backups I do are via http://duplicity.nongnu.org/ http://duplicity.nongnu.org/ (its also super convenient) Additionally all emails that are GPG encrypted are stored that way with all the mail clients I know of (that is, they just keep the mail the way it is,decryption is in volatile memory only). So yes storage is encrypted too! Yes it also means search only works on sender/subject. Eventually you can have an index that is GPG encrypted and works once decrypted, no technical issue here.
aidenn0 15y ago
The answer to the question in the headline is "Then gmail and twitter wouldn't be free"
- joedevon 15y ago
  I was waiting for someone to notice. UPvote :)
kodablah 15y ago
Could client-side code could read what is placed in the DOM after decrypted by the browser extension? It seems many things (e.g. ad sense) reads the DOM on the client side to determine the context of the ads it will place. Correct me if I'm wrong.
- parley 15y ago
  I too was thinking exactly this. I watched the crypto walkthrough video on the kickstarter page and though what was shown looked solid, it didn't mention this. Would it turn into a client-side JS-war between the extension and the host (FB, etc)? It would be nice if someone involved in the project could mention this and why it's not a problem. Thanks! Edit: clarified.
- dsetton 15y ago
  I think it would be possible to read the content if it was just inserted into a <div> in the DOM or something. But the priv.ly link that is pointing to the content could be replaced by an iframe, and then it wouldn't be accessible to outsiders code, because of same-origin policy, I think. Not sure how it's actually done, though, I didn't dig any deeper.
tbsdy 15y ago
So instead of the original third party destroying your privacy, you hand control to another third party? What measures are being put into place to stop them from doing what the original third party did? Also: what's to stop someone like Facebook from banning these sort of links?
sedachv 15y ago
Private "cloud" services seem to be very much part of the zeitgeist. http://freedomboxfoundation.org/ http://freedomboxfoundation.org/ is probably the most well known, with Justin Frankel's WASTE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASTE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASTE) being one of the earliest. I researched the technical challenges of making these kinds of systems practical and wrote some findings at http://carcaddar.blogspot.ca/search/label/ClearSky http://carcaddar.blogspot.ca/search/label/ClearSky For everything to work as well as Facebook does today in a fully decentralized manner, there still needs to be a lot of research done in zero-knowledge password proofs and shared public key systems. The most relevant work I've found in those particular fields is http://ai.stanford.edu/~xb/pkc09/index.html http://ai.stanford.edu/~xb/pkc09/index.html
- wmf 15y ago
  there still needs to be a lot of research done in zero-knowledge password proofs and shared public key systems You might be setting the bar a bit high. You could also do logins by having a server you trust (e.g. because you own it) that vouches for you via OpenID or BrowserID.
zobzu 15y ago
Priv.ly, Y U NO USE GPG?
cowkingdeluxe 15y ago
We use something similar at the office. We have chat for all employees based on google talk, but it is encrypted before it's sent to Google's servers and decrypted after receipt.
- seanmcgregor 15y ago
  Interesting, is it open source?
  - cowkingdeluxe 15y ago
    Not sure, here it is: http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/ http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/ . We use it with Pidgin.
  - padraigm 15y ago
    OTR is open source, yes.
- oneweekwonder 15y ago
  I understand this boils down to security vs convenience but one of the main reasons I like google talk is that I can search through my old messages and I believe encrypting it before sending it to google, "disables" that functionality.
CGamesPlay 15y ago
Very related is this Firefox extension which does just the encryption portion: http://getfiregpg.org/s/home http://getfiregpg.org/s/home (I wrote the inline detection bit!)
- seanmcgregor 15y ago
  Nice! We'll standardize the URL structures so anyone can write their own extension to interface with the protocol, but we'd love to have more contributors on Privly. There are many components that we can carve up and work in parallel.
- freshhawk 15y ago
