Ray Dillinger wrote:
Would there be a market for someone to create an encrypted-services provider? Would people do this?
I have something like this in the making. if you're working on a similiar project - why not team up?
Here is what I envision, at a cost of something like $10/month.
Email accounts that bounce anything not encrypted - either silently or with a message that says "this account accepts only encrypted mail." at the option of the account holder. These accounts are restricted in some way that makes them unattractive to spammers - probably they are able to send no more than 3 or 4 unencrypted emails a day, maybe they are unable to send *any* unencrypted email.
in addition, access to the email account is via encrypted means only: either forwarding through S/MIME or SSL channels or IMAP with SSL. plus a local mixmaster for sending out mail (in the process mixing it without mail that's merely travelling through). an optional (2nd) e-mail address can accept unencrypted mail, but before forwarding will encrypt it (PGP). goal: your home machine never gets an unencrypted e-mail.
Web Hosting strictly via HTTPS. Standard accounts get four or eight kilobytes accessible by http (enough for a redirect), and 100 Megabytes or so of web space accessible by HTTPS.
not planned here. I'm on the e-mail aspect only. data you need to provide is minimal - a username/pwd and/or a forwarding e-mail. we don't want to know what we have no technical need to know. all payment can be done anonymously - that's an important point and possibly the most difficult one.
I think this is, just barely, feasible. What say you all?
all of this is doable. as I said: I'm working on encrypted e-mail services at the moment (I bounced a couple stego ideas off this list recently).