I will be looking for a way to move my online identity away from Google to something I control more directly. I am also going to try replacing my social media activity with email. The web is already decentralized, we just need to use it.
If anyone’s interested I wrote up my investigation into potential replacement mail services: http://www.robinwhittleton.com/2018/02/18/dropping-g-suite/ . In the end I went with Runbox, will see how they perform but I’m happy so far.
They have a dedicated EU service now. I use them and RunBox.
I tried Runbox back in 2013 after a fair amount of research and they looked great. After signing up, they sent a confirmation email with all my account info with user-name and password in clear text. I cancelled immediately after seeing this, but I wonder if they are still doing it?
I ended up switching to Fastmail, which I still use and highly recommend.
I don't want to use AMP in email so I'm not going to. It's just that easy.
What are you doing and what do you suggest the rest of us do? Is voting with our wallets not a thing any longer?
A familiar example is the NRA. It's not a political party, but it advances the interests of its members relentlessly. Institutions of the left include things like Planned Parenthood. Often, there are issue advocacy organizations that spring up when corporations are doing bad things. Often the strategy is to do things that impact the corporation financially, which short of legal threats is basically the only thing they understand. Anything short of that can be brushed off with rationalizations by various powerful stakeholders within the corporation.
Basically, the point I'm trying to make is that individual action is essential, but not sufficient to make a difference when it counts.
While it's certainly not totally impossible to vote with your data, you should remember that you are the product for google. The customers are advertisers. Not you.
/s
On a serious note I don't like the negativity in your comment and I don't think there is anything insightful about it. I believe the free market is based on individual actions. I will continue to choose services based on how well they serve my needs.
My point was that you can't go it alone and there are friends that will help you. I left a more theoretical justification in another sub-thread.
Then again, maybe AMP is their solution to this third-party interface "problem": create an incompatible "feature" that will encourage or force users to abandon standards-based tools.
Kind of like what's happened with Google Talk. God I miss the Mac's Messages app being able to interface with my work's gsuite chat.
FWIW, the iOS email client has improved a lot over the last few iOS versions. Worth checking out if you haven't looked at it for a while.
along with DDG I find myself very well taken care of, and I can always type in Google if I need to (2 times a day?).
But... under U.S. law, online email storage over X... (I forget the exact count, something over 100 days) days old, is open to examination without a warrant.
Not that I've anything particular to hide. But moving my personal correspondence in that direction?
I may spin up a an email server under my own sub-net, just to make use of this tool and capture its output. But I'm strongly disinclined to put it on a publicly facing email server.
Anyway, they may well have this data. Some other data, more likely not.
And, even where they may have -- or have access to, this data, retention periods may be significantly shorter. At least, the retention periods that aren't shrouded in secrecy in e.g. a large campus in the middle of Utah.
Not email, but more and more social/communications platforms are offering to archive your data in your Google Drive account. Now, maybe with a privately held passphrase to AES encryption, some might consider that ok. But that is not what these services are offering.
For the majority of people, "Who cares?" And there is value to keeping your life free of unnecessary friction.
But, more and more of this stuff is getting supeonaed in divorce cases, employment disputes, etc., etc.
Though, I suppose if you maintain private access to the messages, and don't share them, you are still a candidate for contempt of court.
Anyway, I'm not interested in accumulating more of my social life into a data store that, here in the U.S., has less constraints against third-party (here, meaning particularly, government) access.
Email seems fine, if it's your own server and you can keep it secure. Including, secure from some legal argument that they can knock on your door or the data center's and just have a look at whatever they want.
There was a fellow in the UK who used assymmetric keys to encrypt all his inbound email, holding it on the server in encrypted form where the paired key was not on the server but rather available only to his email client.
Then, you have the problem of security in transit. That email doesn't offer, inherently. And most of your correspondents won't use PGP/GPG nor SMIME.
I just had another friend start using WhatsApp. Is it really secure? I don't know. At least, she'll use it.
WhatsApp offers to archive your correspondence to Google Drive. I haven't turned that on.
I've tried brining up Signal with a few friends, but they won't give it the time of day. (Unlike the Washington, DC crowd, who now appear to be flocking to it in minor degree.)
The tool I might use is for SMS/MMS. It used to also offer to archive WhatsApp conversations, but that's been discontinued.
Umm...
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.zegoggles.smssync/
It's also on Play.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zegoggles....
So yeah, this isn't any "big security context". Just my personal stuff. But the default is to put the messages into Gmail. On the one hand, actually convenient. On the other... just, no.
I have a bootlooped Nexus 5x with a bunch of SMS/MMS I never backed up. Including, I now realize, from a friendship that's ended. I'd kind of like to have some of those. So, I'd like to be pro-active with regard to the next phone that's going to crap out on me.
----
P.S. In short, I think I basically agree with you. Decentralized, and under one's own control.
It's just that:
Email doesn't secure the transport, and many people won't secure their messages before transport.
If it's not your own email server, under your control including perhaps physical, law in the U.S. with respect to email designates older messages as quasi-abandoned and "up for grabs".
And I forgot to mention the many posts/comments I've been reading here, about how more and more difficult it's becoming to run your own email server, not just in terms of securing it but also because more and more email providers are shit-canning any emails that don't appear to be blessed by their counterparts.
Anyway, I'm not promoting the idea that I have some particularly good answer. Rather, just food for thought.
but that's not all.. if a pw protected chunk was sent back to a buddypress activity or message reply and could be decoded there... then people could setup a wordpress/buddypress for family and a separate install for friends..
Options to get rss read of activity, or get emailed activity and replies. Could just email a reply back with a plugin, but that's currently in the clear. It could just be a notice that ScreenName X posted a reply on the Activity Group Y.. click to read.. and it's trivial to make those things private / login needed kind of privacy at that point.
So solve email encrypt on device, send to server which I think can hold data encrypted with php 7, and it would need to be decrypted within wordpress/buddypress for friends / family there when they logged in .. then there are most of the other pieces for mutliple messaging different contacts and groups.. it's all there.
I am sure there are other similar projects with similar hooks where a similar thing could be streamlined / integrated with just on device email, with options to beef up the privacy to make it better. Would be nice to addin sms texting to the mix for notifications and replies somehow.
most people know using email, and buddypress can be very similar to fbook for layout, so familiar to most I think. It's all close.