[libreplanet-discuss] Is disroot ok?

[G. Sebastián Pedersen]

Hello,

Since the radical change in openmailbox.org I've been searching for
new alternatives on email+cloud.

I came up with https://disroot.org

So I was wondering if you guys could give me some advice or opinion.

Disroot or any other suggestion or comment is more than welcome.

Many thanks in advance,
and cheers from Argentina

Sebastián

[J.B. Nicholson]

Post by G. Sebastián Pedersen
Since the radical change in openmailbox.org I've been searching for
new alternatives on email+cloud.
I came up with https://disroot.org
So I was wondering if you guys could give me some advice or opinion.

I'm not sure what you mean by "cloud" (that's part of the problem with that
term); as far as I know "cloud" computing refers to doing one's computing
on someone else's computer (obviously inherently unrecommendable) so I'll
limit my comments to talking about email.

disroot.org doesn't look to be remarkably different from any other email
hosting provider so long as you avoid using POP3 and keep the total size of
your mailbox under 2GB (what https://disroot.org/services/email says is the
size limit).

Use encrypted IMAP for reading mail, encrypt and sign outbound mail with
GPG, and use an encrypted connection to their SMTP server for sending mail,
and you'll do about as well as anyone can expect to do with email. Webmail
interface probably requires Javascript which makes it easy for the server
side to get you to run nonfree software or run malware.

I don't know how disroot.org's prices compare to other hosters (I didn't
look that far into their website) but you should consider getting your own
domain name so that your email address(es) don't change, even if you switch
hosters. I didn't notice disroot.org offering domain names so if you go
with disroot.org and you want your own domain name you may have to get the
domain name somewhere else.

Dreamhost.com might have a better deal for you for email hosting because (I
think) Dreamhost offers a higher email quota and optional "+" offsets (for
instance: username+***@yourdomain where you use your username,
optionally add a "+string" to the end of it to help you identify how people
got your address or for filtering inbound email), and optional server-side
filtering (more simplistic than it used to be years ago but still useful
enough to do what most novices want to do most of the time like moving
inbound email to a folder). Dreamhost.com also sells domain names and
offers a JS-based webmail.

[Adonay Felipe Nogueira]

Haven't you inverted the words POP3 and IMAP?

I mean, I find it way secure and better to use POP3 because I have all
my email in my own computer, and can yet optionally leave part of the
newest ones in the server.

With IMAP, on the other hand, it can turn out to be very expensive also
for the service provider. I read OpenMailBox's social network profile
posts and it seems that IMAP consumed more resources than POP3.

Post by J.B. Nicholson
I'm not sure what you mean by "cloud" (that's part of the problem with
that term); as far as I know "cloud" computing refers to doing one's
computing on someone else's computer (obviously inherently
unrecommendable) so I'll limit my comments to talking about email.
disroot.org doesn't look to be remarkably different from any other
email hosting provider so long as you avoid using POP3 and keep the
total size of your mailbox under 2GB (what
https://disroot.org/services/email says is the size limit).
Use encrypted IMAP for reading mail, encrypt and sign outbound mail
with GPG, and use an encrypted connection to their SMTP server for
sending mail, and you'll do about as well as anyone can expect to do
with email. Webmail interface probably requires Javascript which makes
it easy for the server side to get you to run nonfree software or run
malware.
I don't know how disroot.org's prices compare to other hosters (I
didn't look that far into their website) but you should consider
getting your own domain name so that your email address(es) don't
change, even if you switch hosters. I didn't notice disroot.org
offering domain names so if you go with disroot.org and you want your
own domain name you may have to get the domain name somewhere else.
Dreamhost.com might have a better deal for you for email hosting
because (I think) Dreamhost offers a higher email quota and optional
your username, optionally add a "+string" to the end of it to help you
identify how people got your address or for filtering inbound email),
and optional server-side filtering (more simplistic than it used to be
years ago but still useful enough to do what most novices want to do
most of the time like moving inbound email to a folder). Dreamhost.com
also sells domain names and offers a JS-based webmail.

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[Caleb Herbert]

I want to do the SSH method that RMS uses.

[J.B. Nicholson]

Post by Adonay Felipe Nogueira
Haven't you inverted the words POP3 and IMAP?
I mean, I find it way secure and better to use POP3 because I have all
my email in my own computer, and can yet optionally leave part of the
newest ones in the server.

You never had such security. By the time you can use any means of reading
the email your mail server has already seen those emails. This is true
regardless of the protocol involved. Furthermore you can't undo the fact
that your server got to read that email before your client got to read it.

If you want to keep your emails from an untrusted email server, stop using
that server. Pick a server you can trust and use GPG plus an anonymous
remailer. As far as I know that's about the best you can do with email if
you want to use their resources to convey messages to you but you don't
trust their system.

So when it comes to POP3 vs. IMAP, it's really a question of whether you
want to be limited to one connection (POP3) or be able to use multiple
concurrent connections (IMAP). This is a show-stopper limitation of POP3.
With IMAP you could easily leave an email client running at home while you
take a portable device around with you and keep up with your email
remotely. Any changes to the account get synchronized across the clients as
the changes occur.

I'm not sure if POP3 will do new email notification during a POP3 session,
but I know that IMAP will.

There are good reasons why some service providers don't offer POP3.

Post by Adonay Felipe Nogueira
With IMAP, on the other hand, it can turn out to be very expensive also
for the service provider.

I would need to see your evidence to back up that assertion before I could
comment on that, however...

Post by Adonay Felipe Nogueira
I read OpenMailBox's social network profile posts and it seems that IMAP
consumed more resources than POP3.

...this doesn't immediately strike me as your problem so it doesn't seem to
me that this will lead to a valid objection.

