Snowden triggers flood of Crapware [was: Gruveo, more secure skype?]

[Alfie John]

On Wed, Jul 23, 2014, at 06:34 PM, rysiek wrote:
> Dnia środa, 23 lipca 2014 23:59:25 stef pisze:
> > On Wed, Jul 23, 2014 at 05:24:22PM -0400, grarpamp wrote:
> > > To quote OP... not open source.. not audited.. central servers.. webrtc..
> > > 'no' logs.. and a shiny link for grins... and then claims it 'looks very
> > > interesting and promising'. WTF, really? I appreciate innocent questions,
> > > but the answer (or at least our response) should be obvious, from those
> > > parameters alone, to someone who's been around for a while.
> > 
> > exactly this prompted me to come up with the seven rules of thumb to detect
> > snakeoil:
> > 
> >     not free software
> >     runs in a browser
> >     runs on a smartphone
> >     the user doesn't generate, or exclusively own the private encryption
> > keys there is no threat model
> >     uses marketing-terminology like "cyber", "military-grade"
> >     neglects general sad state of host security
> 
> So very true. Can we have it named as "stef's six rules of snakeoilness"
> and 
> spread around? I'm serious, this is important.

I've always been a fan of the Spam Solution checklist:

  https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt

Maybe Stef's six rules can be expanded into something like this.

Alfie

-- 
  Alfie John
  alfiej at fastmail.fm