alt Hacker NewsI read this article and was surprised when I reached the end because the whole thing felt like it was setting the stage for some announcement or new thing. But nothing came..? Forgive me if I'm being thick but what was the takeaway?
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That was how I felt. "The Future of Email", from Fastmail - I immediately assumed some big announcement.
It's basically "you need to pass DMARC now" which has been true for 2 years.
It also goes into how authentication helps stop spoofed domains which yes, is true. But in my opinion the biggest problem isn't spoofed domains at all.
Attackers will figure out how to make your payment platform (PayPal, Stripe, etc) send out emails. They'll figure out what pieces of info make it into the generated emails, so they'll do things like set their company name to "there's a problem call this phone number." So next thing you know you're getting an email from PayPal that sounds urgent because they'll put that company name in the subject or body of the email.
These emails will be legit, from-the-actual-company, passes-all-authentication emails. DMARC can't catch that, and that's what I've been observing attackers do. They'll find a ticketing system or payment processor and get them to generate "authentic" emails.
I was sincerely hoping that Fastmail had something to deal with that problem.
Because it's just inbound marketing. Write some random vaguely interesting blog article, post it everywhere, then watch as thousands of people see your brand name for the first time, connect it with being helpful. Maybe even see a search engine boost for your product.
Agree. I was waiting for the other foot to drop and then..."email's not going away."
Genuinely curious. Why is it posted and being upvoted here?
Yeah I had the same reaction. From the title I was expecting to find out what the "future of email" is. I'm still waiting.
As a fastmail user I'm glad there was no announcement. Every time a company starts telling me about some bright future, this usually means my user experience is about to sink.