news from Google
JC Dill
jcdill.lists at gmail.com
Sat Dec 12 06:36:48 UTC 2009
Seth Mattinen wrote:
> JC Dill wrote:
>> Seth Mattinen wrote:
> <snipped>
>
> What I mean was that everyone seems happy with the whole "don't do
> anything you don't want anyone knowing" thing, then this tangent
> started. There must be things you don't want people to know that have
> nothing to do with a potential issue with law enforcement, no?
> Companies that use gmail must not want trade secrets or IP to be
> considered fair game for everyone to know?
True.
But email isn't secure, no matter what provider you use. I refer you to
the CRU "hacked email server" again, as well as wikileaks, as examples
of what can happen. If you really don't want the info to potentially
leak out, don't put it on the internet, which also means don't even put
it on any internet connected computer.
Any information that you send from your computer to anyone else can be
leaked. It can be leaked by the recipient - intentionally or
accidentally (e.g. forwarding it to the wrong address). It can be
leaked by their ISP - and not just their mail provider. If they have a
virus/trojan infected computer, (an unfortunately highly likely
scenario) it can be stolen. If they sell their used computer, it can be
recovered from the hard drive that they "thought" they had cleaned. If
they put it on a laptop the laptop can be stolen. These things happen
every day.
Worrying about it being leaked because they use gmail is far down the
list of things to worry about. AFAIK there are no actual cases of
information being compromised or leaked because someone used gmail.
The #1 thing you can do to minimize that theoretical possible leak, if
you care, is to use encryption e.g. PGP.
Everyone on NANOG should know all of this already.
jc
More information about the NANOG
mailing list