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Old 30 May 2014, 03:52 AM   #1
zinneken
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PrivateRelay

Anyone heard of this one? PrivateRelay?

The page
https://privaterelay.com/privacy_policy.php
made me smile.
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Old 3 Jun 2014, 02:21 AM   #2
Tsunami
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Seems nice! But is this a new service, or has it been around for a while? Stability and continuity are very important, you don't want to announce your new email address and then see the service being discontinued after a short while. But if they are stable as a provider, then indeed this looks very good
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Old 4 Jun 2014, 06:07 PM   #3
Paul Taylor
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Hi,

I'm the technical director at PrivateRelay and found this page after a search. Thanks for your comments

The product PrivateRelay was put together to market our secure email service which has been operating since 2011. We launched under the name PrivateRelay in March, and our company has been working in Internet email and networking since 1996.

There is more information about us here:
https://privaterelay.com/who_are_we.php

Please let me know if you'd like any further details and thanks again for your interest.

Best regards,
Paul

Last edited by Paul Taylor : 4 Jun 2014 at 06:37 PM.
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Old 4 Jun 2014, 11:46 PM   #4
Berenburger
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Taylor View Post
Hi,

I'm the technical director at PrivateRelay and found this page after a search. Thanks for your comments
Welcome Paul! Please PM Edwin for the representative status.
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Old 6 Jun 2014, 04:33 PM   #5
zinneken
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US: +1 650 521 5100, which other ties do you have with the US? Developers, support, licenses, etc? Shareholders, creditors, of Private Relay or its holding company, or through shadow companies holding an interest int he company?

UK: +44 1296 340 100, which other ties do you have with the UK?

Where is the hardware located, all of the hardware?

Where is the software from, all of the software?

How is email routed from the user to your servers?

You are obliged to keep and release information under EU legislation. In addition to that, you have to oblige to the laws of France. So you wouldn't be allowed in most cases to tell an individual user if you have to release his data.

To me your privacy statements and intentions look noble, but, you're presenting it in such a way that people believe they are safe with you and fact is they are not.

It made me smile (original post).
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Old 6 Jun 2014, 08:07 PM   #6
Paul Taylor
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We have no links or ties with the US nor the UK (no other country in fact than France). These numbers are route numbers to our offices in Paris to save our clients on communication costs.

Our company has a number of shareholders who are all French citizens and tax domiciled in France. We are entirely self-funded with no shares or stock held by any capital investment firms or banks. We do not have any shareholders from companies, shadows companies or any other.

All our servers and technical services are located in Paris, France.

The software we use is all open source and linked in with Zimbra, the most well know WebMail interface, which is also open source. Our servers all run Linux, OpenSuse / Ubuntu.

The Internet decides on how email is routed from user to server, however we have forced secure protocols hence all communications between user and server are encrypted. We do not support any unsecure connections to / from our client’s devices.

With respect to data release, no data can and is provided to any third party unless, as our Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions state, a specific French court order is issued.
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Old 8 Jun 2014, 04:07 AM   #7
zinneken
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Thanks for your comments Paul. My comments may seem a bit harsh, but I merely would like a very critical eye loose on a noble initiative you seem to have. Don't take them personally or against privaterelay, see them more in the way of gaining a better understanding.

I appreciate you say you have no links to the US or UK other then a phone number to lower the cost to customers. It makes me wonder if a skype-type system wouldn't be more adequate (maybe you have it and I missed it), since there are people in many countries that might be interested in your services.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Taylor View Post
Our company has a number of shareholders who are all French citizens and tax domiciled in France. We are entirely self-funded with no shares or stock held by any capital investment firms or banks. We do not have any shareholders from companies, shadows companies or any other.
Let's focus on this for a minute. On your web site you are acknowledging openly: "PrivateRelay is a product of our holding company Quad Logic"

Either I didn't understand your above quote "no shares or stock held by any capital investment firms", or your web site doesn't show the reality of your business?

Also, often times in Europe company shareholders are publicly disclosed. Is it the same in France and if so, where can we check the shareholders of privaterelay? I do wish to believe you, it is just hard to believe an IT company has no ties with anything in the US.

Which brings me to your IT staff and software. I have a hard time believing everything to be French?

What do you mean by secure connections to your servers? TLS/SSL are not secure, they are just a little more secure then without.

Coming to data release, would you add in your T&C that any time information is requested through a court order you would automatically and every time inform the individual user (for example by email) that his/her data was released that day?

I am very much interested in email privacy, and your company and its statements seem very noble, I just like to see things through all the way.

Thanks for taking the time!
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Old 9 Jun 2014, 06:05 PM   #8
Paul Taylor
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With respect to our company, Quad Logic is the official registered name and we have been operating since 1996 in Paris, serving clients mainly in Europe.

