https://theintercept.com/2019/04/30/helm-email-server/
> During a group dinner in a small town in Norway in 2015, at an international > conference for investigative journalists, a Ukrainian reporter told me that > he used both Gmail and Mail.ru, Russia’s most popular email provider. “Every > time I write an email,” he said, “I have to decide if I want Obama to read > it, or if I want Putin to read it.” > > It may be hyperbolic to suggest that world leaders personally comb through > individual email accounts, but the reporter’s point stands: When you use > services like Gmail, Mail.ru, Facebook, Dropbox, Slack, or any other site > that stores your data, they will hand your private information to governments > when compelled to do so and in some cases, merely when asked. Last year, the > Supreme Court ruled that the government usually needs a warrant to access > private data held by third-party companies. But even with new legal > protection, email remains all too easy for governments to quietly obtain. > Many companies, like Facebook, have shared personal information even more > widely, with private entities. When your personal data is stored on a > company’s servers, as with the email in your Gmail account, there are no > technical barriers to the host company sharing it when it sees fit. > > Google provided private information to government agencies around the world > more than 60,000 times in 2017, often turning over data from multiple Google > accounts at once, according to its transparency report. And that doesn’t > include over 100,000 Google accounts from which the company gave data in > response to secret orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a > U.S. national security tribunal whose meetings and decisions are kept from > the public. Mail.ru doesn’t provide a transparency report, but the situation > is no doubt much worse in Russia: All Russian internet companies are required > to retain data they collect about their users and to hand it to FSB, a > Russian spy agency, if asked. > > Google gave data from over 100,000 accounts in response to secret national > security orders — in one year. > If you want an email account that’s actually private, one solution is to run > your own email server from your house. This way, if governments want to > secretly ask your email provider for a copy of your inbox, they’ll have to > ask you. > > Until now, this hasn’t been a viable option for most people: Not only would > you need an extra computer to act as a home email server, but you’d also need > enough system administration skills to install, configure, and secure this > server. In addition, you’d need to deal with headaches related to your > broadband internet provider; such providers typically try to block email > servers by interfering with connections to a particular networking channel, > port 25, associated with mail delivery. After you solved that problem, you’d > need to configure your router to forward inbound email deliveries to your > server. Then you’d need to register a domain name where your email address > will live, and then point that domain to your email server using a system > known as DNS. This is complicated by the fact that most residential internet > addresses change on a regular basis. And as much work as it is to initially > set up this home email server, it’s even more work to maintain it over time — > to promptly install security updates, set up monitoring so you’ll be notified > when something breaks, block spam, and avoid getting your server added to > spam block lists. > > With the release of Helm, that has changed. Helm is a triangle-shaped > personal server that can host email (on your own custom domain name), > contacts, calendar, and a file server, and is about as easy to set up as a > new smartphone. For being basically a sophisticated product for hosting your > most private data — where there are many opportunities to screw up — Helm’s > technical choices and business model are surprisingly well-thought-out. All > you need is internet access at your home and an iPhone or Android phone to > configure it. > > The biggest hurdle prospective users will face, I suspect, is the price: You > have to drop $500 to buy Helm to get started, and then pay a $100 per year > subscription to continue using its cloud gateway and encrypted backup > components. -- Kim Holburn IT Network & Security Consultant T: +61 2 61402408 M: +61 404072753 mailto:[email protected] aim://kimholburn skype://kholburn - PGP Public Key on request _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
