CIRCLE WITH A DOT

Question to you.

What is a good email solution for non-profits/community groups in the United States?

Base Requirements:
- Emails that use our domain name.
- Allows individual email accounts for users (roughly 20 to 50).
- Allows email aliases / groups to where emailing one email delivers to multiple users (eg info@domain.ex goes to three specific people or foodrescue@domain.ex goes to those working on the food rescue side, etc)

Ideal requirements:
- Cheap or free
- Privacy / security oriented
- Managed (I don't like the idea of hosting our own email server for example)

Those ideal requirements have some contradiction in it, of course.

So high level, I've looked into:
- Google
- Microsoft
- Proton Mail

Here is the quick overview for those:

Google:
- https(slash)www.google(dot)com/nonprofits/offerings/workspace/#!#workspace-pricing
- Cost: Free
- Con: They actively scan and read all emails. So we become the product.
- Pro: They are used by many non-profits and are well liked from a usability standpoint

Microsoft:
- https(slash)www.microsoft(dot)com/en-us/microsoft-365/business/nonprofit-plans-and-pricing
- Cost: $5.50 per user
- Con: They actively scan and read all emails
- Pro: They have a more robust app offering.
(I don't think we need this level of IT for our group though)

Proton Mail for Non-Profits:
- https://proton.me/business/plans#plans
- Cost: 20% off Business Costs. If we just went with email, it'd be about $5.60 per user per month
- Pro: They are private and secure and can't read emails
- Con: Much less app support but we really just need email for this

Tutanota does not offer non-profit discounts within the US - So it's a similar offering as Proton Mail for about three dollars more per month.

Startmail is also similar in price point and features as Proton and Tutanota

Mailbox(dot)org may be ideal in this space as it's only $1 per user per month. I have to check and see if we can use a custom domain, etc.

Google is free... which matters. You are the product. Also folks know it - the UI is good. Making a cost benefit analysis here, I have to bring up the "we don't have anything to hide" sort of thing. As an individual, that doesn't fly - right. But as a community group / potential non-profit, we are already transparent. None of our communications contain sensitive information. And we have a lot of folks coming in and out as it is.

So, what would the threat scenario around an org using Google for email be?

Any other ideas?

#privacy #email #solarPunk

@levampyre - I get the sugar free kind mostly.

But even Juicy Fruit (a favorite) has 2g of sugar with 1 stick being 10 calories.

Beats eating 300 calories for a boredom snack.

@BoydStephenSmithJr - Oh that sucks! I feel you though, some things work individually and some things don't - we adapt as we can.

cc'ing @da_667 as I've been reading his posts for inspiration and I wanted to say thank you for sharing them!

Been tackling things related to diet, eating, and weight, etc., now that I can breath a bit.

Cool thing I found...

I eat when I'm bored (a common thing). I like food. I eat food. I get a dopamine hit. Yay.

In order to address this specific area, I bought a lot of different chewing gums. Really diving into the various fruit flavored ones (I really dont like mint). I bought a lot of different flavors.

So when I'm bored. I chew a fun fruit flavored one, or two or three.

Seems to scratch that itch. I'm not perfect with it. But it has drastically reduced the amount of boredom eating I do. I know so many folks do this (chewing gum works for other things like smoking, as well right?).

So, nothing ground breaking. Just wanted to share that it's working for me.

I've taken care of stress eating (it's still a thing, but I've addressed it and it seems to be working for now). I have now addressed boredom eating. I still "autistic burnout" eat? But that's usually only once a week or every other week and three-fourths of a medium pizza does the trick - when the brain gets fried, it needs grease apparently... no idea...

Turns out I don't need to eat a lot when I just eat for sustenance.

My goal is to lose 1 pound a week and I've been pretty solid with that. But with the chewing gum hack removing boredom eating, I lost 2.5 pounds last week.... huh.... I should watch that, too. Seems to be too quick. We'll see if it becomes a trend.

@sarah @wendynather - I've stood next to them. It is both.

Really great news!!!

A local bakery that specializes in gluten free bread, pastries, and cakes reached out to us...

...we didn't reach out to them. They contacted us!...

...about doing food rescue with them!

Not only are they looking at food rescue in general, but they're specifically looking at serving those that are hungry AND have food allergies and intolerances!

