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I think in general treating email any other way than "everyone will eventually read your mail" makes no sense. Email communication, from forwarding to how peopl

I think in general treating email any other way than "everyone will eventually read your mail" makes no sense. Email communication, from forwarding to how people archive, to copy-pasting provides no security and is so brittle, just assume anything you write in an email is for public consumption. Reminds me of a post from a few years ago about encrypted mail as a security LARP (https://www.latacora.com/blog/2020/02/19/stop-using-encrypted/ https://www.latacora.com/blog/2020/02/19/stop-using-encrypte...) If you want secure messaging that nobody else will snoop on use an application dedicated to.. secure messaging. It's never what email was for and it's not how it's being used.

cryptoz 1y ago
I mean, for normal people that is exactly how it’s being used. Your receipts for everything are automatically emailed with all kinds of private info for example. Nobody, and I mean nobody, is expecting those receipts to be public. And since all that is in your email you reasonably expect your other email to be private as well. Email is auth now. People do not use email the way you are describing.
- shadowgovt 1y ago
  One of the biggest issues with the way the modern internet works is that it technically works the way GP describes but people believe it works the way you describe. Even assuming all encryption is configured correctly at the endpoints so we can discount the risk of mid-transit interception and comprehension (do I assume CVS has encryption set up correctly on their outbound receipt emails? I do not...) People think it's like the postal network but it's more like the mail lands at the post office and they hand you a copy of it, while they retain the originals.
Gigachad 1y ago
Article is from 2014 where this was more of a valid concern. These days I don't think people send email for anything other than external communication with businesses. And only in western countries.
- kevin_thibedeau 1y ago
  The only personal electronic communication I use are the only two widely deployed federated protocols: email and SMS. Everything else involves compromises to enter a walled garden that offers no value to me.
  - brewdad 1y ago
    Sure but you do understand that makes you the outlier these days, right? Most people are on Facebook Messenger or Whatsapp or Signal or a dozen similar platforms. I try to use Signal for most communications but have friends and family that won't move to it, so I also use Whatsapp or plain SMS with them.
  - onlygoose 1y ago
    Is SMS federated though? Genuine question. As far as I know it requires manual each-to-each setup on MNO level thus very fragile when we talk about cross-border or even cross-operator messaging. It is nowhere near email in terms of federation.
- recursive 1y ago
  My experience in 2025 must be extremely different from yours. I don't even know what alternate channels you might have in mind.
  - denkmoon 1y ago
    Chat. Matrix for nerds, discord for gamers and redditors, telegram for everyone else who cares and imessage/rcs for those who don’t.
    - vidarh 1y ago
      Exactly zero people I regularly communicate with other than my teenage son uses any of those regularly. The only people who use RCS to contact me are businesses sending notifications or spam. Unlike e-mail where I do get personal correspondence regularly. I don't expect my experience is typical, but I don't think yours are either - we all live in bubbles.
princevegeta89 1y ago
Exactly. Email is never an organized channel for communication. It only makes sense in the corporate world. For users who don't pay for their personal email, email is nothing but a marketing channel and a very inefficient one at that. All the companies and corporations and people try to pretend to make email addresses look confidential and private. But the reality is they just see it as a way to spam you with ads and promotions and meaningless clickbait messages. The idea of unsubscribing from emails from corporations and agencies is again just an act of pretense. 95% of the cases, it's not done in one click and involves a series of a few confusing steps. Even from a technology perspective, email is fucked and a legacy artifact as of today. I would love to see a more secure protocol to replace it, where the recipient always has full control over all the messages that he can ever receive.
- goku12 1y ago
  > For users who don't pay for their personal email, email is nothing but a marketing channel and a very inefficient one at that. I have a paid personal email plan on my own domain name. (Mostly to get aliases and plus addresses). It is setup very well and filters spam very efficiently, compared to some 'corporate-standard' filters on other services. But I still have to use my gmail address because most individual contacts wouldn't see my mails otherwise since they are on gmail, hotmail, etc. And for many official websites, my email addresses are 'not valid email addresses'. Granted that my TLD .space isn't an official sounding one, but it's used by exactly two types of users - people who use it as their space, and people/organizations working on space tech. So I pay, but I'm still forced to watch them spam. Honestly, I believe that email is now a captured monopoly (cartelopoly?). > I would love to see a more secure protocol to replace it, where the recipient always has full control over all the messages that he can ever receive. I wholeheartedly agree. Email is an awesome idea. But its age is starting to show. We need something with security and encryption built-in, much fewer moving parts (Can we integrate MTA, MDA, WebUI, spam filters, DKIM, etc into just one?), option to opt out of rich formatting (the HTML and AMP junk), dynamic updates, etc and proper spam filtering, etc. We should also have a way to disincentivize or punish big players from rejecting valid emails. Perhaps it can use HTTPS to overcome those pesky corporate reverse proxies and firewalls. But the idea of having a domain name as a namespace for users is still precious.
blitzar 1y ago
I consider it to be like a postcard. The words probably get read somewhere on the way to the destination and in the future someone will probably unpin the pretty picture that has been decorating the notice board, turn it over and read what is on the other side.

