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Comment by girvo | Hacker News Reader

Well done! I love FastMail, and am very glad that I switch from GMail. However, one of the best parts of FastMail is that it's just proper IMAP at the end of the day, so while I'm sure some people are going to love this app, I personally don't have much of a use for it.

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Fair enough, we love IMAP too, and there's no way its going anywhere. We've always cared about standards compliance and client choice, so use what you like and be happy! :)

How does that new Australian law allowing manipulation of data effect fastmail?

There are no new laws (yet). But lets not get into this discussion here. Contact privacy@fastmail.com with your questions and we'll be happy to respond to them.

Actually - I'd really like an answer to that as well. A public answer.

Totally agree. Things like that should be discussed in public, not buried in individual emails.

My point was more that this is a thread about the new apps, not about our privacy policies. If you want to start a new thread somewhere I'd be happy to comment on it.

Fastmail customer here. This is a perfect place to answer the question: it's visible, it's the right audience, and it's relevant. Talking about whether we should be using Fastmail at all is, to me at least, related to the question of whether I should install the app.

Besides, this is an internet forum. It has threads. This is how these things work.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2096768/Woody-Harrel...

At this point, there are no new laws. Its still being debated in Parliament and submissions are still being reviewed, so its not clear what the final act is going to look like, assuming it passes. So we can't really comment on its impact until we know what's actually in it. We just don't know yet how this is going to play out.

Thank you.

By the way, I like the app. First load must be hitting the network, seems like that could come from a stored cached and refreshed asap.

Also, it would be really nice if you could archive or delete a message from the reading view. (a) there's plenty of room for 2 more icons and (b) I have to believe people are way more likely to archive a message than forward it, yet somehow forward gets the spot.

The application gets cached but the data does not. We're looking at ways to improve the initial load time.

If you tap the message area when reading, a row of action buttons will appear. You can archive, delete, report spam, move to folder and mark from here.

I am not a parent, but from UX perspective I think you just got a feedback which says the action is either too hidden or not useful enough. :) (it's a single complaint, though)

Yeah, I've answered that questions a few times in the last couple of days. It was also asked a bit when first release the mobile web app a while back. It's on my list to bring it up with the UI team soon :)

I agree with this as well, though it will be buried deep in an individual thread. We don't like making knee-jerk responses to the political posturing by our politicians, because they don't influence what we see.

Here's what I can tell you:

* while in theory the new laws allow law enforcement to request information from a broad set of computers instead of a single computer, that actually makes sense as a representation of reality. The information for a single user on our system is already spread over multiple machines - 3 separate IMAP servers in a replica set, 4 different database servers in a replica set, plus at least one backup server. Requiring law enforcement to get 8 separate warrants for "all the data about user X on those 8 machines" would be patently stupid.

* we haven't seen any change in the nature of requests coming from law enforcement, and we have no reason to expect them to change.

* our position of fully cooperating with the Australian authorities if they present a lawful warrant for the data on an individual user, having obtained due cause, has not changed. We do not place ourselves above the courts. We do not implement dragnets, but we have provided data on individual users in response to warrants, and will continue to do so. This is quite clearly spelled out in our privacy policy.

(edited: just formatting)

I think that's not really the issue. It's moreso will you allow authorities to plant data on your servers to frame users. That seems to be what's being talked about.

So if you plan to cooperate fully then that's fine. But you will likely lose a ton of customers.

I'd love to a response on Fastmail's blog or something similar regarding this. Gosh our government frustrates me :(

Us too. We don't want to blog every time our government postures about something, but we agree that there are problems with the way policy and laws are being made in Australia.

So far there haven't been any new laws actually passed which change our operating environment. When/if there are, then we'll have to respond to them.

If the laws change such that we need to say anything different in our privacy policy, then we will definitely make a public statement about those changes.

For now, our privacy policy still accurately reflects our understanding of the legal framework we operate within.

Sorry, but this is pretty much the best place on the Internet for that particular kind of discussion.

Check this thread http://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?t=69561 at emaildiscussions.com.

There's an answer given by Fastmail's support. Sadly, I agree with an user there when he/she says that the folks there don't seem to be much interested in that kind of discussion..

> We've always cared about standards compliance and client choice

Then it would be nice to have contact synchronization available via CardDAV.

Its being developed.

Interesting enough, there's no actual generic mail client (for imap/pop3/smtp) for chrome/chromeos ... would be nice to have an option for mail in chromebooks outside of several webmail clients open at once.

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