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Old 27 Feb 2017, 12:13 AM   #271
ChinaLamb
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Whether or not you block the ads, these companies are aggregating information about you. Facebook sells data, Google aggregates it. Mass marketing companies sell data, other companies aggregate the data. Your cell service provider aggregates your location and your browsing habits into the database. You go to a store, your purchases are aggregated into the database.check out Oracle, they are the ones aggregating the physical (store purchases, location, etc.) With the online. You can opt out, but that only stops them from sharing the data, they still hold the data on their servers. And Oracle is not the only one.

I spent a day seeing where all this data goes, and it's amazing how much they store. It's not tin foil hat stuff, it's real. Ad blocking has nothing to do with it for me.

Fast mail doesn't play the data aggregation game, and $50 per year is worth keeping my meta data out of the system.
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Old 27 Feb 2017, 12:22 AM   #272
Gsptlsnz
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Google, Data Selfie

https://vimeo.com/201178499
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Old 27 Feb 2017, 12:24 AM   #273
ChinaLamb
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Originally Posted by Gsptlsnz View Post
Google, Data Selfie
Hahahaha. Hilarious.
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Old 27 Feb 2017, 12:39 AM   #274
TenFour
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I spent a day seeing where all this data goes, and it's amazing how much they store. It's not tin foil hat stuff, it's real. Ad blocking has nothing to do with it for me.
Sure, but the point is you can're really avoid all the tracking no matter what you do, so the only realistic thing to do is to block the pernicious effects on yourself by using ad blockers and adjusting the privacy settings. Unless, you want to stop using credit cards, your drivers license, online shopping, cell phones, websites, and you only want to live a miserable existence somewhere completely off the grid. And, how do you know that despite whatever FM is doing some government agency hasn't tapped your ISP, etc.? There are too many points of vulnerability for most of us to avoid the tracking. Even if you don't like it there is nothing you can do about it. That is just a fact of modern life--big data means there really is no privacy if some government agency wants to learn something about you. Look at what happens when someone tries to hide and works really, really hard at it--they are found eventually. Bin Laden comes to mind. I understand the desire for privacy, but your email is only one small aspect of your life that is being gobbled up in data centers.
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Old 27 Feb 2017, 05:22 AM   #275
ChinaLamb
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Yes, absolutely. The worst of it, I think, is my email communication- this is most of my communication with people and companies, banks, etc.. Fast mail uses ssl for connections to their servers, and messages are encrypted between senders. This doesn't keep out the NSA or CIA, but it does stop the data from ending up in a commercial data aggregator for later sale. The government will know afar they want, when they want, but I just want to keep the guys away who want to make money off my personal data.

I don't want to be a money maker for Google, Oracle, Yahoo, etc.
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Old 27 Feb 2017, 05:25 AM   #276
Gsptlsnz
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Originally Posted by ChinaLamb View Post
Yes, absolutely. The worst of it, I think, is my email communication- this is most of my communication with people and companies, banks, etc.. Fast mail uses ssl for connections to their servers, and messages are encrypted between senders. This doesn't keep out the NSA or CIA, but it does stop the data from ending up in a commercial data aggregator for later sale. The government will know afar they want, when they want, but I just want to keep the guys away who want to make money off my personal data.

I don't want to be a money maker for Google, Oracle, Yahoo, etc.
What happens when you send e-mail to someone who is on a non-secure connection, like Gmail?
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Old 27 Feb 2017, 05:35 AM   #277
ChinaLamb
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Originally Posted by Gsptlsnz View Post
What happens when you send e-mail to someone who is on a non-secure connection, like Gmail?
If it's to gmail, gmail is going to aggregate it.
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Old 27 Feb 2017, 07:38 AM   #278
TenFour
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Almost everyone I regularly send email to uses Gmail, Outlook.com, or Apple mail (whatever it is called today). So, whether or not I have a super private email provider whatever I send is getting scanned and dumped into my profile, whether I like it or not. I wouldn't be surprised if the same is happening to most commercial places I email too. Unless you only correspond with other people using private and/or encrypted communications you are just kidding yourself that you are not being tracked. Every company you do business with learns as much as they can from your email--they know when you open their emails, on what equipment, where you do it, and what you click on, and probably how long you linger on each page, etc. So do website owners, unless you go to the trouble to use Tor and other systems. Do you also avoid using Amazon, Netflix, Facebook, etc. etc.? Personally, I wouldn't use FB at all if it wasn't required for my job--that's just too creepy putting out personal information where the entire world can see it, not just some algorithm trying to target ads to me. Not ragging on any particular person, just pointing out that the privacy ship has sailed. The good news is that I believe you are generally very safe due to being only one of billions of data points in the cloud. Yes, Google and others make tiny fractions of profit off of each one of us and in return offers us very valuable services. Just looking around it is hard to find anything close to what Gmail gives you in terms of functionality for less than $50 per year, so let's assume that Gmail costs us $50 per year in terms of our information being sold to the highest bidder. But, you still have complete control over whether or not you actually pay in dollars because you don't have to buy anything presented to you. In fact, I would guess Gmail loses money on many of us that aren't ad readers, or are not susceptible to advertising pitches. On the other hand, what is wrong if someone wants to purchase something presented to them in an ad? I guess I don't see the huge outrage over this loss of privacy.