If you choose to host something valuable on someone else's computer, it's
up to them to manage that resource or stop offering protocols they can't
adequately manage. I don't know what specific problems OpenMailbox is
talking about but Dreamhost has lots of accounts across many email servers
all accessible via IMAP and they work quite well.

[G. Sebastián Pedersen]

If you choose to host something valuable on someone else's computer, it's up to them to manage that
resource or stop offering protocols they can't adequately manage. I don't know what specific
problems OpenMailbox is talking about but Dreamhost has lots of accounts across many email servers
all accessible via IMAP and they work quite well.

Well, in some respect, my original point was that OpenMailbox use to appera in this list:

https://www.fsf.org/resources/webmail-systems

But now it does not. Same as disroot. So partially that's why I ask the question.

G. Sebastián Pedersen

[Andrew Nesbit]

Post by G. Sebastián Pedersen
https://www.fsf.org/resources/webmail-systems

Wow. This is a truly dreadful list. Some of those services are well
known to have violated users' privacy, others don't even exist anymore.

Really, I'm actually a little shocked that this made it through the
FSF's normally excellent quality control and high standards. Especially
for something so critical as this.

Andrew

[Adonay Felipe Nogueira]

Perhaps now it's the time to contact FSF about these issues you are
seeing?

I'm not really updated on the news loop, so I don't know which issues
you are seeing. Due to this, I think you are the best person to contact
the FSF for now.

Post by Andrew Nesbit

Post by G. Sebastián Pedersen
https://www.fsf.org/resources/webmail-systems

Wow. This is a truly dreadful list. Some of those services are well
known to have violated users' privacy, others don't even exist
anymore.
Really, I'm actually a little shocked that this made it through the
FSF's normally excellent quality control and high
standards. Especially for something so critical as this.
Andrew

[Andrew Nesbit]

Post by Adonay Felipe Nogueira
I mean, I find it way secure and better to use POP3 because I have all
my email in my own computer, and can yet optionally leave part of the
newest ones in the server.

This is nice if you only ever access your email from a single host.
Otherwise you end up with bits of email scattered over all over the place.

Hey wait! Your comment has given me an idea, which would solve a problem
I've been having for a long time. Thanks!

Post by Adonay Felipe Nogueira
I read OpenMailBox's social network profile
posts and it seems that IMAP consumed more resources than POP3.

Have you got a link? I'd be really curious to read that. And also how
they define "resources".

Andrew

[Adonay Felipe Nogueira]

I'm glad my message gave you an idea. ;)

On the context of having part of POP3 messages kept in the server, I
find Emacs Gnus the best one when it comes to doing that because you
simply specify how many days you want to leave them there and --- as
long as the server doesn't suffer from an issue that would make it loose
or change the date/timestamps --- then Emacs Gnus will know what to do.

As for the issue with IMAP, see [1][2].

[1] See the messages and discussions that appear bellow
<https://twitter.com/openmailbox_org/status/894122458181226496>.

[2] I'm sorry for linking to a site which forces non-free client-side
software through JavaScript, I'll summarize what I see so far in [1] ---
although I'm not a developer nor a network expert --- : IMAP, even with
"IMAP IDLE" tends to consume more resources specially for those who
"live in mobile" and those who have clients that leave IMAP connections
open, because the server has to keep track of these and of how many
connections that user has in other mail clients, besides having to keep
all the connections alive and in sync.

Post by Andrew Nesbit
This is nice if you only ever access your email from a single
host. Otherwise you end up with bits of email scattered over all over
the place.
Hey wait! Your comment has given me an idea, which would solve a
problem I've been having for a long time. Thanks!
Have you got a link? I'd be really curious to read that. And also how
they define "resources".
Andrew

[Steven D. Brewer]

Post by Andrew Nesbit
This is nice if you only ever access your email from a single host.
Otherwise you end up with bits of email scattered over all over the place.

Thanks to everyone for the thoughtful considerations about email.

I started doing email long, long before IMAP and have maintained the
practice of having my work mail repose on my Desktop workstation in my
office and my personal email repose on my home server. I have email
clients (Thunderbird, currently) on those systems use POP3 to download
the mail and leave it on the server for a couple of weeks and, during
that time I can use IMAP from other clients (phone, laptop, etc) to look
at email from the past week or two on the mail server. Note: I'm not
recommending this practice -- just describing what I do.

What I've wanted to do for a while, however, is set up an email
archiving system: A searchable, permanent repository for my old email,
so I would neither need to leave it on the server nor have to dig
through old POP mbox files to find things.

I've looked at piler:
http://www.mailpiler.org/
but haven't actually set it up. Partly because mbox files, tho creepy,
are pretty standard and portable, whereas in piler, each message is
"parsed, disassembled, compressed, encrypted, and finally stored in the
file system: one file for every email and attachment." That sounds
pretty irrevocable.

Any other suggestions for how to both (1) chart a path forward and (2)
deal with many years of accumulated email through some integrated solution?

[Caleb Herbert]

Post by Steven D. Brewer
http://www.mailpiler.org/
but haven't actually set it up. Partly because mbox files, tho creepy,
are pretty standard and portable, whereas in piler, each message is
"parsed, disassembled, compressed, encrypted, and finally stored in the
file system: one file for every email and attachment." That sounds
pretty irrevocable.

That sounds like Maildir, except encrypted. Maildir is just as
common/standard as mbox.

Post by Steven D. Brewer
Any other suggestions for how to both (1) chart a path forward and (2)
deal with many years of accumulated email through some integrated solution?

I haven't thought about this problem before. I too hope there's a
solution. Thank you for bringing it to light.