No Buzz for me
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| Ridcully Feb 11, 2010 9:43 PM EDT |
I use GMail intermittently for a specific purpose, but one thing I am sure of: I have seen how Facebook can destroy privacy with its defaults which can let total strangers see what you saying and allow them to share your personal and private details - if you are silly enough to put them on your Facebook home page. Any friend you add may have totally open default settings - you simply don't know. Buzz seems to be following more or less the same pattern. I refer any reader to this article which seems to confirm my ideas: http://www.pcworld.com/article/189081/google_buzz_criticized... Email is one thing.....it goes to a specific person and unless I so instruct the email client, ONLY that person. No-one else can see the contents of any of my emails or knows whom I am contacting. I like it that way since much of my scientific, family or personal information is private and not for the idle reader; I also know that none of my email contacts has any reason to widely disseminate my email contents. GMail follows this pattern. Buzz, to me anyway, is the reverse. It seems to be designed for people who like to share private information, and my first move in opening my gmail account has been to turn it off using the option (in minute print) that I found at the base of the gmail page. It's lack of privacy hum is not agonna be heard in this little hive !! Disclaimer: and yes, I do have a facebook account; it is kept as simple as possible with only three family friends and no more are being added; the account is rarely if ever used and its principle purpose is to provide a de facto "home page" if someone in the science world ever wants to contact me, knows my name but doesn't know my email address. |
| jdixon Feb 11, 2010 10:07 PM EDT |
> No-one else can see the contents of any of my emails or knows whom I am contacting. Well, except for anyone with access to the mail server on your end, access to the mail server on the other end, access to any other servers it may hit on the way, and access to the routers involved. And, if you're using a Windows machine (no, I'm not accusing you of such), pretty much anyone at all who wants access to the machine. If you want secure email, you have to encrypt it. |
| Ridcully Feb 11, 2010 10:58 PM EDT |
>If you want secure email, you have to encrypt it. < Absolutely, full agreement........I wasn't going that far however and none of my traffic is of that significant a nature to the server admins - I have never considered encryption... And I promise you: this is NOT coming from a Windows machine. :-) |
| jdixon Feb 11, 2010 11:53 PM EDT |
> Absolutely, full agreement. I expected you knew as much, Ridcully. But a number of folks reading this thread might not, and we wouldn't want to give them the idea that email is a secure medium. |
| tuxchick Feb 12, 2010 12:43 AM EDT |
I use quadruple ROT-13. Take that, snoopy skript kiddies. |
| jdixon Feb 12, 2010 1:04 AM EDT |
> I use quadruple ROT-13. TC, I have it on good authority that our government schools are even now teaching students to break your quadruple ROT-13 encryption. While many have argued that their teaching methods are ineffective, even ineffective methods applied to such a large base are sure to turn out hordes of qualified quadruple ROT-13 encryption breakers. :( I'd say you have a DMCA case if you want to pursue it. |
| Bob_Robertson Feb 12, 2010 11:51 AM EDT |
I use Kmail most of the time, which has GPG plugged in quite easily. There's also the FireGPG plug-in for Firefox, which makes encrypted mail and Gmail work quite nicely together. But indeed once someone has access to mail servers, anything other than using mail on your local machine and encrypting it both ways is insecure. |
| hkwint Feb 12, 2010 2:01 PM EDT |
Hey, you know, these Chinese hackers paid by the government? Well, turns out, China stole some design for some spectacles which decrypt quadruple ROT-13 on the fly in real time! Of course, all very experimental and expensive spectacles as they rely on large quantities of super-conducting Europium mixed with ureum under a pressure of 2GPa, and reports indicate some of those spectacles explode. But nonetheless, I advise you to rely on ROT130 (a derivative of Whirlpool) instead. I mean, 13 bit encryption was good enough in the early days, but with all those advanced techniques you surely need 130 bit encryption nowadays. |
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