Our secure / private email service was put together in 2011 for internal use and was also used by a number of our clients. We decided in 2013 to package this service as a product under the name of PrivateRelay. Our company registration was also duly modified to add this as a trading name, in French ‘un nom commercial’ which allows us to trade fully under the name of PrivateRelay. As you can see on our extended SSL certificate on the web site this is clearly shown.

To reiterate, Quad Logic only has 'people' who hold shares, we are all French citizens and tax domiciled in France. Our company is completely owned by us with no other shares with investment firms or banks. France has the state controlled InfoGreffe, which allows free access to basic company data, and extended data for a fee, available here:
https://www.infogreffe.fr/societes

For the international telephone numbers, we use Twilio which, unlike Skype, is quite sophisticated allowing us to route calls and manage our services directly through our own programming (no plug for Twilio intended). Additional geographic lines may be added in the future.

Our staff and services are all located in Paris. I don’t think I can provide any other proof than asking you to traceroute any of our IP addresses.

With respect to the software not internally developed, I did not say it was all French. It is however all Open Source and will undoubtedly have been developed with contributions from around the world including the Americas, Europe and Asia.

Our connections use 2048-bit SSL industry signed or PrivateRelay signed certificates. This is in our opinion more than adequate for general purpose use which is the intended reach of our product.

With respect to the data release notifications, I will raise this with colleagues and report back.
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Old 15 Jun 2014, 03:40 AM   #9
zinneken
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Thanks for all the info Paul, was waiting for the:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Taylor View Post
...
With respect to the data release notifications, I will raise this with colleagues and report back.
Looking forward to your news!
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Old 15 Jun 2014, 08:47 AM   #10
webecedarian
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I'd heard of it, and thought it looked promising - but I'm still looking for free options.
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Old 16 Jun 2014, 10:12 PM   #11
Paul Taylor
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Quote:
Originally Posted by webecedarian View Post
I'd heard of it, and thought it looked promising - but I'm still looking for free options.
Sorry we don’t offer a free option, we are of the opinion that a company can only look after the privacy of its clients by being given the financial resources to do so. Free providers make money by advertising / personal profiling and then selling client data or inflated prices for their paying users, none of which we would ever judge appropriate for our clients.

Last edited by Paul Taylor : 17 Jun 2014 at 01:11 AM. Reason: Spelling!
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Old 16 Jun 2014, 10:13 PM   #12
Paul Taylor
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Quote:
Originally Posted by zinneken View Post
Looking forward to your news!
Sorry it’s taken some time to come back to you.

We have been trying to get clarification on the legal issue regarding disclosure, but are still not completely clear on this issue. As such we have decided to include a disclosure amendment to our Privacy policy which now reads as follows:

“We deal with law enforcement requests individually and will only entertain such requests when legally forced to do so. We will notify all clients for whom we have been served a warrant / order to disclose information unless, in the unlikely event, that we are prevented to do so by law in the terms of that order.”
https://privaterelay.com/privacy_policy.php

If we can confirm that a ban on disclosure is not possible then we will amend this further to remove the conditional “unless prevented to do so by law…”

Last edited by Paul Taylor : 16 Jun 2014 at 10:42 PM. Reason: Added link to privacy policy
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Old 16 Jun 2014, 10:40 PM   #13
zinneken
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Taylor View Post
Sorry it’s taken some time to come back to you.

We have been trying to get clarification on the legal issue regarding disclosure, but are still not completely clear on this issue. As such we have decided to include a disclosure amendment to our Privacy policy which now reads as follows:

“We deal with law enforcement requests individually and will only entertain such requests when legally forced to do so. We will notify all clients for whom we have been served a warrant / order to disclose information unless, in the unlikely event, that we are prevented to do so by law in the terms of that order.”

If we can confirm that a ban on disclosure is not possible then we will amend this further to remove the conditional “unless prevented to do so by law…”
Thanks Paul!

I think you'll find that a company like yours is typically always forced to not communicate. France Telecom doesn't tell its users who got a phone tap either.

I guess the question would be better formulated as: does email disclosing fall under the same privacy rules as a phone tap?
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Old 17 Jun 2014, 01:01 AM   #14
Paul Taylor
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Quote:
Originally Posted by zinneken View Post
I guess the question would be better formulated as: does email disclosing fall under the same privacy rules as a phone tap?
This is where things are still unclear. We believe it does not, but we added the condition to our policy to be as transparent as possible on the issue.
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Old 17 Jun 2014, 01:08 AM   #15
Paul Taylor
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Quote:
Originally Posted by zinneken View Post
I guess the question would be better formulated as: does email disclosing fall under the same privacy rules as a phone tap?
I’d also like to say thank you for your input! The services that we provide can always be improved by constructive suggestions such as yours.
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