[LINK] mail2web service

[Craig Sanders]

On Sun, Jan 10, 2010 at 03:10:53PM +1100, Roger Clarke wrote:
> >On Sun, Jan 10, 2010 at 09:02:48AM +1100, Jan Whitaker wrote:
> >>  I have a question about a service available to "anonymously" collect
> >>  email on the web from different email accounts.
> >>  http://mail2web.com
> 
> At 14:34 +1100 10/1/10, Craig Sanders wrote:
> >personally, i think you'd have to be completely insane to use such
> >a service - or provide ANY third party with your login and password
> >details for anything, let alone your email account(s).
> ...
> >if i needed webmail, i'd use google mail. possibly even forward (some
> >of) my mail to gmail when i'm travelling.
> 
> Maybe I'm mis-reading, Craig, but there seems to be an inconsistency here.
> 
> We all have to depend (as distinct from necessarily 'trust') the 
> various organisations, servers and devices that pass along our 
> messages outbound, and inbound.
>
> Where we use a third-party's POP, IMAP or web-server to gain access 
> to inbound mail, we depend on that organisation and its servers.

yes, you have to trust them for the email you have hosted with them.
there's no avoiding that - they provide the email service, of course
they have to have your authentication details (although most commonly,
the password is not stored in plain text).

they have no access to any email you have with some other provider.

mail2web.com (and similar services) is an additional, unnecessary third
party you have to trust.  

> Google, on the other hand, has conditions that permit it to do 
> prettymuch whatever it likes.  We haven't yet established what the 
> terms of mail2web.com are;  but it would be difficult to see how they 
> could be any *worse* than Google's.

mail2web wants access to your existing mailbox(es).  gmail
only has access to mail sent to your gmail account.

> Why would anyone who has any concern about privacy use gmail, or 
> flush their mail through gmail??

because i only use gmail when travelling, and even then ONLY when i
can't access my server with ssh for some reason (some internet cafes
only allow basic web stuff or don't allow you to use your own laptop -
and there's no way i'm ever going to type my login and password into
some computer in a cafe).

and i only send/receive mail through gmail with the assumption that
there is no privacy at all on gmail - so i don't use it for anything
confidential. travel diary updates and travel snaps aren't exactly
top-secret material.

mostly, though, i have a gmail account as a last-ditch backup in case i
really need to send an email and everything else fails. i don't think
i've logged in to it for a year or two. or perhaps three.



my preferred method for email while travelling is encrypted
uucp-over-tcp. i just set up uucp account for the laptop's subdomain and
and then forward some or all of my mail to it. connect to a wired or
wireless internet connection anywhere and connect via encrypted uucp to
send/receive a batch of mail.

this isn't really something that most people can do or would want to do.


craig

-- 
craig sanders <cas at taz.net.au>