  Wow, that's excellent. I was just posting messages to the OP asking why they didn't start with something that does x where x equals exactly what this extension does, including inline detection. Too bad it's discontinued.
eps 15y ago
An off-site delivery for Gmail recipients would be a big step forward. Instead of seeing an actual email, the recipient would get an https link to a page on some non-Google server. Extra bonus for attaching an explanation along the lines of "your peer decided not to share the contents of this email with Google." What really ticks me off personally (and I fully realize I'm not in a majority here, even on HN) is sending an email to john@domain.com only to see the reply come back from Google's servers. In many cases I would've not sent the original email if I have had known it would go through them. They've got enough data on me as it is.
gordondevoe 15y ago
This idea is great. I'm interested to hear what mobile opportunities you plan on exploring. When clicking a youtube link on an android phone the device prompts a user to pick an app to use (browser or youtube or etc). I think this approach might be the simplest implementation (ie: when someone clicks a priv.ly link anywhere on the phone it prompts to use the priv.ly native app).
mcot2 15y ago
I already have a proof of concept that works like this but requires no 3rd party servers. My POC chrome extension uses a JavaScript based AES routine to encrypt text with a given user and passphrase. What gets posted to a site is the encrypted text plus the user name plus a unique string that my extension recognizes. If you have the extension installed it will scan the DOM for text that matches the known pattern and decrypt transparently given that you have the right username/password combo entered in the extensions settings. All that is left is to share the username/password combo to whomever should view the text via a different channel. I lost interest and didn't extend this to public/private key pair but that is the next logical step. Also, the extension needs a nice UI and maybe some visual cues on the page as to which text was encrypted/decrypted. Lastly, once the text is decrypted by the extension, theoretically the host site could query for the decrypted text and send it back via ajax. I couldn't find a great solution to this using chromes pathetic api's for extensions. If anyone is interested in this, just message me.
- _exec 15y ago
  Your email address is not visible in your profile, please enter it in the 'about' section, the 'email' field is not visible to the public. How can I reach you?
  - mcot2 15y ago
    thanks, I didn't know that wasn't public by default. Email address added.
- unicornporn 15y ago
  Sad fact: most users do not access these services using a web browser, they access them through mobile applications controlled by the service provider. Most mobile web browsers doesn't support extensions either. I'm afraid these browser extension solutions might be a solution for the desktop era, which will be long gone soon (if it isn't already). This is the price we pay for simplification and applification. People no longer know their machines.
rdl 15y ago
People have been doing this kind of thing (data aliasing/tokenization) for business SaaS apps for a while. It's interesting, but 1) you leak a fair bit of information, which in a business app isn't as big a deal as on a social network, due to volume -- just knowing I've friended you is as important as most of the messages posted -- and you lose a lot of indexing on structured data. Interesting hack, though.
JohnnyFlash 15y ago
I don't get it.. so anyone with the priv.ly extension installed can view the content? Priv.ly is also open source? So.. if say 10% of Facebook users started using Priv.ly.. wouldn't Facebook just put their own implementation directly into their site? This would give Facebook access to your content as well as make your content available in the Facebook mobile app's. Sure, it abstracts away your content but if it can be viewed anonymously it doesn't protect it or prevent twitter etc from reading it.
DallaRosa 15y ago
"Email that sits in the cloud -- like Gmail -- could be edited by the sender even after its been received. Tweets could change on a tweeter's whim." I guess if this really becomes standard you'd never be able to use an email conversation as evidence in a court.
4ydx 15y ago
my.zenlok.com PKI + Your Browser
Sami_Lehtinen 15y ago
Well, that's why we have solution called RetroShare, it protects you privacy. Only thing that it leaks is connectivity between peers. If you prefer to hide it too, then you can run it over Tor.

