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I mean, duh!!
It’s a web version wrapped in some god-awful semi-native wrapper. Everything the app does is stored on the server. So, yes, like gmail, if you give it access to another IMAP account, the password is stored on the server BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS.
This isn’t a scandal. It shouldn’t be news.
The bigger discussion why are we pretending a server driven mail client is local?
That is the discussion. Microsoft is pretending by making it the upgrade path for two products which actually are local, and hoping users won’t notice.
At work I’ve been trying to use the new Outlook but the biggest gripe (other than this new news) is that it’s once again, a fucking Electron app and a lot of features have been cut.
I work at an MSP and people have mistakenly changed to the new Outlook, and then find things like their local mail rules stop working (because it doesn’t support those anymore), their custom accounting software that would compose an email in Outlook straight up won’t do that with new Outlook, for businesses it’s going to wreak havoc if Microsoft just force updates everyone.
Thunderbird ftw
People complain about Apple a lot but I think Microsoft is a much more annoying company and it is very difficult to avoid their products/services. Same with google
There’s definitely things to dislike about Apple, but a lot of the complaining just feels like some childish console war.
Sure, if you only listen to and care about such petulant complaining.
There are actual gripes to be had that have broader implications.
What are the more “trustworthy” email clients? Thunderbird still good?
the recent revamp of thunderbird is really good.
em client (commercial product, but free for some–2 mail accounts, home use only) is also a solid choice.
Personally disliked emclient and went back to outlook.
Maybe I’ll consider Thunderbird in the future now that it looks modern.
Already using Firefox.Why did you dislike eM Client?
I’ve been looking at it recently because I’m currently using Mailbird. In recent weeks they told us that support for their current client will stop in 12 months time and we need to get on their latest client, which they want a one off payment AND an annual subscription. What greedy ducks.
Some points I remember from the time I ditched it (around 3-5 years ago). They may changed them:
- The payment was linked to the version. Wanna get a new major version = pay for the new license. It’s like buying the MS 20xx package but in that case you only have the single client instead of a whole suite. (Ignoring the whole price difference)
- Client UI wasnt my cup of tea
- Multi account didnt feel as comfortable as it does feel on outlook.
- Had some issues connecting my Gmail accounts and keeping them connected. Not aware of any issues with outlook
- Afaik the database went bad at some point. Maybe imisremember it though
In essence, most issues were personal. Try it for yourself. Maybe the newer version suits you more than me!
Update: Seems like I either misremember it or I bought a license because of a feature (at the time). Anyway: They appear to have changed the licensing for home use to be free and only corporate users need to pay.
I don’t get why people still use Microsoft services. How many data privacy scandals do we need, so they understand? Or do they still not care?
Because they’re forced to? They own a large slice of enterprise.
In taking about personal email. I also use outlook at work because I’m forced to, but I would never let these bastards touch my private Mails.
It’s insanely cheap for what you get
Business wise it’s a no brainer
It’s honestly pretty expensive compared to the alternatives. If you compare a business setup with windows plus office etc plus the support fee you can get all of that for free plus a much lower support fee from a variety of independent companies with Linux and libreoffice. The typical office worker really doesn’t need the few corner cases where MS office maybe has an advantage. Honestly for a business I would even go with Google tools. Same data privacy issues, but at least the product works great. MS office in the cloud is hot garbage.
Well you got 15 words or so in before mentioning Linux.
What else would I mention? Some doesn’t have an office suite and figure is the only other competitor.
imnate compatibility with other organisations is a huge selling point.
For companies at a certain scale / within a certain field I don’t think it’s even up for discussion.
Because my line of work means I working corporations, and they ALWAYS run everything on the big names, Microsoft and Oracle.
At home, I have choice. At work, I must swallow.
At home, I have choice. At work, I must swallow.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Yeah companies that choose otherwise are rare. But they do exist.
If you’re working with clients that requires you to have security certifications it can be a real pain in the ass to certify your setup for everything vs just using the 365 stack.
And at work I don’t really care. It’s not my data they are “looking” at. It’s my employers.
I guess they won’t lose any corporate customers over this. The pure shit that it outlooks hasn’t scared anyone away yet.
I tried to delete ~7k emails today. I had to kill the process since it stopped responding. Wtf?
Even with search engines you can basically choose the Google index, the Microsoft index or the Amazon index
Yeah but at least Google offers a good search engine while sniffing all your data. Microsoft products are usually hot garbage, sniff your data and then loose it. Also what is the Amazon index?
I have a government job (shocking to me still) and everything is on Exchange and 365. I don’t know why, other than “nobody ever got fired for recommending IBM.”
not just login credentials, but all your mail, too, even if you aren’t using a microsoft-hosted mail account.
