niksakl

Sorry for the lousy work in structure / syntax etc, I was in a hurry. But I HOPE people get the point and realize how serious all this is.

Let's talk about Microsoft as serious mail provider: I self-host my mail server for <10 years. My server is in 0 blocklists. DKIM / DMARC / SPF implemented since ages. The company I work for, hosts their emails on 0365, I have been sending emails from one account to the other with no problem. Recently I got an email from an outlook.com account. I am in the contacts list of the sender. I tried to respond, my email was rejected. The email auto-response from MS contained links with "things you should do in order to make mails from your server acceptable by MS". I have everything done already since ages. Nothing missing. I googled on how to "appeal". I find a hell lot of people complaining in MS forums about it, no obvious solution.

Eventually I find a portal from MS to do exactly that: Appeal. I tried to use the portal but I got an error "event service error" - or something similar. Portal not working. I say "what the heck - I ll try later". I do try later, same outcome. Several times. For days. I google the error, I find several threads on redit since years complaining that the portal doesn't work giving this exact error. Since years. I keep trying nevertheless to respond to the email and go through the portal again for days. Nothing. I try the following: I signup for azure, it asks me for an email address, I say I have none and guides me to sign up to outlook. Outlook asks me for a backup email address, I provide my email address from the blocked server.

I then try to respond again to the original email that outlook has been rejecting - WORKS. Summary again: MS blocks email my mail server for not fulfilling requirements that it actually fulfills. MS portal to object, doesn't work since years. I create an outlook email and set self-hosted mail address as "backup" - my server gets unblocked.

Fun fact: I received "on-boarding" emails from MS Azure to my new MS Outlook account. MS Outlook classified them as "Junk".

Does this qualify as a "serious mail provider"?

--updated wording.

There is a fork of it called "barrier". Using it every day.

https://github.com/debauchee/barrier

...which has the root of the Greek verb "κυβερνώ", which means "to govern", and is also the root of Kubernetes, which means "governor/captain" :)

I believe it is not about the means and the tooling. Systemic problems need to fix the system, not various outcomes of such problems. Assuming we are talking about democracies, I guess it is up to the people. If the people do not care, then fine. "Nothing to see here, move along". If this is the case, I disagree with "the people", but apparently that is just me... Or few of us.

Well, to the best of my knowledge, in most countries, the constitutions themselves suggest some actions to the people in the case somebody is not complying with the constitution. Did we see any of those suggested countermeasures taking place?

>There's no reason why this should not hold for spying and policing agencies

Isn't that what democracies call "constitution"? Something that protects citizens' rights again wrong-doing of powerful entities including legislators and the state itself?

WhatsApp has streams.

"Streams" for example. You cannot create a group of contacts that only receive messages from you, but they cannot send into the group. Replies of stream-members only come to the creator of the stream. Moreover, members of "streams" do not see other members. Basically is a BCC functionality for messages. I am a signal user since ages and constantly try to "convert" people. I miss this.

Is there any plan in making it part of pulse audio shipped with Ubuntu? Is there a straight-fw way to install it somehow and enable high-quality calls for BT Headsets? I am sure that this is a very common issue especially now-days, where people have lots of calls instead of meetings due to COVID-19...

The point is that the same headset works perfectly fine on windows/android/apple devices. The call quality there is just great. Only calls on Linux are with that issue.

A HUGE issue for me is the quality during calls with a BT headset (HSP/HFP) profiles. This is a killer in my workflow as I need to be in calls all the time, and for that I need to take them through a separate windows laptop. It is crazy, I hate it. Is there a way to improve call quality?

With basic auth you give something more than that. You give the ACTUAL credentials, because they are base64 encoded and not hashed. It is trivial to decode them and have the raw values.

To assume that a user trusts the subdomain because she trusts the domain, is something I find insane.

here is a youtube link to the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=976Q2cu1_DE

Yes, i guessed the same, but after i posted the original answer.

1. Telegram - Not p2p

2. Tox - p2p

3. Whatsapp - Not p2p

4. Signal - Not p2p

Putting the above aside: If Tox doesn't work for you, your best mobile-friendly options are: 1) Signal and 2) as others have mentioned Matrix - if you want a self hosted and federated solution.

[edited: addendum] i now realize you probably mean p2p-encrypted messaging. Damn semantics of non-formal languages!

Yes I did that, but the gui looked horrible, as it was not using my themes, colors etc. I then found out that this was a known issue of snap at that time.

An official ppa repository for Ubuntu would be great! There is a link to an unofficial one in your page, but since this is a security app, installing it from some random repo just feels wrong... Thank you for the great work!