Last edited by TenFour : 27 Feb 2017 at 07:54 AM.
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Old 27 Feb 2017, 08:25 AM   #279
Gsptlsnz
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That's what I meant. You may be on a secure line but it won't matter if the other person isn't on a secure line!

Most people forget this simple fact.
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Old 27 Feb 2017, 08:37 AM   #280
ChinaLamb
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Originally Posted by Gsptlsnz View Post
That's what I meant. You may be on a secure line but it won't matter if the other person isn't on a secure line!

Most people forget this simple fact.
But... I'm not forwarding them my bills, receipts, mortgage info, bank statements, tv bills, credit card builds, rewards programs, etc. That's the stuff I want private. I sign all the privacy statements for every company I use.

There's still value in using a provider disconnected from the aggregators...
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Old 27 Feb 2017, 09:20 AM   #281
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Gsptlsnz View Post
What happens when you send e-mail to someone who is on a non-secure connection, like Gmail?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gsptlsnz View Post
That's what I meant. You may be on a secure line but it won't matter if the other person isn't on a secure line! .
This thread is getting pretty far from the subject and should probably be restarted as a non-Fastmail thread.The term "secure" can mean several different things.
  • Web connection from the user to Gmail: This has been forced to use a secure (SSL encryption) connection for three years.
  • SMTP and POP/IMAP connections from a local email client to Gmail:This has also been forced to be a secure (SSL encryption) connection for a long time.
  • SMTP connections between email servers: If you sent email from an external email system to Gmail (for example, from Fastmail to Gmail) the servers will use opportunistic TLS encryption if the external (non-Gmail) server supports this. The same happens if you send from Gmail. See this listing of providers which support TLS encryption for server-to-server connections.
  • Of course, Google is a major company and I would place their internal security as about as good as you can expect.
Now you might have meant privacy rather than security. Email providers such as Fastmail have no interest in advertising or selling information about you to others. Google is an advertising oriented company, and they generate revenue by assisting the serving of advertisements which are targeted to individuals. This is a different issue than email security. I would not worry about an email sent from a company like Fastmail to Gmail being intercepted by a non-governmental entity, but if you send or receive email from an email provider which does not insure encrypted connections the message might be intercepted.

The most likely reason for the interception of email is a human factor, such as:
  • Use of short insecure (easy to guess) passwords or the use of the same password for several services.
  • Phishing: Someone sends you a link to a fake page and you log into the wrong website, revealing your login credentials or other secret information. Text messages can also be used for phishing.
  • Viruses or other malware installed on any computer or server which contains your email messages. Let's say that someone sends you an email with 5 of their friends (which you don't know) in the CC field. You reply-to-all, sending your comments to those 5 unknown people. Some of them may automatically forward that message to other email systems or their friends. If any one of those people has malware on their computer or mobile device, your address and the contents of that message (and all of the forwarded comments which you forgot were down at the bottom of that message) can be released to criminals.
  • Physical security: If you write your password anywhere which allows someone else to see it, your account is subject to viewing by others. If you leave your PC open with no password at your house (or if you have no login password or one which is easy to guess), any email client on that PC may have years of your correspondence, even messages you deleted from the email server.
  • Local network and PC security: If you have poor security (no firewall or an open non-encrypted WLAN access point, for example), bad actors can use automated search and attach techniques to hack into your PC or device. They can then access your email client or use bookmarks and saved passwords in your browser to log into webmail.
Bill
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Old 4 Mar 2017, 03:07 PM   #282
Parviziyi
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Fastmail is offering to refund the entire purchase price of the legacy account they're closing. Therefore, they're legally alright and arguably morally too. But I don't think they're alright rationally.

There is no sensible programming maintenance reason to terminate these legacy accounts. Fastmail's statement about "to help simplify our internal architecture" is undoubtedly a crock of ṣḥite from the point of view of computer programming. In order for a real architecture problem to exist here today, they would've had to've introduced absurdly foolish architectural divergences back around 10 years ago. I'm extremely confident that they weren't so foolish. The commenter BritTim imagines there's non-trivial work involved in maintaining legacy accounts at different feature levels from all the other different types of different accounts. He's obviously not a programmer. He's wrong. I omit the details. There is no other cost reason to terminate the legacy accounts. They are low-traffic accounts (something like 100 MB per month is the transfer ceiling; 16 MB timeless total is the storage ceiling).

