You gave away your privacy. What can you do about it?
by Art Merrill | Contributing Editor
Most email service is “free” because giants like Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL and others read private emails, track them and profit from selling the information to their customers – which include the government as well as advertisers. A new email service, launched and staffed by computer programmers who are also Second Amendment and Fourth Amendment supporters, is offering enhanced security and complete privacy specifically to gunowners.
“I am, first, a Constitutionalist,” said GCMail Manager Brian Royce, “and second, I don’t like being spied on. We are a communications system for gun people.” With these precepts as its basis, GCMail’s “by invitation only” service is exclusively for those most concerned about privacy during the present federal administration’s anti-civil rights political environment. “This includes all gunowners, dealers, manufacturers, distributors, industry press and other people who uphold and support the Second Amendment to the US Constitution,” information at the website reads. You can request an invitation by visiting their website.
Lost privacy
In layman’s terms, your emails pass from server to server to server in different worldwide locations before finally arriving at the destination address – rather like standard mail moves from post office to post office before finally arriving at the final address. Each of these servers is an opportunity to read and record your email; again using the postal analogy, it’s like your emails are open-face postcards easily read by the postmen in every post office.
“If you read the user agreements for those big email providers you’ll see that you give them the right to plow through everything you do,” Royce said. “They sell everyone’s information, so they treat people like products, not like customers.”
This is why advertisements for products similar to those mentioned in your emails—or for which you recently searched online—appear on your screen. Open access to your emails and tracking your online activity, combined with other information you have entered online (such as your zip code) is enough to determine much about your lifestyle, income level, personal interests and even identify your friends and family members. While that loss of privacy to email providers and advertisers may seem harmless, if annoying, you have much more to lose when unscrupulous hackers gain access to your information retained on servers.
And it isn’t just providers, advertisers and hackers who want your information. The federal government also reads countless emails every day, ostensibly searching for key words that might indicate terrorist or other illegal activity. Key words include those related to firearms, and that singles out gunowners for scrutiny. Royce believes the government is not only invasive, but is wasting resources in this practice.
“Gunowners are the most moral group in the world,” he said. “That’s proved with every purchase of a gun, which requires a NICS [FBI background] check. Besides, while the government is destroying everyone’s right to privacy, they can’t possibly process all the data from even one day of emails.”
Digitally coded emails
Though the federal government has the authority to read private emails, there is no requirement that emails must be openly accessible, any more than are letters posted in envelopes. To make emails totally unreadable to all but the recipient, gcMail ensures email security by encrypting emails— think of them as being inside a digital manila envelope—that not even gcMail reads. De-encryption is done automatically upon reception, with no other action needed by the recipient.
For even greater security and privacy, unlike those “free” email providers gcMail does not maintain logs of your email activity, does not record browsing or cookies to track your interests, does not record metadata (“To,” “From,” “Subject” line and date), does not keep your credit card or address info and automatically deletes messages more than six months old. This is in addition to providing spam filtering and hacker protection exceeding that of the “free” email service provider, according to information at the website.
The gcMail service costs $35 per year; Royce said he expects that rate to drop, rather than rise, as technology continues to improve and reduce provider costs.
“There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch” is an axiom that applies to email service, as well as to everything else in life. “Free” emailing costs you your privacy; GCMail offers it back for about 10¢ a day.
Visit https://gc.net/ for more information.