173 points by kmfrk 15y ago

I like the sentiment of this idea, but sadly I think that this will be doomed to failure. It is unfortunate (but understandable) that the browser plugin is required even to read messages or posts by people using Privly. Crypto solutions need to be dead simple to be widely adopted. If users have to download extra software on top of what they already expect, then people like my parents will probably not use this.

dclowd9901 15y ago
I'm not sure what the adoption or usage rates are for it, but a very popular Pinterest has its bookmarklet. This implementation couldn't be far removed from that.
spung 15y ago
I think people who don't have the extension/plugin installed would be able to click the link to view the content from Privly's servers

p0ckets 15y ago

The issue of changing your email/tweet after posting is easily resolved by posting a hash of the email/tweet along with the link.

wmf 15y ago
People who want to change stuff after the fact won't post hashes.

EGreg 15y ago

This is actually rather cool, but we are far ahead of this at Qbix. We actually patented (sigh, hate the game not the playa) a way to have social networking integrated into websites with instant personalization and social context, but with total privacy and control over your data. And the stuff here is just one part of it. If you want to experience it for yourself as we roll out, download the "Groups" app on iPhone.

_exec 15y ago
Patent number? Pending or approved?
- EGreg 15y ago
  Sorry I should have said "patent application". We don't have a patent yet. I am guessing this was downvoted because it says we applied for a patent. I feel ya, downvoters :P If it makes you feel any better, we simply need the patent because many investors ask about IP and "barriers to entry" and because we may want to license it to a company like Google, which respects patents, to get an additional revenue stream enabling us to not need to sell more shares of the company, which makes all of our current stakeholders' holdings more valuable :)

AdamFernandez 15y ago

I don't think this is a matter of forcing users to choose between modern technology and privacy. Based on their current revenue models, some of the companies may cease to exist if they can't mine user data for advertising revenue. Then again, Facebook and Twitter could charge users with an agreement that their data won't be used, and they will see no advertisements. I wonder how many users would choose this alternative. It is doubtful many would. So with these 'choices', would privly just shut down companies that use this data as a basis for revenue if widely adopted? Would this be a real positive for users?

wmf 15y ago
Yes, there is a social contract in Web 2.0 that these services are being provided in exchange for data mining. If you post nothing but encrypted blobs you are breaking the contract and you should expect your account to be closed. This service is actually worse than the previous ones because instead of mooching off other sites to host the data they actually host it themselves. There's no business model to pay for their hosting.
- seanmcgregor 15y ago
  (let me take my Privly hat off and put on my Machine Learning Researcher hat) Facebook needs users far more than access to users' private communications. Their "like" button and the demographic data they collect is more valuable than crawling messages between users. Privly could slightly impact the efficiency of advertising, but it won't shut down advertising as a business model. AdBlock poses a bigger risk for that. (Privly hat back on) Our biggest challenge to legitimacy is interfacing with the web in a way that is private and allows sites like Facebook to "news feed" something only if the user reading the news feed can read the content. This is why we need to work towards a standard where both Facebook et al and Privacy can coexist. There are many options in this area, with differing amounts of privacy, but it is ultimately up to the posting user to post and the host site to decide what to do with it.
  - wmf 15y ago
    But if something like Privly was "done right", wouldn't everything — friends, profiles, likes, etc. — be encrypted? I think anything that really provides privacy would be too parasitic to Facebook; that's why I prefer a "clean break" approach like Diaspora/Appleseed/OneSocialWeb. Time will tell, I guess.

jmspring 15y ago

There have been similar ideas over the last few years -- encrypt in the browser before posting. A couple of private email services encrypted in javascript before posting the message. You then needed to share your key/password. An interesting idea, but one that comes and goes -- be it due to usability, lack of popular need/interest, etc.

tommi 15y ago
Yes, it kind of goes against the idea of sharing when you are limiting your post visibility to only a handful of people in your network. Not all of your friends are going to install addons to every browser they use and maintain yet another network of trust. Reminds me of http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt
amirmc 15y ago
> "I think Privly is best viewed as an argument in code. It's an attempt to expand the philosophical and technical terrain on which the privacy debate is playing out." I think debates on privacy (and even what it means to have a digital identity) are important and things like privly help push this forward. I'm not convinced by the implementation but I'm glad they made something.
- seanmcgregor 15y ago
  Thanks, and with help, our implementation will monotonically increase in convincingness.
zmmmmm 15y ago
Encrypted email has been around and built into email clients by default forever and nobody uses it. Even just signing emails gets quizzical responses every now from people I send to (why do all your emails have a weird attachment?). The mere need give decryption keys to your contacts by a back channel has been sadly enough to push it over the edge of usability. People prefer total lack of security to even the most minor inconvenience. It's sobering and worth deep contemplation by anyone thinking about solving this issue.

