Virtually everyone is clueless. I mean it, most people don't know the first thing about computers, or networks, or how data flows when they send an email or even read a web page. Many others underestimate the actual price they pay for their supposedly free web mail.
The issue here is one of control: relays can basically read every mail they relay, and the likes of Gmail do. Spying on you is how they make money. No targeted ad would be possible otherwise. And the automation only makes it worse (because it scales, and can be repurposed).
And the user can do nothing about it. That total lack of control is why I maintain they do not, in fact, send their own email. Now there's PGP, but that would look conspicuous. If everyone had their own mail server, TLS alone would provide pretty good security.
What angers me the most is, even I don't have a choice: most of my friends use a big webmail provider, which invades my privacy whenever I communicate with them. This would never happen if we all had our own mail servers.
> Now there's PGP, but that would look conspicuous.
Also, it doesn't hide the authenticated user, envelope mail from or envelope rcpt to values used in the message, unless, like you said, the sender and recipient(s) are using their own SMTP servers.
I remember when everyone could have their very own mail servers. Never since have I been offered such a vast and varied selection of ways to increase the size of my penis.
The issue here is one of control: relays can basically read every mail they relay, and the likes of Gmail do. Spying on you is how they make money. No targeted ad would be possible otherwise. And the automation only makes it worse (because it scales, and can be repurposed).
And the user can do nothing about it. That total lack of control is why I maintain they do not, in fact, send their own email. Now there's PGP, but that would look conspicuous. If everyone had their own mail server, TLS alone would provide pretty good security.
What angers me the most is, even I don't have a choice: most of my friends use a big webmail provider, which invades my privacy whenever I communicate with them. This would never happen if we all had our own mail servers.