Puckdropper
What they like about e-mail is it's insecure
Mon Aug 07, 2023 3:50pm

The average person doesn't know that, but it's really just a post card. Intended for recipient only, but not private. It makes it very easy to eavesdrop on it.

Secure messages are things like Whatsapp. Will IM programs ever replace e-mail? Well, they've made e-mail look a lot like IM programs....

So we set up a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. 6 e-mails during the checkout process. Got another one today. It's all trash. (Unsolicited Commercial E-mail AKA Spam.) Is it any wonder people click the spam button so often?

  • Yeah it's crazy now but also a good thing. - Erik_, Sun Aug 06 2023 4:05pm
    It makes it sort of a pain as the person sending the emails but makes the quality of life of the recipients so much better than it was back in the day. I wonder how many more layers they can plop on over the coming years or if something will finally replace email. (Thinking probably not... Sort of like... more
    • What they like about e-mail is it's insecure- Puckdropper, Mon Aug 07 2023 3:50pm
      • Didn't even think of that - Erik_, Tue Aug 08 2023 8:32am
        But it makes sense. The sending and receiving parties have to read the email in order to process them. You can base64 encode the body but that's trivial to reverse. (IIRC the types of transfer encoding were 7bit, 8bit, base64, printable and binary or something) I guess that's how messages with too much... more
        • The "envelope" portion will always be world readable - Puckdropper, Mon Aug 14 2023 5:58am
          It's just how it's got to work. The body could easily be encrypted, but it needs to be seamless. PGP never really took off, unfortunately. Sometimes I think it's a useful thought exercise to pretend an email costs the same as postage stamp. Do you really need to spend that money to just tick off... more
          • I wonder how much an email does cost? - Erik_, Tue Aug 15 2023 1:05am
            It's using server resources on every hop it makes to the final mail server. It's probably a fraction of a fraction of a cent from end to end but the sheer amount of unsolicited spam emails that get generated and sent around must cost a somewhat substantial amount of money overall. I had that issue only... more
            • Good question... Probably what you're thinking. - Puckdropper, Fri Aug 25 2023 6:05am
              I'm sure somewhere you can find stats on how much stuff is on the Internet backbones that no one actually wants. Spam, the Nieman-Marcus cookie recipie that's been forwarded 35 times without being cleaned up, etc. It's actually quite a bit. It could be that it's an exchange server... Yahoo! and... more
              • Yeah, it's definitely an Exchange server - Erik_, Wed Aug 30 2023 9:54am
                It's just been so long since I've done IT/SRE work besides just development that I wasn't sure if maybe MIcrosoft had their own spam filter that they do on top of whatever your local Exchange server has set up. I guess thinking about it now, that would probably annoy a bunch of IT workers who are wondering... more
                • So now we know--email sending is cheap (like stealing) - Puckdropper, Wed Aug 30 2023 5:09pm
                  and the receivers waste around $.95/message (like those being stolen from) and the only real solution is filtering (like theft prevention) but that takes resources (like buying locks does) and everyone except the spammers (thieves) would be happier without it. I really didn't expect the analogy to... more
"Forces act when not restrained" - Puckdropper