From a friend:
I never did see John’s post. – Daniel
Dan, I’m sharing this reply with everyone, as I wish to push an urgent topic to the forefront of everyone’s thoughts.
I expect to see the above complaint more frequently as time goes on. GMail is interfering with the free flow of e-mail. Expect the same from AOL, Yahoo, Outlook, and many other popular mail providers.
I’m not going to supply a link to qualify what I’ve said. It makes no difference to me if anyone believes me or not. I know it to be fact. I can’t tell you when to expect this to become obvious, or what providers, specifically, will follow GMail first, or are already following them now.
As you’ve read from me already, Google’s algorithms are actively searching everyone’s e-mail content and sharing certain results of that with the intelligence community. It’s only a matter of time before one of us could regret sharing something that hits a nerve.
If we’re going to talk about the stuff we’re talking about, knowing full well that certain groups are working against that kind of freedom, we need to take this very seriously. This is not an “invisible threat”, like the CV19 bogeyman, asking for forfeiture of your freedom. Do not engage in any such comparative. I’m talking about a quantifiable attack on your freedom that is proving itself.
If we’re going to continue these group threads, everyone needs to be encrypted, and ideally using the same mail provider, to keep the conversations in an encrypted space. Since a few of us are already using Protonmail, and since Proton is currently the safest provider, I would strongly urge the rest of the group to open a Proton account as well.
To be clear, I’m just asking that this group use Proton to conduct these conversations, and only these conversations. Keep your other mail for regular business, and for exchanges that don’t include our Proton addresses. No need to change your business card info, or anything else.
I don’t ask this of you lightly. As you know, I follow this stuff very closely, and I’m telling you simply, it’s time to encrypt, and its time to be more careful of who you’re sending to and forwarding from. It’s time to acknowledge the present reality and react to it before it bites someone really hard.
I ask this for your sakes. I’ve broken my usual protocol in order to keep contact with this group, but I have a certain number of things in place to protect myself. But I know none of you do. I’m not that worried about myself, but I also know my current setup cannot be relied on forever, either. I, too, must tighten a few screws soon.
In approximately 2-3 weeks, I will be shutting the door on non-encrypted providers to this Proton box. I believe Lila related this same intelligent decision last week. I also really want to see this whole group continue. I maintained contact with you all because I value knowing every one of you, and don’t want to lose any of you.
I’ve touched on this subject before, and have fielded questions from a number of you about it, but I haven’t imposed my opinions on the group. I don’t believe in “telling people what to do”, and we’ve all had enough of that kind of thing in the last 18 months. I’m making the plea now, as it needs to be made.
Proton is easy to use, and it’s free (or you can pay for enhanced services, if you wish). If you use a cell phone, you can still access it without worrying about the content being spied on. If you value this group as much as I do, please consider making this a Protonmail group, before too many more messages get intercepted or blocked. We’ve already sharing enough content to get someone flagged now.