4 ms·

We need some decentralized way to send e-mail. Oh wait, there is such a way. It's absolutely decentralized, everyone is free to join and use it and add encrypt

• Zikes 13y ago
  One of the flaws in that is that while you can encrypt the information in the email body, you can't obscure the metadata like who the sender and recipient are, when it was sent and received, etc.
  • fossuser 13y ago
    I think combining pgp with tor solves that problem, the issue is main stream usability. Even beyond that a bigger core problem is that many (most?) people communicate outside of email because it's too slow. Facebook chat, google hangouts, iMessage, SMS - these are the real things that matter to secure today. As much heat as cryptocat has taken - I think they have the right idea and are working on an important problem (whispersys too). Security should be built in and easily adoptable. It should be equivalently usable to what people are already communicating with or they won't use it.
    • Zikes 13y ago
      The sender and receiver are still necessary for the SMTP protocol to work, as the mail servers need to access that to know where to route the email. At best, tor+pgp would allow you to create a pseudonymous email address (or series of addresses), but there would still be nothing stopping people from looking at your mailbox and seeing what other addresses you've communicated with, even if they can't decipher what those communications are. The SMTP protocol itself needs rewritten to function more like tor, so that each intermediary is incapable of seeing the complete picture.
• MichaelGG 13y ago
  Not that I disagree with your sentiment, but how is that "inherently encrypted and secure"?