Fwd: philosophical question about gmail

Derek Martin invalid at pizzashack.org
Thu Aug 5 11:58:01 EDT 2004


On Thu, Aug 05, 2004 at 11:25:51AM -0400, Dan Jenkins wrote:
> Personally, I have no problem with GMail. I also have no interest in
> GMail. I run my own domain and my own email servers (and my own webmail
> servers). So any discussion of GMail is purely academic for me.

It's not really that simple though; I think that this thread is
highlighting an oft overlooked point: if you send e-mail to someone,
the e-mail is only as private as the server it sits on.  If a user
uses GMail, and gmail decides to publish all the e-mail on their
servers, then suddenly your private e-mail isn't so private.  This is,
of course, true of any e-mail.  This is one of the main reasons some
people (like me) advocate encrypting all e-mail, and always encrypt
mail whenever possible (i.e. whenever the recipient is PGP-capable).

FWIW, it's not that most of the mail I send is so private or sensitive
that it NEEDS encryption -- it just isn't.  It's the principle that no
one should EVER be reading my e-mail but me and my intended
recipients, regardless of the contents.  Some people will no doubt
feel that this principle is, practically speaking, not worth
defending.  Given how few people are sufficiently sophisticated and/or
concerned to use PGP for all their e-mail, those people are probably
right.  But I'll stick to my guns as much as possible despite. :-P

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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