NelsonMinar 15y ago

Everything old is new again. I wonder how many folks reading this article even know how UUCP email worked. Or traditionally decentralized SMTP, for that matter.

ams6110 15y ago
Yeah, I was wondering how many people DON'T use a browser to read their email. How does Privly work for them? Or why wouldn't they just use GPG.
- SoftwareMaven 15y ago
  The problem with GPG is one of key management. The first person who truly solves that well (both reasonably secure and reasonably easy) is going to do well. To date, everybody has failed. (Disclaimer: I am working on solving that and hope we can make it work. :)
  - stephenbez 15y ago
    I worked on a project to make email encryption more user friendly. We handled key exchange through Facebook. You can read more here: http://www.alexlambert.com/_media/waterhouse-wip-chi2009.pdf http://www.alexlambert.com/_media/waterhouse-wip-chi2009.pdf
  - marklindhout 15y ago
    Email encryption is too much of a hassle, yet has enormous potential. I sure hope you succeed! Then I can finally send encrypted emails to my mom. Yay!
  - mike-cardwell 15y ago
    Another problem with using PGP to encrypt mail is that it only secures the message body. It doesn't secure the subject line or other headers. If I send a PGP encrypted email to somebody, their email provider can't read the message body, but what they do know is the email address of the sender, when they sent it, and when it was picked up. If everybody in the World started using PGP to encrypt all email tomorrow, we'd still have massive privacy problems that need addressing. P.S. I use PGP extensively. I sign all of my emails and even my HN profile, and encrypt whenever I can.

ryan_s 15y ago

I guess I don't see the point. The data is stored on their servers where they offer the same "promise" that they won't sell your data either. The only benefit I see is a central location of all data.

ojilles 15y ago
s/only benefit/other downside/
- mratzloff 15y ago
  Time until hacked by some authoritarian government looking to suppress dissent, T-minus...
  - seanmcgregor 15y ago
    Yep, in the long run something will leak out of our servers. The plan is only to store ciphertext.
tesseractive 15y ago
Selling your encrypted data seems like a somewhat more difficult proposition for them than the one social networking services usually have.
- dce 15y ago
  Do you not understand how encryption works, or do I?
  - tesseractive 15y ago
    If they have the ability to decrypt data on their server anytime they want then this whole thing seems utterly pointless. I sincerely hope that's not the case.
    - 15y ago

freshhawk 15y ago

I don't understand why there needs to be a privly server in the loop or what benefit to the users it provides (besides the retroactive editing of an email (that is now unreadable offline) if you read it in a web based email program.) The main use case is handled by a browser extension that handles encryption and decryption of text input/web site snippets. Having all the content hosted on the privly servers but embedded on pages and always editable is interesting I guess but seems unrelated to the encryption stuff. The problem for me is that the encryption portion is interesting while the embedded snippet thing is completely uninteresting to me.

seanmcgregor 15y ago
The hosted server is how we plan on financing development since many users will want the level of privacy it can provide, but don't have the technical expertise to manage their own environment. Over time we want to push content into a network of content hosts and P2P, but we have to promise something we can deliver as part of the Kickstarter. Our fundraising effort is more about recruiting devs than it is about raising 10K.
- freshhawk 15y ago
  I see this as two separate apps though. This is probably because I already had thought about the encryption part and had a mental model of how this would work. One is a browser extension to handle encrypted chunks of text on webpages (and some kind of key management i assume). So I post the ciphertext of my message to twitter and my friends see the plaintext while others see the ciphertext. The second is the snippets of embeddable text hosted somewhere else (p2p, central server, etc) and an extension to auto-embed the special links to this content. Does it make sense to combine these two ideas from the beginning? Because honestly I would volunteer my time to develop the first but have only marginal interest in the second (although it's a cool piece of tech with some interestingly weird use cases). I can see the overlap, but I think the encryption part would be much more useful if it wasn't tied to the snippets stuff. Am I missing something?
  - seanmcgregor 15y ago

codezero 15y ago

If everyone uses GPG in their email we don't have to worry about email being insecure, right? Now we just need to get everyone on board with this extra, third party step.

