Like it or not, email is a critical part of our digital lives. It’s how we sign up for accounts, get notifications, and communicate with ...

Like it or not, email is a critical part of our digital lives. It’s how we sign up for accounts, get notifications, and communicate with a wide range of entities online. Critics of email rightfully point out that email suffers from a significant number of flaws that make it less than ideal, but that doesn’t change the current reality. In light of that reality, I believe that an encrypted email provider is a must-have for everyone in today’s age of rampant data breaches, insider threats, warrantless police access, and targeted advertising. If I can get access to your emails, I can get a range of sensitive information including where you bank (to craft more convincing phishing attacks), information about pets (I get notifications each year from the vet for my cats’ annual checkups), calendar reminders, news announcements from family, support tickets from services you use, and more. In a worse case scenario, if I get access to the account itself, it’s trivial to simply issue password reset requests for nearly any of those accounts, have it to sent to said compromised email account, and gain access to a wide number of other accounts you use – from banking to shopping and more – for any number of reasons. So this week, let’s look into the top encrypted email providers The New Oil recommends and their features to help decide which one is right for you.

    • wagoner
      61·
      2 years ago

      Idk… my gut tells me… didn’t people say… might be… I’m probably going to be down voted to hell… if something’s too good to be true…

      What a ridiculous response.

        • wagoner
          2·
          2 years ago

          I quoted the bits that answer your question and which completely undermine the bits I didn’t quote.

            • wagoner
              1·
              2 years ago

              This is all kinda of weirdness. You were the one who asked me a question, and I responded to it. And now I’m done. Have a nice day.

    • BrikoX@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
      3·
      2 years ago

      You thinking it’s a honeypot is a win for the government. All they need to do is spread some propaganda instead of actually bothering to run a service that is hard to keep alive. And if they were to run a honeypot, having it outside 14 eyes countries would be the most stupid decision the government could make.

        • BrikoX@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
          1·
          2 years ago

          Good point, but I didn’t think of it that way just because, I saw things and read stuff that made me suspect it…

          There is “speculation” spread about every single “privacy” focused service for exactly that reason. If you don’t trust them, you are not using them. I’m not saying don’t be suspicious, but also look at facts that make it unlikely of it being a honeypot.

          But they did, and it worked for them before, and it’ll always work unless no one start using that service, so there’s no point in keeping servers operational… time for a rebrand. plus they’re getting paid.

          Right, but there are plenty of easier services to target that provide more sensitive information. If you are a honeypot, you have to be profitable and expand your services or people will move somewhere else. That all takes time and work. Buying other services like SimpleLogin or Standard Notes and integrating their staff into your scheme would be unnecessary complication.

          having it outside 14 eyes countries would be the most stupid decision the government could make.

          It’s not a story. So called 5 eyes, 9 eyes and 14 eyes refers to country agreements to share intelligence and make cooperation instant instead of having to go through proper channels that take time. I’m sure there are many conspiracy theories about specific things that might not be true, but there is no dispute that these agreements exist.

          Government run honeypots are usually facilitated by federal agencies, INTERPOL, or EUROPOL, and if they want to run something in a country where they are not welcome it has to be court approved. Hence, it being run in 14 eyes countries, make it easy. Switzerland on the other hand not only requires everything to be approved by their courts, but also require using their specific privacy laws when making determination, which are the strongest in the world.

          You only need to look at previous known honeypots to see where they originate and what they target.

    • Magic Blue Smoke@frogdrool.net
      14·
      2 years ago

      @electro1 @ISOmorph imagine your enemy has infinite money, manpower, and resources to turn against you.

      why would the DoD give away a weapon like TOR?

      why would satoshi release bitcoin at 51% difficulty?

      why would Putin allow for the grotesque corruption of the oligarch state?

      because they have the other half.

        • Magic Blue Smoke@frogdrool.net
          1·
          2 years ago

          @electro1

          The DoD controls a non trivial number of TOR nodes, allowing them to monitor all the traffic

          Putin owns half of the oligarchy in Russia personally

          The inventor of bitcoin mined the first 51% of them and has all that money to himself.

          Unassailable positions of power don’t need to be fair.