[ale] [OT]Non-ISP Email services

[Alex Carver]

On 4/2/2013 09:13, Ron Frazier (ALE) wrote:
> On 4/2/2013 11:43 AM, Michael B. Trausch wrote:
>> On 04/02/2013 11:33 AM, Ron Frazier (ALE) wrote:
>>> Buy a domain name at 1and1.com and pay for their email only service.
>>> It's about $ 15 / year if I recall.  Then, you mail can come to your
>>> own domain.  It's a good idea (in my opinion) to pay something for
>>> such service.  In terms of customer service and maintenance, you get
>>> what you pay for.  $ 1.25 / month doesn't get you much in that
>>> regard, but with millions of customers, they have more funds to
>>> manage the data center and provide some help to needy customers.  Try
>>> to get some help from gmail for a problem.  Also, having your own
>>> domain name lends more credibility, which may be useful in some
>>> cases.  The domain name costs about $ 8 / year.
>> Everyone, just remember:
>>
>>   * If your mail hosting is outsourced, the Government can read it
>>     without a warrant after 180 days.
>>
>>   * If your email hosting is in-house, on your own equipment, the
>>     government must always obtain a warrant to read messages stored on
>>     the system.
>>
>> If you want to ensure that your messages cannot be read without a
>> warrant and therefore mandatory service upon yourself or your business,
>> you should ensure that (a) you use an email service that purges all
>> messages no later than 180 days after receipt, or (b) host the mail
>> yourself, in-house.
>>
>>     --- Mike
>>
>
> WHAT ?!!  Can you elaborate on that?  How can the government do this?

Loophole in the Stored Communications Act (enacted in 1986 so long prior 
to the widespread usage of email and non-local email providers) lets it 
happen.  There's some debate on closing up that loophole but no progress 
on an actual updated bill.