Since the legacy account holders have all been fine with such basic accounts for years and years, most of them won't opt to pay the recurring fee, but will just go away to a free alternative. But in addition, there's an effective breach of good faith here by the Fastmail company, which commenter NEOFORUM has eloquently explained. Some account holders will exit out of repugnance. NEOFORUM said, and this is my view too: "I don't like the idea of having to start paying them even a small amount to keep my account, because I don't want to reward fastmail for breaking their promises." Some people exiting out of repugnance would've voluntarily paid for a feature upgrade a few years forward from now. That includes me. I've had a member account since 2007, using it as my primary personal email address. I don't get much mail. I don't get much spam, but maybe in a few years I may intentionally expose my email address and then I'd be in the market for a spam filter, which I might've paid fastmail for. I'd also like to pay to increase my storage quota right now, today, but they won't let me.

Because of the low maintance cost, I believe the legacy accounts that fastmail will be terminating will be a net financial loss to the company. These accounts are still a pool of potential future fee-paying customers and referrals, even though the percentage of the pool that has gold in it is low. By forceable terminating the legacy accounts, Fastmail will get an income stream from the minority who hold their noses and pay up to preserve their longstanding email address. How much of a stream that will produce for fastmail, we don't know. Your guess about it is as good as mine or theirs. My guess is that it is rationally better to retain the potential customers.

Fastmail is not telling me a rational reason why they're practically forceing me to change my email address.
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Old 4 Mar 2017, 08:51 PM   #283
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Originally Posted by Parviziyi View Post
The commenter BritTim imagines there's non-trivial work involved in maintaining legacy accounts at different feature levels from all the other different types of different accounts. He's obviously not a programmer. He's wrong. I omit the details.
I promised to bow out of this thread, but feel obliged to briefly respond to this.

In recent years, my programming has been relatively mundane. However, back in the day, based near Boston in the US, I was one of the two senior architects of a DB/4GL product used by over 30 of the Fortune 100 companies. Junior to me were PHDs and MIT alumni. Later, as an independent software developer, I carried out large projects for IBM in Asia, Nixdorf in Germany, and Dassault in France (among others).

When there are significant features (which I gave examples of in an earlier post) that the legacy accounts are not entitled to, it is not always as easy as a simple if not <member> do <this>. At the appropriate point in the code, it may be highly inconvenient to even need to pass along details of the user account level. It can mean passing down an additional property through multiple calling levels just to have the information available to carry out that test. If really unlucky, it may make it impossible to use standard frameworks without modifying them and creating a maintenance mess.

The best solution, as I indicated, would simply be to drop the restrictions on legacy member accounts where they become onerous to maintain in the code. I think the only reasons not to approach things that way are emotional rather than rational.
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Old 4 Mar 2017, 10:29 PM   #284
ChinaLamb
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Originally Posted by Parviziyi View Post
There is no sensible programming maintenance reason to terminate these legacy accounts. Fastmail's statement about "to help simplify our internal architecture" is undoubtedly a crock of ṣḥite from the point of view of computer programming. In order for a real architecture problem to exist here today, they would've had to've introduced absurdly foolish architectural divergences back around 10 years ago. I'm extremely confident that they weren't so foolish. The commenter BritTim imagines there's non-trivial work involved in maintaining legacy accounts at different feature levels from all the other different types of different accounts. He's obviously not a programmer. He's wrong.
Wow. Really!? So... You know the code? You've reviewed their programming architecture? I have a family of programmers and I've learned never to assume something is as simple as I believe it is in my brain. Whenever I suggest something is simple they chuckle, then explain all the dependencies and connections that need to be reworked for my idea to be implemented. I know from experience never to assume something is as simple as I think it is. I whole heartedly are with BritTim.

Think about the interface, and the operation of the servers, virtually everything is touched by the legacy accounts. Every time an email is sent you need to check the data usage to see which account sent it, if it is legacy. The interface needs hundreds of calls to build the interface to disable features, everywhere that feature exists. It's not just one setting, it impacts everything.
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Old 5 Mar 2017, 01:14 AM   #285
TenFour
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It doesn't matter whether you or I think it is simple to maintain the legacy system--that is something I am 100% certain was weighed by FM when they made the decision. They made a business decision for whatever reasons, and as consumers you can vote with your wallet on the decision. The best thing is to explore your alternatives and move on.
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