I am happy with ProtonMail, but since so few people use ProtonMail, the end to end encryption features is not that valuable. With some reservations, I mostly trust Apple, and it would be good having another privacy preserving email option.
Ideally I should be able to generate for you a single GUID when we meet (e.g. by a QR code).
I should be able to grant a privilege to you for calling/texting/mailing me. You can call me with it, you can message me, you can mail me - but you never get any other info through that system (nor do I for you).
If I ever want to be done with you I delete the GUID and the operator removes the link and declares the GUID out of service.
How has Apple and/or Google not already built this?
Should stalking victims really be forced to uproot every part of their digital life to get rid of creeps or spammers? It’s ridiculous in 2021 that this isn’t standard.
And I think you may be overdoing the contrariness. E-Mail is one of the few open standards still existing, and with the advances of spam filters, it is really not that bad.
If you have my e-mail address, then you have a means to contact me - even if I don’t want you to.
Sure, I can block you, I can ignore you or I can trust that my spam filter will catch your e-mails, but what if you’re malicious? You can circulate my e-mail to any number of spam lists that I’ll have to receive rubbish from in perpetuity.
HME works for that, but I’m still stuck giving the same phone number to everyone. Phone numbers are even worse in that I can’t just ignore a call from you (save for declining all calls from withheld or unknown numbers, at which point my phone could be likewise getting called constantly if you were maliciously circulating my details).
The notion that the means by which I contact you is the same as how your friend John or cousin Sarah or even your parent/kids/spouse contacts you is insane.
We have two systems where you need to arrange with everyone you know to use new details because one single person that had your details is being nasty. And you’ll have to do it all again if they find out your new ones.
It’s not at all how you would design a communication system if you were to start over.
Something like Hide My Phone Number would be a big help, but wouldn’t work with the existing phone network as you’d need to make far longer phone numbers than the standards support (essentially a number for Apple/Google then a routing GUID for the contact if you wanted to built it on top of the phone network).
I’d like to see Apple and Google make a standard to push to replace phone numbers with something like this that can sit inside the dialer so it’ll handle it transparently as if it were a normal call.
> Sure, I can block you, I can ignore you or I can trust that my spam filter will catch your e-mails, but what if you’re malicious? You can circulate my e-mail to any number of spam lists that I’ll have to receive rubbish from in perpetuity.
I use a few catchall domains for this.
Sure, people can still circulate the email address I give humans, but I can easily create filters to send website email addresses to spam.
Wouldn’t this utterly undermine the privacy features in Hide My Email?
Example: If my e-mail addresses are me@mailboxman.com and ghj5628@mailboxman.com then combining my MX records with the domain name yields my identity (or at least a very close contact) across all of the proxy e-mails I use for privacy.
It’s essentially offering an easy way to unmask email.
I'm not saying Google or Yahoo is better, I'm saying that it sounds silly to say you Trust Apple.
You've probably heard of Edward Snowden, this is what he uncovered.
And yeah for profit corporations make money. Its unethical to advertise privacy and do the opposite.
Maybe this is the human brain trying to rationalize your past behavior in speech and it just sounds silly.
Also, in practice, Apple offers objectively much better privacy than Microsoft or Google do. For example, for over a decade now, iCloud Mail aliases let you have completely different addresses tied to your login, instead of exposing your primary address like YourRealAddress+UselessAlias@gmail.com
Does Apple have better security than Microsoft? They advertise that too, but every other week there's a Apple 0 day exploit.
Does Apple make you "Think different"? But make everyone conform to the same apps, web browser, hardware, etc....
I'd be extremely careful not to take marketing/psychology tricks as fact.