I wish I was a good enough dev to write a swift keys replacement. There’s AnySoftKeyboard available, and they’re doing an amazing job with swipe input which I prefer, but there’s only so much one person can do.
FlorisBoard
Gesture typing is still in early development. The suggestions bar doesn’t work yet so it’s really hard to use. Nevertheless, looks promising, and it looks like development is starting back up. I’ll keep an eye on it.
I have yet to find an open-source keyboard with gesture typing that is anywhere near as usable as Gboard, unfortunately.
A compromise is this OpenBoard fork by Helium314 which is able to use Google’s proprietary gesture typing library, which can be downloaded and loaded manually if you want to enable it. It’s still a privacy improvement over using Gboard.
Common Microsoft L
Ubiquitous Microsoft L
Yet another reason to use Thunderbird or Evolution. There must finally be mobile devices with Linux that are usable.
Both of those are usable but that’s about it. I use Evolution because it integrates with online accounts service well and I don’t have to mine for contacts, but overall it’s a sorry state of email clients in Linux world. Geary had nice ideas for a while, but it’s also dreadfully optimized and development has kind of stopped.
It’s also not such an easy to problem to solve either. Whole Gnome ecosystem got a lot better with new and modern applications with sleek designs, but email clients remain a pain in the ass.
It’s just outrageous that we’re in 202-almost-4 and mail is still in use the way it is.
Seriously, the fix has been available for almost 30 years, no one has been able - or willing - to popularize it. Hmmm.
What’s the issue with mail?
Not one of them seem to be major and inherent to the technology. Size limits are arbitrary. Privacy concerns can be addressed with the likes of encryption. Email fatigue is a ridiculous reason to gripe about.
Address spoofing is probably the most annoying but could be addressed my making the actual email the header. So that’s an implementation issue.
Size limits aren’t arbitrary. Email format translates attachments to ASCII which makes them larger and harder to process. Mail servers need to scan and handle messages which means they will need to impose limits to be able to work well. Back in the day when Gmail didn’t it quickly started being abused by people using it as online storage.
Encryption is difficult to implement with a system that performs multi-point handoff, and works against some use cases like corporate use where you want virus scanning.
Try to design an alternative email system and you’ll see how quickly you start losing features that make it interesting and useful. For example, for all its faults email is very user-centric and portable, you can easily take your domain and move your addresses to a different provider. How many other communication services can you say that about?
What’s the fix?
I’m seeing many people recommend Thunderbird. Let me enlightnen you.
I personally never trust any software that is not secure and private by default. Mozilla Corp is a for-profit corporation that makes nearly a Billion dollars in cooperation with Google monetizing data about your life. Thunderbird is Mozilla and if you setup with the Wizard, it already got the basics about your email life even if you disable it later.
Thunderbird Not Private by Default
- Sends all interactions with it to Mozilla
- Whether calendar is in use
- How many filters you have
- How many email accounts you have
- Computer/Device Information including hardware configuration
- Operating system
- IP address is logged
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-telemetry
Disabling Telemetry
- Click the menu button Menu Button and select Settings.
- Select the Privacy & Security panel.
- Scroll to the Thunderbird Data Collection and Use section.
- Deselect the Allow Thunderbird to send technical and interaction data to Mozilla checkbox.
Thunderbird Bad Security Practice of using a Primary Password
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/protect-your-thunderbird-passwords-primary-password
17 Criticial or High Vulnerabilies this year alone
Conclusion
If email security and privacy means a lot to you, or even computer security and privacy, your best options are to use BSD/UNIX/Void/Alpine and Claws-Mail. That is just the way the cookie crumbles in 2023.
Thunderbird doesn’t passphrase-protect your PGP key. Though you can set a general password… For something less important, its OpenPGP may be convenient, given that if you send/receive email normally, there is metadata problem anyway. But if you need to play it safe, you may want to use gpg offline and paste ascii.
Increasingly more and more “phoning home” is not exactly comfortable, either: thunderbird-settings.thunderbird(.)net location.services.mozilla(.)com addons.thunderbird(.)net versioncheck.addons.thunderbird(.)net services.addons.thunderbird(.)net, etc. Perhaps people today, both users and developers, feel something like this is normal, because things were already more or less like this when they were born.
Re: Micro$oft - It might be that after raped by Google, the society has been desensitized and stopped feeling anything about “minor details.” Why worrying now? You use a Windows 10 passport account (what is it called?) just to log on to “your own” computer and also a Gmail account anyway, right? So bad news is, your privacy is almost zero already.
- Sends all interactions with it to Mozilla
