Beating Gmail and the rest

[tijmen-peter]

@Sandyd, both options look interesting, however darkmail is not an actual email service, but rather an attempt to implement end-to-end encryption among current email providers. I have little faith in mayor companies such as Google and Windows implementing this, especially as they depend financially on 'reading' your email. (Windows claims they don't do this, but evidence points to the contrary). The service I am planning will not 'read' or scan people's email and will offer both GPG encrypted and 'normal' email, which is quite different from what I gather Darkmail is proposing.

The Silent Circle is also an interesting project, but as it only works for mobile and still doesn't allow secure email I think it's only part of the solution, and my email project could coexist peacefully, as another part of the solution.

[sandyd]

@Sandyd, both options look interesting, however darkmail is not an actual email service, but rather an attempt to implement end-to-end encryption among current email providers. I have little faith in mayor companies such as Google and Windows implementing this, especially as they depend financially on 'reading' your email. (Windows claims they don't do this, but evidence points to the contrary). The service I am planning will not 'read' or scan people's email and will offer both GPG encrypted and 'normal' email, which is quite different from what I gather Darkmail is proposing.

The Silent Circle is also an interesting project, but as it only works for mobile and still doesn't allow secure email I think it's only part of the solution, and my email project could coexist peacefully, as another part of the solution.

If your wanting GPG encryption of emails, enigmail already provides this, and can be used in fact on any email provider that you want.

[tijmen-peter]

@sandyd Enigmail is an additional plugin/add-on for existing email clients. This is an inconvenient extra step in installing and can be confusing for many people. What I want to build is a complete solution including client, server, host, emailaddress etcetera.

[sandyd]

@sandyd Enigmail is an additional plugin/add-on for existing email clients. This is an inconvenient extra step in installing and can be confusing for many people. What I want to build is a complete solution including client, server, host, emailaddress etcetera.

Which means they will still have to install your client.

[tijmen-peter]

@sandyd, besides the client, I would like to make a webmail function as well, for added convenience. However, even if people have to install my client, it would be just the client, not a client and additional plug-ins and add-ons to get the security they are looking for. So that's still easier than the currently available options.

[user1397]

@sandyd, besides the client, I would like to make a webmail function as well, for added convenience. However, even if people have to install my client, it would be just the client, not a client and additional plug-ins and add-ons to get the security they are looking for. So that's still easier than the currently available options.

Makes sense. Have you looked into lavabit? Seems like the same thing you're trying to do, except the feds shut it down because it was linked to Edward Snowden (Snowden apparently had a lavabit email address).

I would suggest really looking into lavabit and trying to basically copy/mirror what they did, but the fact that you would be hosting it outside the USA already makes it way safer than lavabit (poor guy, if you read up on it the feds came and shut his system down basically)

[tijmen-peter]

@Ubuntuman
Lavabit is pretty much exactly what I want to do, but like you said, outside the US and outside the legal reach of US intelligence.
I'll be looking closer at what they were doing and how. Thanks!

[tijmen-peter]

Although Lavabit comes pretty close to what I want to do, my approach would be a bit different. Lavabit stored the encryption key to all messages on their server, I would keep it on the user's device. Lavabit could have read people's emails if they wanted to, as they had access to the encryption keys. Also the emails were sent to the device in plain text, and were therefore vulnerable to hackers. I would send the email to the user in encrypted format and then use the encryption key on the device to decrypt it. This system is safer for the user as it makes it physically impossible for me to read (or share) the content of the messages.

[bapoumba]

Although I can see your point, no one can escape the law and international agreements. Where are your servers based again ?

[lads]

I have used GMail for about 8 years. The past 18 months I have tried hard to quit it, but every other alternative seems to have a downside: be it cost, US based infrastructure, lack of encryption, limited storage, user interface.

I have recently started using ProtonMail, which so for is the closest to beating GMail. The downsides are limited storage (minor) and user interface (major but solvable).

Instead of starting a project of your own from scratch, I would advise you to rather support an existing project such as ProtonMail.