About PaleMail

 

 

- What is PaleMail?

- Email files not in the cloud but on your own harddisk, ready for backup along with other docs

- Sending email to a group

- Privacy, encrypted email

- Strong encryption with large keys

- Taking care for privacy

- In case of high confidentiality

- Pressure of authorities, backdoors in software

What is PaleMail?

PaleMail is meant to be a simple emailclient for personal use on a Windows-computer. It has no agenda-facility, nor other auxiliary functions. This computer-app is simply about sending and retrieving email, and storing/archiving email. Email messages are saved by PaleMail as files with the .eml-extension, like Outlook and Thunderbird do. But unlike these two apps, PaleMail does not store files in a data-base but in normal files in folders on your own harddisk (not in the cloud!) in "My e-mail", which is a sub-folder of "My documents". This open filesystem implies that you can freely manage your email files and back-up them with your other documents. PaleMail is meant for use all over the world. It is available in one language only: English, the language of the internet.

The use of PaleMail with these basic functions is free. The crypto-functionality, that is described below as the special feature of PaleMail, is available for an amount of EUR 10,-- once per computer. The crypto-license is unlimited in time. It belongs to the computer with which the license is requested. The license ends when the main characteristics of the computer change (for example when important changes are made to the hardware configuration or when another operating system is installed)..

 

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Email files not in the cloud but on your own harddisk, being ready for backup along with other docs

PaleMail offers full support in setting up your personal email filesystem (accounts and archive-folders), not in the cloud but in an open system on your own harddisk that is managed and kept in good condition by yourself and nobody else..

 

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Sending email to a group

Although PaleMail is not designed as a server for large-scale advertising mailings it is nevertheless possible to send mail to a group of addressees by pasting addressgroups into the addresslines..

 

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Privacy, encrypted email

The very special feature of PaleMail is the ability to encrypt email in a simple yet effective way. At a time when investigative agencies worldwide gain increasingly competence for unlimited surveillance, in many civillians awakens the desire to preserve a certain degree of privacy. It feels absurd if it is not possible at all, to send a message without being uncomfortable about the chance that third parties can read it. The author of PaleMail believes this is more than an adequate precaution in the interest of national security should prescribe. PaleMail therefore offers an opportunity to all email users - any technical skill is not required - to mail privately. Users have to consider that the use of the regular email-protocol implies that meta-data, such as mailaddresses, which can be of great importance for secret-service-agencies, are still to be intercepted easily. It's only the content of a message, subject-text and attachments included, that is being hidden by encryption..

 

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Strong encryption with large keys

PaleMail is not unique in the possibillity of encrypting messages. Unique is however the way of easily creating very large and thus very strong encryption-keys that PaleMail introduces. There are existing messaging services that provide excellent, fully automated end-to-end encryption. However, their servers are involved in assigning the encryption keys. When their managers are forced to give authorities access, the encryption becomes an illusion. PaleMail is only related to the usual email infrastructure. There are no interstations that can know encryption keys. The sender chooses an encryption-key and informs his adressees about it. The need to inform them is of course an extra complication. Sender and recipient will have to agree about the encryption-key they want to use in their email communication. It's their responsability to keep the key secret..

 

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Taking care for privacy

When many people in many countries make use of this application and its crypto-functionality, a large-scale suveillance of email communication will become very labor intensive and will take lots of time. It is likely that the effords of secret agencies then will be limited to special targets. In that case for most people there will no longer be a need to use very strong encryption-keys. The encryption is perfect with any key, even when it consists of only one character. The only problem of such a small key is, that it can easily be found by simply guessing. For common use we therefore recommend the use of a simple typed key of ten or more characters (for instance a small sentence or a long word). In case of very confidential communication (i.e. commercial stuff, business secrets) we recommend using a very large key (the contents of a file or a piece of html source code), up to 50,000 characters (which is the maximum number of characters that PaleMail can use - if there are more then they will be ignored). Such a key can hardly be discovered, but it can be stolen alright! It deserves consideration not to save key-files on a recognizable location on your computer or with a recognizable filename (do not save the keyfile on your desktop with the name: "This Is my encryption-key")..

 

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In case of high confidentiality

For those who use to send/receive very confidential messages, using large encryption-keys, it may be wise to use stand-alone computers for the encryption and decryption process, so that hackers from the Internet have no chance..

 

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Pressure of authorities, backdoors in software

There has often been pressure on large tech-companies to facilitate the authorities in their inspection of electronic traffic. There have also been rumors about backdoors in application-code. Using PaleMail you do not have to worry about it. PaleMail is written in Dot NET Framework - Visual Basic, a programming language of Microsoft. However, PaleMail only uses the Visual Basic crypto engine to a limited extent. If there were a backdoor in that engine, then it only allowed access to data fractions. PaleMail uses its own encryptionsystem for the important parts of the data..

 

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