
Email doesn’t disappear - brongondwana
https://blog.fastmail.com/2018/04/09/email-doesnt-disappear/
======
rahimnathwani
Slight tangent:

"Nobody, from the lowliest spammer to the grand exulted CEO of a massive
company, can remove or change the content of an email message they have sent
to you."

Unless the message has embedded images linked from the web. Those images are
part of the 'content of an email' as far as most people are concerned, but
aren't part of the message envelope. So they can be destroyed or replaced by
the sender whenever they want.

Do any mail clients aim to deal with this by keeping a permanent copy?
(Including the 1x1 tracking pixel content?)

~~~
p49k
GMail supposedly downloads, caches and proxies all images to prevent tracking:

[https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2013/12/gmail...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2013/12/gmail-blows-up-e-mail-marketing-by-caching-all-images-on-
google-servers/)

~~~
pleasecalllater
Yea, everything to beat the other trackers :)

------
erikb
I agree that normal email-to-email might not disappear. But considering that
most email users are either using Outlook or Gmail, and both these systems not
being forced to use Email protocol when the receiver is using the same
network, I'd guess that email isn't that much more reliable than FB messages
when it comes to getting deleted.

------
Crosseye_Jack
Unless your Goldman Sachs
[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/goldman-
sac...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/goldman-sachs-wins-
court-order-to-make-google-delete-confidential-email-sent-in-
error-9581374.html)

Ok, one of the major points was that the email had yet to be opened/downloaded
but still that email disappeared from an inbox.

------
evilmoo
It's a great advert for Fastmail from the CEO of Fastmail.

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emodendroket
Assuming I'm using IMAP, I still have to trust my mail provider, be it
Fastmail or anyone else, right?

~~~
ams6110
Yes, but if you dont, you always have the option to download a local copy of
your mailbox. This is how I use email. I use fetchmail to deliver mail to a
local mailbox on my hard drive. I don't delete it from the online mailbox, in
case I want to access it from the web, but I have my local copy in case the
online provider either goes away or does something else with it.

~~~
emodendroket
Yeah, but I have the option to download locally a copy of the Facebook Mail
page in my Web browser too.

------
eadmund
Well, right now email doesn't disappear — but under the GDPR anyone can demand
that an email server delete any messages he sent (or at least remove his name
from them). I think that's a _horrible_ approach, but it appears to be what
the GDPR demands.

~~~
icedchai
What if someone's already downloaded email from that server, or forwarded it
on to their friends? Seems absurd. Anyone can demand anything. You just tell
them it can't be done.

------
juskrey
Wow, the article is a lie.

> Nobody, from the lowliest spammer to the grand exulted CEO of a massive
> company, can remove or change the content of an email message they have sent
> to you.

No. Unless it is on your own server. And this is an argument against FastMail,
and they know it for sure. So why lying so brutally?

> FastMail is a provider you can trust

Rule of thumb: never trust anyone who says you can trust him/her.

~~~
legostormtroopr
If I have an IMAP client, I can fetch my emails and download them locally.

If the Fastmail CEO sent me an email through Fastmail, with very little
technical knowledge, I could set up a regular desktop client to download all
those emails locally - headers and all. Even the iPhone default Mail app setup
helps you do it.

The same is not true of Facebook - those messages belong to Facebook.

~~~
rovr138
IMAP can also send other instructions like Delete.

You might want to consider POP3.

~~~
epicide
It can't delete an automatic or manual backup I've made of all/some of my
email.

I think the argument is that you have a way to export and retain emails while
there is nothing you can do with messages on FB other than screenshot.

~~~
emodendroket
If the argument is that I can go out of my way to back something up outside of
the regular framework of the software, I could do the same by saving messages
from Facebook.

~~~
dx034
Email backups have been standard for decades. There are solution that follow
standards and have been tested in audits. Taking screenshots of Facebook
messages is very different from that.

~~~
emodendroket
You could either save the HTML or pretty easily use some JavaScript to extract
the message contents to plain text.

~~~
dx034
But convincing courts and auditors that this is the original version of that
time will be harder with a self-written script than with email backups.

~~~
emodendroket
I suppose that's true, but isn't there some precedent for dealing with Web
pages? This can't be the first time this has come up.

------
retrogradeorbit
Only as long as you host your own mail. If your mail sits on some third
party's cloud servers (like fastmail?) they can certainly make your email
disappear.

~~~
HenryBemis
Or use a local client (e.g. I've been using MS Outlook since 2000) and
download the emails (I don't leave them on my email server). I prefer to keep
massive .pst files (which I backup with CrashPlan - and soon Carbonite) on my
machine that having them sitting anywhere outside.

------
dasanman
> FastMail is a provider you can trust

Really? I mean who writes such a thing literally. It has to be indirect!

~~~
epicide
Maybe I'm biased towards FastMail, but I'm kinda glad they made it obvious it
was an ad (small lead up as to why, then they hit you with a "use our product
instead").

I wouldn't say it's worth linking on HN (except maybe to spark a
conversation), but here we are.

Admittedly, actually using the phrase "____ is a ____ you can trust" is pretty
tacky at this point.

------
grandpoobah
Massive tangent:

I use FastMail for my work email and it's ok, but I wish these guys would
introduce a few new features from time to time. Why in 2018 do I not have the
ability to "Snooze" an email and come back to it at a later date? or add notes
to an email that don't get sent to the person I'm conversing with? or
consolidate emails from multiple conversations into a single conversation?
Yeah FastMail your service is a better alternative to Gmail because I don't
have to worry about being locked out of my email one day for no apparent
reason, but why aren't you innovating? Email with Fastmail is just as tedious
and boring as it was 10 years ago.

tl;dr - less politicised blog posts, more making your service not suck,
please.

~~~
stonogo
One person's "tedious and boring" is another person's "reliable."

~~~
grandpoobah
Reliable and modern are not mutually exclusive.

Once you've used a service like Intercom, FrontApp or even Google's "Inbox"
you realise emailing can be far more productive. It's a shame that companies
like FastMail gave up on trying to improve the experience.

~~~
epicide
The features you list sound like something that should be implemented by an
email client not an email host. I realize they have their own client, but that
is really just a means to an end as it is obviously not their core business.

On top of that, it sounds like you really want something other than email.