No I have not misunderstood you, maybe I haven't made myself clear enough(not a native English speaker here...). As you also say, the context itself is what matters. For example, today I would guess most e.g. Canadians do not hunt for survival. Having a Canadian hunter saying "I hunt elks for sports, but I appreciate them", is kind of funny and meaningless. In the context of hunting for sports, it is pointless to say "but I appreciate them". If you beat up your neighbor cause he attacked you with an axe, and you needed to save your life, it is pointless to say that you appreciate him. It is clear you did what you did, cause you appreciate your own existence more than him. It is equally pointless to say "but I appreciate him" after making clear that you beat him up, cause you din't like his face. In both cases, the context is clear and thus the level of appreciation to the other party. Stating "but..." is meaningless. That for, my understanding of what the level of appreciation of someone hunting for sports towards his pray, is that it is very low by my standards.

Obviously then, you appreciate "having a clean, web-free house" more compared to the contribution of the webs in your home to the environment. Same same way, the hunter appreciates his hunting activity more compared to how much he appreciates his pray. Which makes the statement "I appreciate my pray" meaningless in the context of hunting. If you only hunt in a life threatening hunger situation, then obviously appreciate your own life more than the pray's. If you hunt for sports, then you appreciate your hobby more than your pray's life, and so on...

(I am a meat-eater, just pointing out something I find funny in such statements)

But still, nobody really claims to appreciate the pork the schnitzel he enjoys in the cafeteria used to be. It is much easier to get emotionally engaged with a living being when you see it and interact with it in its natural environment and you are the one who kills it and watches it die, than getting emotionally engaged with the beef where the frozen meatloaf you bought from the supermarket comes from.

Are you suggesting that if he had claimed that he generally appreciates elks but not the ones he kills, would make more sense?

Of course it is only speculation, but this is my argument: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13390564

this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13390564

What you say makes blocking Signal pointless.

If they blocked Signal just because it was less of a trouble to block compared to WhatsApp, then all the people that were on Signal will easily switch to WhatsApp... What you have at this point, is a government paying the price of blocking a less popular messaging app they cannot control, while the people they are after can just switch to a MASSIVELY used messaging app the gov can also not control and additionally, is too expensive to block.

If this was the case,it would actually work against the gov. Do not underestimate gov authorities, they are not THAT naive. If they had not blocked Signal at all, they could at least track Signal users and at least have that information: that this small group of people (Signal users), contains the group of people they are after. They could have their honey pot there. Mixing the "dangerous" Signal userbase with the chaotic massive userbase of WhatsApp makes no sense, unless you really have WhatsApp on your side.

I hope you understand what I am trying to say.

edit: rephrasing

Well, I kind of feel that I have to repost my comment on this old thread[1] with regards to the government of Egypt blocking Signal application:

"Isn't it "weird" that they chose to block Signal app and not the signal-protocol based Whatsapp? If Whatsapp really implements the same kind of security and privacy measures that Signal does, why is Whatsapp allowed to continue operating? If signal is preventing them spy on users and they ban it, is in't it safe to assume that Whatsapp is NOT preventing them spy on users, so they let it operate? Wouldn't you expect Whatsapp to be also targeted, especially considering the broad user-base it has compared to Signal? Yes, I know they had blocked Whatsapp in the past, but they didn't block it now. Which means that something has changed in the relationship of the Egyptian gov and Whatsapp since 2015."

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13219304

That is exactly my point: It seems as if Egyptian gov doesn't care if people use whatsapp. Which means something smells there...

Never said a man rules alone. Any dictatorship only takes a critical mass of powerful enough people to establish itself. This doesn't necessarily mean the people of a country as a whole, or the majority of the people, or even some times a significant and/or representative amount of the people.

In most cases of dictatorships, people end up being kind of pissed off against the dictators. That's what it takes usually for people to call their rulers "dictators". It is not how you would call someone you like. Exactly for the same reason, the more authoritarian the establishment is - the less they respect/support liberties, personal/political rights and privacy of the people: Because the establishment expects such rights and liberties will be probably used by the people against the establishment itself. And exactly this is why such liberties and rights MUST be protected always, by all costs.

I am not Egyptian myself, but through discussions with Egyptian friends and/or Egyptians I randomly met, this is what they think of their government.

This is getting off topic so I stop it here.

Keep in mind that Egypt is practically under a dictatorship. It is not like their gov really cares if their people gets pissed off... Their government is far from carrying about peoples liberties[1].

So, for me the question remains: If what the Egyptian government wants is to apply their surveillance policies and Signal is banned because it is preventing them, doesn't the continuation of operation of other "private and encrypted" messangers say something? Especially of Whatsapp that claims that it implements the same security and privacy oriented architecture as Signal does?

[1] https://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2013/egypt

Isn't it "weird" that they chose to block Signal app and not the signal-protocol based Whatsapp?

If Whatsapp really implements the same kind of security and privacy measures that Signal does, why is Whatsapp allowed to continue operating?

If signal is preventing them spy on users and they ban it, is in't it safe to assume that Whatsapp is NOT preventing them spy on users, so they let it operate? Wouldn't you expect Whatsapp to be also targeted, especially considering the broad user-base it has compared to Signal?

Yes, I know they had blocked Whatsapp in the past, but they didn't block it now. Which means that something has changed in the relationship of the Egyptian gov and Whatsapp since 2015.