seanmcgregor 15y ago
Our adoption model is to pass through a phase where content is separated into a key hosted by a site like Facebook (on the link), and the encrypted text on a content server like priv.ly. That way it is readable when they click the link, but priv.ly cant see it unless the link is clicked. Over the course of time we will transition away from this model because the ability to read the content without clicking through should be enticing, and we will prompt for installs every time they do click.
pyre 15y ago
Usually GPG is used to secure email transmission, and not storage. There are examples out there of storing your email GPG-encrypted, but you would have to leak at least some information to have useful things such as indexing for search on your emails.
- zobzu 15y ago
  Wah? I use GPG to encrypt data all the time. For example all backups I do are via http://duplicity.nongnu.org/ http://duplicity.nongnu.org/ (its also super convenient) Additionally all emails that are GPG encrypted are stored that way with all the mail clients I know of (that is, they just keep the mail the way it is,decryption is in volatile memory only). So yes storage is encrypted too! Yes it also means search only works on sender/subject. Eventually you can have an index that is GPG encrypted and works once decrypted, no technical issue here.

aidenn0 15y ago

The answer to the question in the headline is "Then gmail and twitter wouldn't be free"

joedevon 15y ago
I was waiting for someone to notice. UPvote :)

kodablah 15y ago

Could client-side code could read what is placed in the DOM after decrypted by the browser extension? It seems many things (e.g. ad sense) reads the DOM on the client side to determine the context of the ads it will place. Correct me if I'm wrong.

parley 15y ago
I too was thinking exactly this. I watched the crypto walkthrough video on the kickstarter page and though what was shown looked solid, it didn't mention this. Would it turn into a client-side JS-war between the extension and the host (FB, etc)? It would be nice if someone involved in the project could mention this and why it's not a problem. Thanks! Edit: clarified.
dsetton 15y ago
I think it would be possible to read the content if it was just inserted into a <div> in the DOM or something. But the priv.ly link that is pointing to the content could be replaced by an iframe, and then it wouldn't be accessible to outsiders code, because of same-origin policy, I think. Not sure how it's actually done, though, I didn't dig any deeper.

tbsdy 15y ago

So instead of the original third party destroying your privacy, you hand control to another third party? What measures are being put into place to stop them from doing what the original third party did? Also: what's to stop someone like Facebook from banning these sort of links?

sedachv 15y ago

Private "cloud" services seem to be very much part of the zeitgeist. http://freedomboxfoundation.org/ http://freedomboxfoundation.org/ is probably the most well known, with Justin Frankel's WASTE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASTE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASTE) being one of the earliest. I researched the technical challenges of making these kinds of systems practical and wrote some findings at http://carcaddar.blogspot.ca/search/label/ClearSky http://carcaddar.blogspot.ca/search/label/ClearSky For everything to work as well as Facebook does today in a fully decentralized manner, there still needs to be a lot of research done in zero-knowledge password proofs and shared public key systems. The most relevant work I've found in those particular fields is http://ai.stanford.edu/~xb/pkc09/index.html http://ai.stanford.edu/~xb/pkc09/index.html

wmf 15y ago
there still needs to be a lot of research done in zero-knowledge password proofs and shared public key systems You might be setting the bar a bit high. You could also do logins by having a server you trust (e.g. because you own it) that vouches for you via OpenID or BrowserID.

zobzu 15y ago

Priv.ly, Y U NO USE GPG?

cowkingdeluxe 15y ago

We use something similar at the office. We have chat for all employees based on google talk, but it is encrypted before it's sent to Google's servers and decrypted after receipt.

seanmcgregor 15y ago
Interesting, is it open source?
- cowkingdeluxe 15y ago
  Not sure, here it is: http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/ http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/ . We use it with Pidgin.
- padraigm 15y ago
  OTR is open source, yes.
oneweekwonder 15y ago
I understand this boils down to security vs convenience but one of the main reasons I like google talk is that I can search through my old messages and I believe encrypting it before sending it to google, "disables" that functionality.

