Re:Ask HN: If there is a replacement for email, what should ...
by dane-pgp on Monday March 21, 2022 @02:52PM
(#30758168)
> the decision to encrypt can be applied on a case by case basis with little mental overhead --- is the data sensitive or not?
But that's the problem, how does a decision-fatigued user decide what is and isn't sensitive? People have lost jobs over tweets they sent years ago, and we know that users get used to clicking through warnings and find it difficult to tell whether something is secure or not. Dutch Jews filling in the 1930 census form didn't realise that stating their religious affiliation was going to prove a disastrous decision a few years later.
> How many email "man-in-the-middle" privacy breeches are you aware of?
There are all sorts of targeted security attacks and privacy breaches I'm not personally aware of, but protecting all email from potential snoops is the right thing to do regardless of how often they happen.
Revealing my email as a potential target is a minor trade off I would accept for ease of use. It should not be a big deal if the encryption is solid. The cost to try and break the encryption is enough to discourage most attackers.
How many email "man-in-the-middle" privacy breeches are you aware of? The ones I am aware of usually happen at a service provider endpoint --- like Google data mining your email. I doubt even Google is motivated enough to absorb the cost of breaking email encryption. There would also be legal ramifications if they (or any other provider) did.