Comment on Why Not Store Encrypted Emails in Plaintext Locally?
apis@beehaw.org 1 year ago
Just as it inconveniences you to have to decrypt to search, it would similarly slow down anyone malicious who gains access to your machine.
Am in favour of allowing users to decide which features are best for their needs, but this seems like it would be easy to forget to reinstitute local encryption after a search, so can also understand why developers prevent storing in plaintext.
spookedbyroaches@lemm.ee 1 year ago
You can’t search encrypted emails, period. The way I see the benefit of encrypting emails is to not have them compromised in the cloud servers. But on my own machine, if someone gains access to the files, then it’s all ogre. Maybe that’s just me IDK.
apis@beehaw.org 1 year ago
Point is, one can decrypt each email individually. That slows an malicious attacker rummaging in your device from finding what they are after as much as it does you.
You wouldn’t be alone in wanting this feature, but for those who need rather than prefer to encrypt, the option to store locally in plaintext is a major risk. On balance it seems better for developers to pay heed to that than to our preferences.
For the rest of us, we can download the emails we wish to refer to with ease, or we can create aides memoire to make it easy to locate specific emails later.