Neomailbox vs Countermail

Discussion in 'privacy technology' started by driekus, Dec 16, 2014.

  1. driekus

    driekus Registered Member

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    I know there have been threads in past on the both providers but wanted to get a fresh more recent take.
    My goal is to have an email account that is resistant to passive surveillance both from government agencies and corporations.

    The majority of my emails are what I would consider non-confidential. While I might not consider discussions with my wife about what I eat for breakfast confidential I do not want agencies or corporations building a profile of me based on that information.
    For material that I consider confidential (business agreements, financials) I currently use PGP and am very comfortable with the technology.
    Most of my email is sent through a client and I do not like webmail.

    I signed up for neomailbox (30 day trial) and the countermail 7 day trial just to give them a go.
    Despite other reports I found neomailbox to be slightly quicker than countermail and more intuitive. Yes it did take neomailbox a few days to register me but it is something that I can live with.

    Interested what other opinions are between the two.
     
  2. Veeshush

    Veeshush Registered Member

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    http://prxbx.com/email/ is a good rundown of the differences between the majority of privacy based email providers. Generally, I feel as long as you're using something other than the top proprietary/closed sourced services (gmail, yahoo, outlook, etc) you're going to be meeting your goal. Of course, go with your gut with who you'd trust with your own data.
     
  3. driekus

    driekus Registered Member

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    Agreed a very good list. I also added that I wanted email served outside of US, Canada, Australia and Germany. It does narrow the list down dramatically. Sort of leads to similar comparison, although didnt realize countermail is webmail only, makes it a no deal.
     
  4. PaulyDefran

    PaulyDefran Registered Member

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    Proton Mail just sent me my activation.
     
  5. driekus

    driekus Registered Member

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    Proton Mail is interesting.
    Security Now (Twit) podcast covered aspects of the crypto and had some doubts and that the crypto is fully developed yet. My preference is to rely on well proven crypto like PGP.
     
  6. Veeshush

    Veeshush Registered Member

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    What do you mean? If you mean it is only accessible through a web browser, I just want to point out that you can set them up with pretty much any open source mail client, like Thunderbird: https://support.countermail.com/kb/faq.php?id=182

    Less you mean something else.
     
  7. driekus

    driekus Registered Member

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    My mistake Veeshush, you are right.
    I interpreted the column (accessible via Free Mail Clients) in prxbx to mean that it was webmail only.
     
  8. driekus

    driekus Registered Member

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    Well after 5 days using Neomailbox I am pretty happy with it. Starting to migrate all my gmail stuff over and try to kick the google habit.
    I do like the disposable email address feature because I can give all my miscellaneous memberships their own email address and identify which ones leak my personal information. I can individually shut out any that are a problem.
     
  9. Veeshush

    Veeshush Registered Member

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    Glad to hear you've found something that works for ya. More people should support services that at least make an attempt of doing something in a better, more decent way. :thumb:
     
  10. deBoetie

    deBoetie Registered Member

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    One of the most important elements for me would be facilities for communicating with people with insecure email (at least one provider sends a link which allows encrypted access to the mail for people without, and a PGP gateway). Just as in the early days of email, it was hard to get a critical mass, I think we need to help our communicating partners to get comfortable (and expecting) more secure communication channels. That the initial ones are not-very-good is OK to start with, but then, current email is never going to be secure.

    I am dismayed at the complacency of my business partners (especially companies like lawyers, accountants and patent agents) when it comes to this stuff, and I also believe that our Information Commissioner (UK) is negligent in not demanding encryption as standard in B2B. In my opinion, that would make the shift in pervasiveness that is required. I also think that from a corporate fiduciary perspective, that many major corporations are negligent and should be sued by their shareholders. It's simply not acceptable for a multinational to have its communications swept up and distributed (as it is) by the 5 eyes and beyond, as well as vulnerable to criminal hackers.

    I found the following interesting in respect of structuring of the criteria for selection of services:

    https://www.eff.org/secure-messaging-scorecard
     
  11. mirimir

    mirimir Registered Member

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    Right. I consult from time to time in litigation, in my non-anonymous persona. I've worked with numerous attorneys. Only one of them ever used end-to-end encryption. None of the others could even handle encrypted attachments. The justification was something like this: "It doesn't matter if opposing counsel read our stuff. They can't use it, because we'd know if they did. And they'd be in contempt of court, which would be expensive for them. And anyway, we exchange everything, even work product, in discovery." I've tried to explain that such information could be very useful to opposing counsel, especially if learned early enough, and that they could exploit it in very subtle ways. Nobody gets it :(
     
  12. Veeshush

    Veeshush Registered Member

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    That's why I like the Cryptocat guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hakux3_W8-4 At one point he talks about trying to get journalist to use better, more secure methods of communication and them just going back to using Facebook chat.

    The same applies to email in my opinion. I just feel everyone and anyone in the world should not have to learn a bunch of tedious stuff to stay secure, but obviously this ain't a perfect world. We Wilders bunch are security enthusiast to say the least.
     
  13. driekus

    driekus Registered Member

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    I used to work in the Pharmacy industry. Shocking what they used to send by email..... patient records, prescriptions, the works. This is scary stuff, they even used scan to email with the password to the publicly available email address set as the company name followed by 1234. I still love getting told by staff that when they hit the send button it gets encrypted. Even scarier was the email was hosted on a google corporate account.

    It is such a struggle to get through to people that their emails are not secure, google searches are not secure and changing facebook privacy settings does not make it secure.

    deBoetie: I am a big fan of the EFF and their work on messaging as well as the plan with mozilla to offer free "easy to install" website certificates. Would love to see a similar push to PGP. At the moment I am limited by the fact I need to educate people on how to use PGP before they communicate with me. If there are any EFF people here I am sure many people here would like to see a PGP initiative once you finish solving the rest of the problems on the internet :)
     
  14. StillBorn

    StillBorn Registered Member

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    Still waiting for my Proton Mail activation. I'm hoping/assuming it is compatible with Thunderbird. Based on what what I've gleaned elsewhere, perhaps based on the seemingly potential popularity of Proton Mail, it will warrant a thread of it's own in the near future. (Wow! deja vu... this similar post was deleted with in past two hours.)
     
  15. Mayahana

    Mayahana Banned

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    Neo has hideous support.

    Try Runbox.
     
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