Startmail - The World's Most Private Email

https://www.startmail.com/

On a different note:
https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/55/7/when-is-your-startmail-private-email-service-going-to-be-released

 

By it's very nature, email is not private. Unless...

You encrypt it and of course the receiving party much be able to decrypt it.

Even if both parties use the same "secure" service, you are entrusting your emails to a 3rd party.

 

I think now a days, "private" *also* means hostile to US Administrative Subpoenas. Meaning they will fight any attempt to go through your various mail boxes...or at least let you know when it is happening. Where will this server sit? Any info on the set up?

PD

 

Certainly welcome this new service.

Nonetheless, numerous questions would have to be answered before we'd make the claim "The World's Most Private Email."

Would IP headers be stripped from emails? (not likely) Would originating IP addresses be logged? What jurisdictions would the servers reside in? Would those servers be encrypted? Would those jurisdictions require logging and or data retention? To what extent would Startmail comply with a subpoena or court order to divulge information?

And lastly, of course, all email services are the same in the sense that if an email is is not encrypted to the recipient, that email IS readable by the operator, thus, not private.

 

What makes you say that? Even Google does that.

 

besides hyping its own service, have they said anything about how they intend on making it more private.

I would have thought that basing it in the NL was not a good start.

 

I'm going to test it once available. I assume it's mostly avoiding the ad scanning that Yahoo and Google are doing.

 

Only way to be sure the mail is safe on the server is to locate the server on the moon, as it doesn't appear they are going back there anytime soon. But that 8-10 lag would make uploads and downloads a tad slow.

They are spending too much money trying to store and go thru everyone's mail to be able to afford any moon trips soon.

 

Privacy and the internet do not exist.

 

any news on the launch?

 

The regular "highest standards security " bla bla. E-mail can never be totally secure, the future lies within alternatives, such as bitmessge, which encrypt the entire message, does not rely on a provider, and has total anonimity and a lot more good stuff.

 

Agree. But you *can* do email to the highest security level that is available if you find a good provider that offers anon payment, strips IP's, PGP's everything plain text, in addition to you PGP'ing everything else, and you always connect via VPN. IMO.

PD

 

If i remember good, Snowden sent many crypted mails to important newspapers about the data gate and at the beginning noone really knew that it was Snowden sending them until he did "coming out". So i guess crypted mails are possibles and pretty safe.
Just dont remember if it was Snowden or Manning

 

I like StartPage a lot. I've tried many search engines and none of them are as good as google, which I try to avoid for privacy reasons, but StartPage works pretty well. I'll give StartMail a try when it comes out.

 

yeah its more of a chat client replacement imo , well see how it goes , the jurys still out on how secure it really is , until some proper reviews come in ill be using pidgeon with torchat plugin and otr encryption to be 100% anonymous and secure in my chats , for voip and the rest theres always jitsi and vpn chaining to hell , and about email yeah as pauly mentioned there are ways its just not for everyone exspecially those that are too lazy to protect theyre own privacy as if it hadnt been explained a million times over already how to do so

anyhow ill be watching startmail as i have been , well see if it proves relevant in time once its launched, until then use vmail ...for non irl stuff logically or remailers as mentioned by mirimir ...still gotta get into that thou once i find some spare time

 

Snowden used a lot of encrypted communication, but of course, until the leaks began to be published, no one was trying to track him down and crack his emails, so in a certain sense he might as well have communicated in plain text. Given the lengths the FBI has gone to, to try to get the SSL keys from Snowden's email provider Lavabit, it would seem that Lavabit was good enough that they couldn't crack it.

I believe Manning also used encrypted communication, but did other things that made it easy to identify him, not least of which was confiding in someone, who later turned him in.

Anyway, I'm curious also, to see what Startmail is like.

 

Yes correct, and it was Adrian Lamo the famouse hacker who betrayed Manning selling him to the federals

 

Just received a mail from them "...Within the next week or so, you'll receive a link to a confidential email usage survey."

And it mentions "All StartMail users will now have access to a fully-encrypted user vault, the protection of perfect forward secrecy and transport layer security, state-of-the-art SSL encryption, and the confidence of knowing their email provider is based in the Netherlands, outside of US jurisdiction."

 

https://support.startpage.com/index...rticle/View/278/7/startmail-beta-survey-email

https://support.startpage.com/index...il-private-email-service-going-to-be-released

 

I don't think Netherlands is outside of US jurisdiction. If they were located in China or Russia then It would have been a different story.

 

but then you'd have China or Russia spying on you.

imo Netherlands seems like a fairly decent choice - I'm guessing they would cooperate with US legal enforcement agencies on specific cases, but I doubt they'd hand out everyone's data, their citizens included, to NSA-type agencies willy-nilly. Switzerland or Iceland might be even better.

 

Yeah but China/Russia would never coorporate with USA.

 

I wouldn't count on these 3 countries not cooperating in the near future. I think globalization will also happen in politics.

 

I doubt it. Their intelligence agencies are competing against each. And the 3 countries are competing in terms of economy, military and intelligence. I highly doubt that China/Russia will give up anything to USA. Just look at Snowden. Those countries are too proud and doing anything but standing up to the USA would be a sign of weakness and dishonor in the eyes of Chinese and Russians too. I think this is a win/win situation for those who want to have minimal privacy from their own government.

 

Im with you Wroll. It's not a case if we'll have globalization (NWO) but when. In the meantime it's byplay, diversion tactics and engineered scenarios. Front men leaders are just puppets. One thing about it, everyone at that point will be on the same team but the spying won't stop.