cryptoz 1y ago

I mean, for normal people that is exactly how it’s being used. Your receipts for everything are automatically emailed with all kinds of private info for example. Nobody, and I mean nobody, is expecting those receipts to be public. And since all that is in your email you reasonably expect your other email to be private as well. Email is auth now. People do not use email the way you are describing.

shadowgovt 1y ago
One of the biggest issues with the way the modern internet works is that it technically works the way GP describes but people believe it works the way you describe. Even assuming all encryption is configured correctly at the endpoints so we can discount the risk of mid-transit interception and comprehension (do I assume CVS has encryption set up correctly on their outbound receipt emails? I do not...) People think it's like the postal network but it's more like the mail lands at the post office and they hand you a copy of it, while they retain the originals.

Gigachad 1y ago

Article is from 2014 where this was more of a valid concern. These days I don't think people send email for anything other than external communication with businesses. And only in western countries.

kevin_thibedeau 1y ago
The only personal electronic communication I use are the only two widely deployed federated protocols: email and SMS. Everything else involves compromises to enter a walled garden that offers no value to me.
- brewdad 1y ago
  Sure but you do understand that makes you the outlier these days, right? Most people are on Facebook Messenger or Whatsapp or Signal or a dozen similar platforms. I try to use Signal for most communications but have friends and family that won't move to it, so I also use Whatsapp or plain SMS with them.
- onlygoose 1y ago
  Is SMS federated though? Genuine question. As far as I know it requires manual each-to-each setup on MNO level thus very fragile when we talk about cross-border or even cross-operator messaging. It is nowhere near email in terms of federation.
recursive 1y ago
My experience in 2025 must be extremely different from yours. I don't even know what alternate channels you might have in mind.
- denkmoon 1y ago
  Chat. Matrix for nerds, discord for gamers and redditors, telegram for everyone else who cares and imessage/rcs for those who don’t.
  - vidarh 1y ago
    Exactly zero people I regularly communicate with other than my teenage son uses any of those regularly. The only people who use RCS to contact me are businesses sending notifications or spam. Unlike e-mail where I do get personal correspondence regularly. I don't expect my experience is typical, but I don't think yours are either - we all live in bubbles.

princevegeta89 1y ago

Exactly. Email is never an organized channel for communication. It only makes sense in the corporate world. For users who don't pay for their personal email, email is nothing but a marketing channel and a very inefficient one at that. All the companies and corporations and people try to pretend to make email addresses look confidential and private. But the reality is they just see it as a way to spam you with ads and promotions and meaningless clickbait messages. The idea of unsubscribing from emails from corporations and agencies is again just an act of pretense. 95% of the cases, it's not done in one click and involves a series of a few confusing steps. Even from a technology perspective, email is fucked and a legacy artifact as of today. I would love to see a more secure protocol to replace it, where the recipient always has full control over all the messages that he can ever receive.

goku12 1y ago
> For users who don't pay for their personal email, email is nothing but a marketing channel and a very inefficient one at that. I have a paid personal email plan on my own domain name. (Mostly to get aliases and plus addresses). It is setup very well and filters spam very efficiently, compared to some 'corporate-standard' filters on other services. But I still have to use my gmail address because most individual contacts wouldn't see my mails otherwise since they are on gmail, hotmail, etc. And for many official websites, my email addresses are 'not valid email addresses'. Granted that my TLD .space isn't an official sounding one, but it's used by exactly two types of users - people who use it as their space, and people/organizations working on space tech. So I pay, but I'm still forced to watch them spam. Honestly, I believe that email is now a captured monopoly (cartelopoly?). > I would love to see a more secure protocol to replace it, where the recipient always has full control over all the messages that he can ever receive. I wholeheartedly agree. Email is an awesome idea. But its age is starting to show. We need something with security and encryption built-in, much fewer moving parts (Can we integrate MTA, MDA, WebUI, spam filters, DKIM, etc into just one?), option to opt out of rich formatting (the HTML and AMP junk), dynamic updates, etc and proper spam filtering, etc. We should also have a way to disincentivize or punish big players from rejecting valid emails. Perhaps it can use HTTPS to overcome those pesky corporate reverse proxies and firewalls. But the idea of having a domain name as a namespace for users is still precious.

blitzar 1y ago

I consider it to be like a postcard. The words probably get read somewhere on the way to the destination and in the future someone will probably unpin the pretty picture that has been decorating the notice board, turn it over and read what is on the other side.