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Setting up a server in any hosting environment at this point comes with the assumption that its contents can be read at any time by the operators and whoever th

Setting up a server in any hosting environment at this point comes with the assumption that its contents can be read at any time by the operators and whoever they let in without you ever knowing about it. That's still a lot better than Gmail. Setting up your own mail server is not a terrible woe-inducing undertaking if you have a working recipe to follow and are comfortable with the Unix command line (e.g. http://www.exratione.com/2012/05/a-mailserver-on-ubuntu-1204-postfix-dovecot-mysql/ http://www.exratione.com/2012/05/a-mailserver-on-ubuntu-1204...). Organization and categorization are the sticking point features, given what I've seen of most open source webmail applications. But worth looking around. If you have a basic mail server image, you can keep trying out applications on top of it to see what works for you. Going beyond that to something with a whole lot more encryption and less of an ability for hosting providers to read your data would really require a product dedicated to that end: that is hard to get right.

mbell 13y ago
> Setting up a server in any hosting environment at this point comes with the assumption that its contents can be read at any time by the operators and whoever they let in without you ever knowing about it. How exactly is that any different than it was 6 months ago?
- bigiain 13y ago
  The difference today is that not only should I assume that Google sysadmins could read my mail, but there's now pretty convincing arguments that Google are sending all my (as a non-US person) email to the NSA - who're storing it forever "just in case it turns out useful". I'm somewhat less concerned about rogue individual sysadmins curiously snooping on my mail, than I am about the NSA's comprehensive perpetual archive.
  - mbell 13y ago
    What? Have you been following this topic at all? Exactly where are these convincing arguments that google is sending all e-mail to the NSA? Links? Data? Do you have anything that supports this at all? There is the telephone stuff that was leaked, which has been well known since 2006 [0]. But, where is this miraculous evidence that google is handing everything over to the NSA? [0] http://yahoo.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm http://yahoo.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.h...
    - bigiain 13y ago
      Yeah, I've been following, with the point of view of someone explicitly not protected by your 4th amendment rights. (I'm assuming, possibly incorrectly, that you're a US citizen?) As a "non-US person", I read all the "We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law" explanations from Google/Apple/Yahoo/Facebook et al - as saying "Oh, you want our data from that guy in Australia? Sure, that's 'in accordance with the law' - here's all his email… Anything else you'd like? His social graph? His contact list/address book? His Adwords clickthroughs? His Google Analytics enabled website visits? Oh look, it seems he accidentally put his GPG private key into his GoogleDrive folder - have that too!" Do you really find it surprising that people outside the US see Snowdon's revelations and the US government's reactions to strongly suggest this is the only sensible interpretation? _All_ the denials/re-assurances we're seeing are of the form "in accordance with the law", then going on to talk about presumed protection against _domestic_ spying, and the 4th amendment rights of US citizens. None of which is reassuring from where I sit.
      - comex 13y ago
        Though I'd agree that non-US persons have reasons to be concerned, you moved the goal posts. It may not be particularly difficult for the NSA to get your data from Google services if they decide to target you specifically, but Google has explicitly denied broadly sending over data from some significant fraction of users, as you suggested in your previous post: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/what.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/what.html
        bigiain 13y ago
        Maybe - but I'm reading it with the suspicion of someone who's just having been served a wake-up call on the exact nature of a friendship, and finding it's a lot less mutually respectful than expected. I still see that "Second, we provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law." glaring out at me from the middle of that denial. My suspicious mind now reads phrases like " … and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don’t follow the correct process" and "Press reports that suggest that Google is providing open-ended access to our users’ data are false, period", as saying "so long as 'correct process' includes a FISA rubber stamp, and that '(claims of) open-ended access to our users' can only be true if it includes all domestic US users" - then sure, we can say that while still handing over _all_ data on non-US users -it's still _technically_ true. This is for me, kinda like when someone you thought was a close friend gets married and doesn't invite you to the wedding - nothing's actually changed, but you now view everything differently. Right now I've got that "Oh, _that's_ how it is huh? I guess that explains a few things, I wish I'd known earlier…" feeling - complete with that sense of foolishness for ever having thought things were different. It might be paranoid - or it might just be pragmatic. Either way, things _are_ different now. I just didn't get invited to The US's wedding, while Apple, Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Skype, TeamViewer, PayPal, eBay, Digital Ocean, Linode, Rackspace, Dropbox, Evernote, Trello, Freshbooks, and a bunch of others all did. Now I have to re-evaluate all those relationships too. How paranoid is it to wonder if I can trust 1Password any more?
