💾 Archived View for gemini.circumlunar.space › users › laur%C3%AB › mail › kolabnow.gmi captured on 2023-12-28 at 16:19:55. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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Paid, requires real name and an existing E-mail address to activate. Accepts bitcoin. Full of privacy posturing, complete with the claim of being protected by strong Swiss privacy laws. Such as this one, for which they've gotten a government data request that they complied with:
Damage to data 1. Any person who without authority alters, deletes or renders unusable data that is stored or transmitted electronically or in some other similar way is liable on complaint to a custodial sentence not exceeding three years or to a monetary penalty. If the offender has caused major damage, a custodial sentence of from one to five years may be imposed. The offence is prosecuted ex officio. 2. Any person who manufactures, imports, markets, advertises, offers or otherwise makes accessible programs that he knows or must assume will be used for the purposes described in paragraph 1 above, or provides instructions on the manufacture of such programs is liable to a custodial sentence not exceeding three years or to a monetary penalty. If the offender acts for commercial gain, a custodial sentence of from one to five years may be imposed.
I don't understand exactly what the above means - sounds like hacking but could be interpreted in many ways (even deleting your own mail could fit "deletes or renders unusable"). I explore the "laws" issue in-depth at the end of this article, so let's move on to KolabNow's privacy policy. It says literally nothing about what data do they actually store aside from "We [...] guarantee you that there is no third party access to your data." No information about the length of data collection or the possibility to delete your account and what does it actually do. Maybe we can find something in their TOS then:
We will only keep the minimum of logs and debug information necessary to ensure that we can improve the service and resolve issues that may have occurred.
Minimum of logs - yeah, that tells us a lot. Umm...maybe their Legal Framework page has something more concrete?
These are requests for retained data. Switzerland has a legal requirement for six months data retention by the provider. Data that is retained is communication metadata, so information about who communicated with whom from where and when but not the actual content of the communication.
Swiss privacy laws in action - but at least we now know something about KolabNow's data collection. By the way, their transparency report has been last updated in 2017, so they might have gotten more requests since then. In fact, the whole site appears to be dead (even their Twitter). In summary, I don't see a reason to use this one - paid, asks for real name, stores 6 months of metadata and doesn't reveal anything useful in their privacy policy. Why can the free RiseUp manage to store metadata for only one day - despite being hosted in the allegedly un-private United States - while the service with super strong Swiss privacy laws cannot? Supporting mail clients is KolabNow's only positive it seems. That, and I guess accepting bitcoins - but since you can find better providers that are free, why bother?