@@ -35,6 +35,8 @@ From https://motherboard.vice.com/read/email-encryption-is-broken:
#+BEGIN_QUOTE
/The researchers also uncovered mass scale attacks of STARTTLS sessions being stripped of their encryption. That attack itself isn't new: internet service providers sometimes do it to monitor users; organizations may use it to keep an eye on employees; or it may come from a malicious actor/
#+END_QUOTE
A way to avoid these pitfalls altogether is to use onion addresses (see the section below) or [[./app_bdsmail.html][I2P addresses]] for email. These are not so convenient because they use long random strings which aren't memorable as addresses, but they do give a strong assurance that whoever recieves the message is the intended recipient and that emails can't be read passively during their transport across the internet.
* Add a password to your GPG key
If you didn't use existing GPG keys during the Freedombone installation then you'll need to add a password to your newly generated private key. This is highly recommended. Go through the following sequence of commands to ssh into the Freedombone and then change your GPG password.
Select /Administrator controls/ then *Email filtering rules* then *Block/Unblock and email address* or *Block/Unblock email with subject line*. Also see the manpage for *freedombone-ignore*.
* Using onion email addresses
By default this system comes with the ability to send and receive emails using onion addresses as the domain name. On the *user control panel* if you select *Show your email address* then you should find one ending with /dot onion/. You will also see a QR code for that address, which provides a simple way to transfer it to a mobile phone if necessary.
If you want to give your onion email address to someone else securely then you can use the QR code to transfer it to a phone and copy and paste the address into an encrypted chat app, such as Conversations. Of course they will probably also need to be running Freedombone or some system capable of handling onion email addresses.
When sending email from an onion address it's not strictly necessary to use GPG/PGP. Tor handles the transport security by itself. You can still use it though if you prefer to have an extra layer of message security. You can also still use onion email addresses even if your ISP blocks the typical email ports (25 and 465).
If you don't make your onion email address public then it should be fairly resisent to spam, since spammers won't be able to randomly guess onion addresses (there are far too many), whereas it's a lot easier for them to do that with conventional domain names.
* Using I2P for email transport
For the most paranoid use cases it is also possible to use I2P as an email transport mechanism. This will of course require the people you're communicating with to have a similar setup in place. For details see the [[./app_bdsmail.html][bdsmail app]]. An advantage of this is that it's very unlikely that your email will get blocked. The disadvantage is that few others will be capable of receiving email this way, and it's only really usable via the Mutt email client.