  - cabalamat 13y ago
    It's not just the NSA. All big countries have intelligence services and anyone with anything to hide should assume that they will try to get their hand on as much internet traffic as they can. So e.g. if you're a US company that has a competitor in China, and you don't want the Chinese company to read your email, it's a sensible precaution to encrypt it.
- jervisfm 13y ago
  The point about trusting hosting providers is an interesting one. Indeed, when renting a Virtual Private Server from a service provider, you have no choice but to trust them to keep your data safe. This made we wonder: would it be possible to actually secure the server in such a manner that the hosting party won't have access to your stuff without your say so ? I think you can (sort of) do this already with having something like an encrypted virtual server running on the rented VPS. Of course, I don't think this is bullet-proof and you also do have the downside of an additional layer of overhead that comes from further virtualization of your actual server(s).
  - etherael 13y ago
    I have a dedicated server with encrypted partitions and admin backdoors turned off at ovh. So theoretically they shouldn't be able to access the running system, and if they take it down to access the partitions directly, they're encrypted so that won't work either.
    - dualboot 13y ago
      The right answer. With a design that focuses on simplicity ( reducing the entry points ) you can be pretty well assured that if someone attempts to gain access to your data you will likely know. For me that is an important factor. I rather dislike the fact that in scenarios like Gmail and other providers of their ilk -- access is provided transparently to a third party. Running your own server can give you a reasonable expectation of privacy. Even in a hosted/colocated environment if you take the time and effort.
      - etherael 13y ago
        That said, even with a dedicated server, I still use gmail, because https://github.com/etherael/phoneme https://github.com/etherael/phoneme
    - Sami_Lehtinen 13y ago
      That's why they take memory snapshot first, which is trivial with VPS and then pick encryption keys from it to access encrypted volumes. This is well known method and works with pure hardware machines too with physical access. It's great question when you get to server, to shut it down or leave on. If on, it could destroy data, if turned off encryption keys are gone. I think it would require some individual case analysis before deciding which one is better approach.
oijaf888 13y ago
Assuming you don't have any sort of console access configured and its a physical server how could they do that without letting you know via at least a reboot?
- ket 13y ago
  First, they could always ask your ISP to route a copy of each smtp to their servers. But this is a bit irrelevant until you solve the social problem: I'm going to guess that >90% of your contacts use gmail/yahoo/hotmail; so the NSA already has 90% of your mail in their databases anyways- until you convince your contacts to install their own email server.
cabalamat 13y ago
> Setting up a server in any hosting environment at this point comes with the assumption that its contents can be read at any time by the operators and whoever they let in without you ever knowing about it. Indeed. If you want to be secure, you need to keep your email server at home, or in some other location you trust, and make sure all communication on the net is encrypted. That way, if an adversary wants your secrets, they will have to burgle your house. > That's still a lot better than Gmail. True, because it takes effort for GCHQ/NSA/whoever to look at your server, which they probably won't do. > Going beyond that to something with a whole lot more encryption and less of an ability for hosting providers to read your data would really require a product dedicated to that end: that is hard to get right That's what I'm working on.
- ams6110 13y ago
  There is a very good chance that an email server running on a "home" IP address block of any of the major ISPs will be blacklisted.
  - butterflyhug 13y ago
    True. If your ISP won't remove your IP from the blacklist, you could probably use a commercial service (a la Amazon's SES) for outbound SMTP while running your MX and mailstore at home. That would have somewhat different privacy tradeoffs, but it's not that different if you expect most of your email recipients to be hosted elsewhere... I may try this.

