To have secure email I think html /css should be dropped from email support and the inbox should work on an invite only basis. Basically you should pre-authorize the senders just like you add someone as friend on a social network.
I don’t think that helps at all. We already know how to consume that securely, we do it billions of times a day in web browsers.
> the inbox should work on an invite only basis. Basically you should pre-authorize the senders just like you add someone as friend on a social network.
Yes. A fundamental problem with email is that the only thing required to send email to somebody is knowledge of their email address, which as a recipient you cannot control. This is what enables spam and phishing. This needs to be changed so that in order to send email to somebody, you also need their consent. A “friend request” mechanism is one way of achieving this.
I think this is a problem that can be feasibly solved in a fairly reasonable way, and I sketched out a protocol for doing so a while back, which I described in more detail in this comment:
But then you’re left dealing with spam “friend requests”, which is still something I have to take action on, filter out, or ignore — same as spam email.
It's your client that's the problem.
I'm happy in my text only Emacs heaven.
I'm also happy with my custom 5 year old bert based spam detector which hasn't failed me once (unlike whatever gmail at work does).
This post was sent from Emacs.
Fastmail’s spam filter is not very good.
Yes it does. However, I have sent messages to more than a few people who tell me that my message is completely empty. I have my client set to send text-only, no HTML, and apparently the system on the other side drops the HTML version altogether. Something on the other end only processes the HTML part. No HTML, no message.
(I believe these are Outlook/MS based systems, but I don't know for sure. It's certainly not ALL Outlook/MS systems that do this.)
For these people I have to set my client to send HTML. It's all well and good to blame them, but I can't make them do something. They may not even be in a position to do anything. And I don't have an option to tell them "too bad, so sad".
The email situation is really quite bad if you don't conform to the Big Three. I've run my own email infrastructure for a very long time, and it's quite irritating that when we get something good (like DMARC, SPF, etc) it gets forced by the Big Three because along with that we also get things like Google toying with the requirement that you have to have AAAA MX records too.
This is kinda what 'masked email' services like Fastmail's – of which I am a delighted customer – do.
Until you've known the comfort of creating an address; giving it to a service; deciding that you want to end your relationship with them; just deleting that address, without changing your mailbox or infrastructure or archives or anything else … it's kinda life changing. I recommend everyone try it.
Also, the chances of a phisher trying to get my BigBank details by sending mail to lonely.chicken6382@spuriously-named-and-unused-other-than-for-email-domain.com are … well, it seems unlikely.
I've never felt more secure. For real.
That's why I bought my email domain and use <domain_name>@hnrobert42.com. It helps to use a password manager.
I get a lot of convincing emails to linkedin@hnrobert42.com. As well as zynga, wework, etc.
Whenever there’s this discussion on HN, someone usually points out that can sometimes be a bother, especially when giving out the email in person, because people don’t really understand how email addresses works and ask “how did you get that email” or think you’re impersonating the service, or something similar.
I guess a solution might be to add the details sneakily. E.g. instead of linkedin@hnrobert42.com, saying robert_lkdn@hnrobert42.com
But that’s like 1:100 or so. And usually I’m entering my address to a robot so it’s not an issue.
It also makes it easier to pass off a fake realname! Hi I'm John Smith, jsmith@oneofmydomains-nottooobvious.com...
You can even pick a domain sound like a legitimate mail service or company, e.g. jsmith@jgs-consulting.com.or jsmith@liberty-mail.io
All domains and addresses in this comment are fictitious - overlap with real domains is coincidental.
Which is in the RFC, but yet the sheer amount of times I sign up for something. Like a bank, or a financial firm, get the confirmation e-mail, and then click "Verify your address"
And get HTTP500 as their SQL has kicked up a stink
The amount of bots promoting Fastmail here is insane. What the actual ...
A bot I am not.