CGamesPlay 15y ago

Very related is this Firefox extension which does just the encryption portion: http://getfiregpg.org/s/home http://getfiregpg.org/s/home (I wrote the inline detection bit!)

seanmcgregor 15y ago
Nice! We'll standardize the URL structures so anyone can write their own extension to interface with the protocol, but we'd love to have more contributors on Privly. There are many components that we can carve up and work in parallel.
freshhawk 15y ago
Wow, that's excellent. I was just posting messages to the OP asking why they didn't start with something that does x where x equals exactly what this extension does, including inline detection. Too bad it's discontinued.

eps 15y ago

An off-site delivery for Gmail recipients would be a big step forward. Instead of seeing an actual email, the recipient would get an https link to a page on some non-Google server. Extra bonus for attaching an explanation along the lines of "your peer decided not to share the contents of this email with Google." What really ticks me off personally (and I fully realize I'm not in a majority here, even on HN) is sending an email to john@domain.com only to see the reply come back from Google's servers. In many cases I would've not sent the original email if I have had known it would go through them. They've got enough data on me as it is.

gordondevoe 15y ago

This idea is great. I'm interested to hear what mobile opportunities you plan on exploring. When clicking a youtube link on an android phone the device prompts a user to pick an app to use (browser or youtube or etc). I think this approach might be the simplest implementation (ie: when someone clicks a priv.ly link anywhere on the phone it prompts to use the priv.ly native app).

mcot2 15y ago

I already have a proof of concept that works like this but requires no 3rd party servers. My POC chrome extension uses a JavaScript based AES routine to encrypt text with a given user and passphrase. What gets posted to a site is the encrypted text plus the user name plus a unique string that my extension recognizes. If you have the extension installed it will scan the DOM for text that matches the known pattern and decrypt transparently given that you have the right username/password combo entered in the extensions settings. All that is left is to share the username/password combo to whomever should view the text via a different channel. I lost interest and didn't extend this to public/private key pair but that is the next logical step. Also, the extension needs a nice UI and maybe some visual cues on the page as to which text was encrypted/decrypted. Lastly, once the text is decrypted by the extension, theoretically the host site could query for the decrypted text and send it back via ajax. I couldn't find a great solution to this using chromes pathetic api's for extensions. If anyone is interested in this, just message me.

_exec 15y ago
Your email address is not visible in your profile, please enter it in the 'about' section, the 'email' field is not visible to the public. How can I reach you?
- mcot2 15y ago
  thanks, I didn't know that wasn't public by default. Email address added.
unicornporn 15y ago
Sad fact: most users do not access these services using a web browser, they access them through mobile applications controlled by the service provider. Most mobile web browsers doesn't support extensions either. I'm afraid these browser extension solutions might be a solution for the desktop era, which will be long gone soon (if it isn't already). This is the price we pay for simplification and applification. People no longer know their machines.

rdl 15y ago

People have been doing this kind of thing (data aliasing/tokenization) for business SaaS apps for a while. It's interesting, but 1) you leak a fair bit of information, which in a business app isn't as big a deal as on a social network, due to volume -- just knowing I've friended you is as important as most of the messages posted -- and you lose a lot of indexing on structured data. Interesting hack, though.

JohnnyFlash 15y ago

I don't get it.. so anyone with the priv.ly extension installed can view the content? Priv.ly is also open source? So.. if say 10% of Facebook users started using Priv.ly.. wouldn't Facebook just put their own implementation directly into their site? This would give Facebook access to your content as well as make your content available in the Facebook mobile app's. Sure, it abstracts away your content but if it can be viewed anonymously it doesn't protect it or prevent twitter etc from reading it.

DallaRosa 15y ago

"Email that sits in the cloud -- like Gmail -- could be edited by the sender even after its been received. Tweets could change on a tweeter's whim." I guess if this really becomes standard you'd never be able to use an email conversation as evidence in a court.

4ydx 15y ago

my.zenlok.com PKI + Your Browser

Sami_Lehtinen 15y ago

Well, that's why we have solution called RetroShare, it protects you privacy. Only thing that it leaks is connectivity between peers. If you prefer to hide it too, then you can run it over Tor.