toomanyusers

Yes, but you had to install an app. Why? They already have your email. They're forwarding email to you as part of the service. And you probably had to verify your email with them when you started using it. So why should you be required to also install either an app or a browser extension?

Doesn't the very act of installing something on your devices increase their technical ability to collect information about you and your devices? That doesn't sound very privacy-oriented.

I stopped using DuckDuckGo when it introduced its email relay service. This service had (and I think still does have) the peculiar requirement that the user must install a browser extension in order to use it.

I can think of no valid reason why a (supposedly privacy-respecting) email relay service should require a browser extension to be installed.

This made me realize DuckDuckGo may not actually value privacy. I stopped trusting all of its services.

Does Amazon have a policy guaranteeing it won't ship items sourced from commingled inventory with its sellers when you purchase "Ships by and Sold by Amazon.com"?

I heard that you can get items from random small sellers (including counterfeit items and used items being packaged as new) even when you think you are purchasing only from Amazon. I haven't bought anything on Amazon since.

It strikes me that a company like Kagi should be able to craft a legally enforcable agreement with its customers which expressly forbids the company from selling ads and conducting surveillance.

The agreement could be carefully written by a skilled lawyer to define the things Kagi cannot do, the proof customers must present in order to proceed with a valid lawsuit, and even the maximum damages that the customer may sue for.

In that case, if Kagi was found at some point to be using customer data for these purposes, it could be sued very easily and by many parties.

People are calling for regulation for data privacy. In the meantime, Kagi can create its own regulation it will hold itself to for the benefit of its users, can it not?

I found a blog post (https://safing.io/blog/2022/09/06/spn-vs-vpns/), but you have to go fairly far down the page (to the header "Cryptographic Identity Protection") to begin to get the gist of what it is.

"This was originally invented for Tor and is called Onion Routing. This way, every server in the chain only knows the previous and the next hop. No server ever knows who you are AND where you are going to."

"As VPNs are centralized, all their servers are operated by only one entity - the VPN provider itself. They can, therefore, monitor all you traffic and see what you are up to. This is why they tout their “No Logging” policies so loudly, because they know they can see everything."

"SPN on the other hand invites the community to join the network and strengthen it by adding diversity to the operators of the network. This way - in addition to the cryptographic protections - it is made almost impossible that anyone will ever be able to track you through the SPN."

It sounds like it is a next-gen VPN service which addresses the shortcomings of the current VPN services by splitting the service into relays and exits, each with limited knowledge and each potentially operated by different parties.

I'd really like to see more technical discussion of Safing's SPN idea and implementation (https://safing.io/spn/). If I've understood it correctly, it seems to be in-line with the general trajectory of where Cloudflare is going with DNS privacy and Apple is going with its relay service.

It seems obvious that VPN services should be split into Relay and Exit services so that you don't have to necessarily trust a single company not to collect and sell all your internet traffic.