Joint custody of data








9 thoughts on “Joint custody of data”

  1. It seems like shared links is a vastly different way of communicating, and is very similar to reading a page on a website. Email is still definitely rooted in the Unix-Unix-Copy-Protocol that preceded SMTP, where things get transferred in ftp-like fashion from one host to the next. Exchanging hands all along the way through MX hosts to SMTP hosts and finally to your mail store on maybe yet another host. Linkages seem at lot less intrusive that way. I’m reminded when Google announced their Google Waves project. Waves was attempting to work around the email design principle of moving a text file from one physical location to another one:

  2. There’s deep psychology behind our need to feel, when we send and receive, that things are actually being sent and received. So yes, the experience ought to feel that way even if it doesn’t exactly work that way under the covers.

  3. I don’t think the reason for “true send/receive” is purely historical or psychological: there’s a case to be made for the practical advantages of keeping a copy of the messages I receive. If your server goes down, or the software changes, or you pass away, I could loose your half of past conversations.

    1. As I envision it, we each have copies of one another’s messages. The difference is that my archive knows that the “source of truth” for your messages is your archive, and yours knows the converse.

  4. The deeper issue here is sharing data with people who then treat that data insecurely. If you send me a super secure message with every bit of crypto in the universe and it transits my hacked box then game over in terms of the privacy of that data.

    That having been said, just because 1/2 your data has been compromised (in the gmail example) that doesn’t then make it sensible to compromise the other half! So this argues for keeping your own mail server and convincing your friends to use more secure ways to communicate.

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