Everyone deserves healthy, tasty, good, and safe food (and also desserts!!!) - even those that have food constraints.

So we worked it out. Every day they take whatever they didn't sell and freeze it. We come by once a week and pick it up and run it to one of the fridges!

Look at this first haul!!!

#foodRescue #foodSecurity #solarPunk #freeFridge #goodNews

@Mage_of_Chaos - I've had a chance to step back and I need to apologize. I should not have taken such a flippant stance and I need to not use sarcasm as a defense mechanism.

I have a tendency to attract reply guys in my posts - legit trolls that are not engaging sincerely. And I acted out in frustration. That was not good.

I think you have been engaging sincerely and I reacted poorly.

I'm sorry.

I'm going to delete my interactions with you. But I'm going to leave this post up as an indication that I acted poorly. I want to remove the things that hurt without hiding that I hurt you or made your day any worse.

I, sincerely, do hope you have a good day.

@mcg - So, this is sort of true, but not really - especially in practice.

So *public* VPNs do go through a known IP address, and those lists can be generated and actioned upon / blocked - but... they often rotate IP addresses.

This does two negative things for people trying to block them. One, the block is only temporarily effective, and you're always playing catch-up. Two, once the IP is released by the VPN its often grabbed up by another non-VPN service, so you end up blocking something you didn't intend to.

You could certainly subscribe to a service that maintains a blocklist for you, but these aren't very effective either (and they cost money) for the above reasons. Lots of false negatives and false positives.

Further, anyone can spin up a VPN service. A simple OpenVPN service on a VPS can be done in less than 10 minutes with a simple guide.

And that's just one aspect of it.

Also, Utah is holding ALL websites? On the internet? Liable? How would they enforce it? How do THEY know the website is or is not blocking it? Are they going to visit every website from one random VPN connection and go "ah-ha! Gotcha!" ? Then what? Send a cease and desist letter? Fine each website on the internet? All over the world?

All this will do is at best be completely ineffective and at worst cause the entire internet to "de-federate" from Utah.

Long and short, VPN's do have IP ranges, kind-of, but they can't be meaningfully blocked. And there is no meaningful way to detect OR enforce it.

@FrutigerAero00 - Seemsit

@da_kink - IANAL but its not unheard of for legislatures to pass contradictory laws or laws that are already superseded by others or even unconstitutional. Thats up to the courts to decide afterwards. So, your reasoning might be a challenge that is brought up now that its passed.

@mcg - That's certainly the goal.

How does the website know?
How can the state know?

I ran out of tortillas.

How can I have any peanut butter and jelly tacos if I don't have any tortillas?!

🧐

@evacide - Ooof. Nail on the head with this one. I feel this completely.

Did you know you can pass a bill that states 1 + 1 = 3 ?

Like. Your legislature can propose, vote, and pass a bill that doesn't follow the rules of math, science, etc. Representatives don't have to understand tech, or numbers, or computer protocols. Or really anything. It's just words on paper (or a screen) that more than half of their body voted for.

And it's law.

Who knew.

Anyways, here's a fun article to read: https://www.tomshardware.com/software/vpn/utah-becomes-first-us-state-to-target-vpn-use-with-age-verification-law

RE: https://mastodon.social/@knoppix95/116512044363013083

Is this a path for Signal on a Linux phone?

#linuxPhone #ubuntuTouch #postmarketOS

@jerry - You're just north of me.

And yeah. Yeah, its been weird since I moved here.

@hzulla @hzulla - Yeah, I think you're right. I followed up the post with this one: https://infosec.exchange/@tinker/116496096417501652

I have observed different groups that line up with this pattern and its *often* (but not perfectly) along neurodivergence.... But!

You're right. One guy I know who is nuerodivergent and he is massively into vibe coding.... such as it is.

So I don't know the right words to describe it yet or the exact phenomena or reason for it. I just see a distinct pattern and have found others that observe it too.

The discussion following this post has been good to further flesh it out. I appreciate your response and input!

@sherbang @raymaccarthy - Sure enough! I stand corrected!

@ariarhythmic - No govt law, sure. But many jobs are requiring them (either through explicit rules directing their use or through not hiring folks who dont have experience in them, etc et all)

So. Yeah. Folks are being forced into this in order to survive.