mbell 13y ago

bigiain 13y ago
The difference today is that not only should I assume that Google sysadmins could read my mail, but there's now pretty convincing arguments that Google are sending all my (as a non-US person) email to the NSA - who're storing it forever "just in case it turns out useful". I'm somewhat less concerned about rogue individual sysadmins curiously snooping on my mail, than I am about the NSA's comprehensive perpetual archive.
- mbell 13y ago
  What? Have you been following this topic at all? Exactly where are these convincing arguments that google is sending all e-mail to the NSA? Links? Data? Do you have anything that supports this at all? There is the telephone stuff that was leaked, which has been well known since 2006 [0]. But, where is this miraculous evidence that google is handing everything over to the NSA? [0] http://yahoo.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm http://yahoo.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.h...
  - bigiain 13y ago
    Yeah, I've been following, with the point of view of someone explicitly not protected by your 4th amendment rights. (I'm assuming, possibly incorrectly, that you're a US citizen?) As a "non-US person", I read all the "We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law" explanations from Google/Apple/Yahoo/Facebook et al - as saying "Oh, you want our data from that guy in Australia? Sure, that's 'in accordance with the law' - here's all his email… Anything else you'd like? His social graph? His contact list/address book? His Adwords clickthroughs? His Google Analytics enabled website visits? Oh look, it seems he accidentally put his GPG private key into his GoogleDrive folder - have that too!" Do you really find it surprising that people outside the US see Snowdon's revelations and the US government's reactions to strongly suggest this is the only sensible interpretation? _All_ the denials/re-assurances we're seeing are of the form "in accordance with the law", then going on to talk about presumed protection against _domestic_ spying, and the 4th amendment rights of US citizens. None of which is reassuring from where I sit.
    - comex 13y ago
      Though I'd agree that non-US persons have reasons to be concerned, you moved the goal posts. It may not be particularly difficult for the NSA to get your data from Google services if they decide to target you specifically, but Google has explicitly denied broadly sending over data from some significant fraction of users, as you suggested in your previous post: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/what.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/what.html
      - bigiain 13y ago
        Maybe - but I'm reading it with the suspicion of someone who's just having been served a wake-up call on the exact nature of a friendship, and finding it's a lot less mutually respectful than expected. I still see that "Second, we provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law." glaring out at me from the middle of that denial. My suspicious mind now reads phrases like " … and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don’t follow the correct process" and "Press reports that suggest that Google is providing open-ended access to our users’ data are false, period", as saying "so long as 'correct process' includes a FISA rubber stamp, and that '(claims of) open-ended access to our users' can only be true if it includes all domestic US users" - then sure, we can say that while still handing over _all_ data on non-US users -it's still _technically_ true. This is for me, kinda like when someone you thought was a close friend gets married and doesn't invite you to the wedding - nothing's actually changed, but you now view everything differently. Right now I've got that "Oh, _that's_ how it is huh? I guess that explains a few things, I wish I'd known earlier…" feeling - complete with that sense of foolishness for ever having thought things were different. It might be paranoid - or it might just be pragmatic. Either way, things _are_ different now. I just didn't get invited to The US's wedding, while Apple, Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Skype, TeamViewer, PayPal, eBay, Digital Ocean, Linode, Rackspace, Dropbox, Evernote, Trello, Freshbooks, and a bunch of others all did. Now I have to re-evaluate all those relationships too. How paranoid is it to wonder if I can trust 1Password any more?
- cabalamat 13y ago
  It's not just the NSA. All big countries have intelligence services and anyone with anything to hide should assume that they will try to get their hand on as much internet traffic as they can. So e.g. if you're a US company that has a competitor in China, and you don't want the Chinese company to read your email, it's a sensible precaution to encrypt it.
jervisfm 13y ago
The point about trusting hosting providers is an interesting one. Indeed, when renting a Virtual Private Server from a service provider, you have no choice but to trust them to keep your data safe. This made we wonder: would it be possible to actually secure the server in such a manner that the hosting party won't have access to your stuff without your say so ? I think you can (sort of) do this already with having something like an encrypted virtual server running on the rented VPS. Of course, I don't think this is bullet-proof and you also do have the downside of an additional layer of overhead that comes from further virtualization of your actual server(s).
- etherael 13y ago
  I have a dedicated server with encrypted partitions and admin backdoors turned off at ovh. So theoretically they shouldn't be able to access the running system, and if they take it down to access the partitions directly, they're encrypted so that won't work either.
  - dualboot 13y ago
    The right answer. With a design that focuses on simplicity ( reducing the entry points ) you can be pretty well assured that if someone attempts to gain access to your data you will likely know. For me that is an important factor. I rather dislike the fact that in scenarios like Gmail and other providers of their ilk -- access is provided transparently to a third party. Running your own server can give you a reasonable expectation of privacy. Even in a hosted/colocated environment if you take the time and effort.
    - etherael 13y ago
      That said, even with a dedicated server, I still use gmail, because https://github.com/etherael/phoneme https://github.com/etherael/phoneme
  - Sami_Lehtinen 13y ago
    That's why they take memory snapshot first, which is trivial with VPS and then pick encryption keys from it to access encrypted volumes. This is well known method and works with pure hardware machines too with physical access. It's great question when you get to server, to shut it down or leave on. If on, it could destroy data, if turned off encryption keys are gone. I think it would require some individual case analysis before deciding which one is better approach.

oijaf888 13y ago

Assuming you don't have any sort of console access configured and its a physical server how could they do that without letting you know via at least a reboot?

ket 13y ago
First, they could always ask your ISP to route a copy of each smtp to their servers. But this is a bit irrelevant until you solve the social problem: I'm going to guess that >90% of your contacts use gmail/yahoo/hotmail; so the NSA already has 90% of your mail in their databases anyways- until you convince your contacts to install their own email server.

cabalamat 13y ago

> Setting up a server in any hosting environment at this point comes with the assumption that its contents can be read at any time by the operators and whoever they let in without you ever knowing about it. Indeed. If you want to be secure, you need to keep your email server at home, or in some other location you trust, and make sure all communication on the net is encrypted. That way, if an adversary wants your secrets, they will have to burgle your house. > That's still a lot better than Gmail. True, because it takes effort for GCHQ/NSA/whoever to look at your server, which they probably won't do. > Going beyond that to something with a whole lot more encryption and less of an ability for hosting providers to read your data would really require a product dedicated to that end: that is hard to get right That's what I'm working on.

ams6110 13y ago
There is a very good chance that an email server running on a "home" IP address block of any of the major ISPs will be blacklisted.
- butterflyhug 13y ago
  True. If your ISP won't remove your IP from the blacklist, you could probably use a commercial service (a la Amazon's SES) for outbound SMTP while running your MX and mailstore at home. That would have somewhat different privacy tradeoffs, but it's not that different if you expect most of your email recipients to be hosted elsewhere... I may try this.