Most people probably do not realise that most email to and from government agencies, NGOs, and corporations traverse the servers of Microsoft Corporation, in the clear.
How would you know, you ask? Do an MX lookup.
like this:
$ for type in mx txt; do torsocks dig @"$dnssvr" -t "$type" -q "$domain_portion_of_email_address" +noclass +nocomments +nostats +short +tcp +nosearch; done
(where $dnssvr is the IP address of whatever DNS server you trust)
If you see “outlook” in response to the MX lookup, the email is certainly shared with Microsoft. Likewise for “l-google” indicating sharing with Google.
If the txt type lookup shows those strings, then it likely means MS or Google are in the loop. The reason to check that is because some orgs hide their e-mail provider behind a 3rd party email firewall service (e.g. baracuda), in which case you cannot know for certain but the txt dns records give good clues.
The best exploit is if you live in the same area as the destination. Lucky for me, this is the case for most of my recipients. So I can cycle to them and drop off the correspondence without postage. And because I withold an email address from them, their response imposes postage costs on them -- which is exactly what I want. They should be penalised for their poor choice of e-mail suppliers.
Danish people are screwed
I have no idea how a Dane can partake in this because national postal service is eliminated in Denmark. You can possibly drop off the correspondence but I suppose post boxes are going away which means you need to get it in recipient’s hands during opening hours. But then how can they respond? Would they have to use FedEx? That backfires because FedEx should also be boycotted and so it ultimately helps another shitty corp. And you have no control over who the recipient will choose to carry the response.
Germans have an extra cost or inconvenience
In Germany, some recipient’s postal boxes are publicly accessible and some are not. When they are not, only the postal worker has a mail room key. And you probably have no way of knowing in advance if the recipient’s mailbox is accessible.
Perhaps the best workflow in Germany is to print the letter, stuff the envelope, and cycle to the destination. If you’re locked out and there is no one to tailgate in, then you have to accept that you lost the gamble and put a stamp on it and post it.
Americans somewhat screwed - but FAX is quite useful
In the US, it is illegal to directly put mail in a postbox that is not your own. USPS is a gov-imposed monopoly. Every city is so sprawled out you’re probably best off buying postage and using USPS anyway.
Consequently, fax is still very useful in the US -- see below.
Why faxing is great
If the recipient still has a FAX number, use it! FAX numbers are dying like flies because people don’t use them enough. It’s a way to send correspondence gratis without revealing your email address. So fax gives you more control over your data than email.
It’s worth noting that the recipient’s fax may be a service that repackages the fax as an email that traverses MS servers anyway. But it’s still more private than email because you need not disclose an email address and also MS would have to run OCR on the payload to snoop on it.
It’s a crapshoot but the odds are in favor of fax (vs email).
The extra benefit to hand delivery: a poor man’s registered letter
You can print a form and ask the recipient to sign for the delivery. Most will sign. Some will not. But when they do it gives you some proof of delivery that may help in court if anything goes sideways. I have actually used this kind of proof of delivery in court before.