which free email account looks best on a kindle?

[russellmz00]

i dislike the way yahoo, gmail, live email looks on the kindle browser. anyone have a nicer looking free web email account?

[Replika]

Have you tried sites for mobile such as m.gmail.com ?

[chas0039]

I second m.gmail.com. The only problem is the repeated need to log in.

[travfar]

Does anyone have any concern that when you're using the Kindle browser, that all your data can be viewed by Amazon? All the traffic flows through the Amazon servers so you are giving your username/password to Amazon which forwards it on to your email provider. Yes, email is inherently insecure but this makes it even more so.

[alsaan]

Usually all communication with your mail provider is performed over an encrypted https connection, so there is no risk of Amazon or any other party eavesdropping sensitive information.

[travfar]

Originally Posted by alsaan

Usually all communication with your mail provider is performed over an encrypted https connection, so there is no risk of Amazon or any other party eavesdropping sensitive information.

Well... actually no. The only popular email provider that does that is gmail. Yahoo and Hotmail are not over SSL. So email in general is not very secure to begin with. On your Kindle, perhaps less so. It depends on how Amazon is running as your proxy. If it's simply routing packets, that's one thing and then gmail would be secure. If it's acting as a full proxy, then no. Not at all. That's because as a full proxy, it's Amazon that has a SSL connection to Google. You might even have a SSL connection to Amazon, but Amazon has full access to your data. Here's my real world example. So you write a letter and seal it in an envelope. If Amazon is just routing packets then Amazon takes your letter and delivers it sealed to the recipient. If it's acting as a full proxy. Amazon opens up that letter, makes a copy and puts that copy in a sealed evelope and delivers it to the recipient. In the latter case, Amazon has full access to your data.

[alsaan]

Originally Posted by travfar

Well... actually no. The only popular email provider that does that is gmail. Yahoo and Hotmail are not over SSL. So email in general is not very secure to begin with. On your Kindle, perhaps less so. It depends on how Amazon is running as your proxy. If it's simply routing packets, that's one thing and then gmail would be secure. If it's acting as a full proxy, then no. Not at all. That's because as a full proxy, it's Amazon that has a SSL connection to Google. You might even have a SSL connection to Amazon, but Amazon has full access to your data. Here's my real world example. So you write a letter and seal it in an envelope. If Amazon is just routing packets then Amazon takes your letter and delivers it sealed to the recipient. If it's acting as a full proxy. Amazon opens up that letter, makes a copy and puts that copy in a sealed evelope and delivers it to the recipient. In the latter case, Amazon has full access to your data.

Not really, the use of encryption and certificates makes impossible for any third party to snoop on the data being transmitted. The session key is known only by the client and server, so there is nothing Amazon can do with the data besides relaying it. They can't impersonate the mail server either without triggering an invalid certificate error.

Hotmail runs on plain HTTP by default, but it is possible (and recommended) to configure it to always use HTTPS.
As for Yahoo, it seems only its login page is encrypted, which prevents password sniffing but not much else. I recommend switching to another provider if security is important to you.

[Tome Keeper]

I really doubt Amazon would be interested in most people's e-mail, however if your that concerned you probably should not have anything confidential/valuable stored in your e-mail in the first place.

[susan_cassidy]

I've never heard before that traffic through the Kindle web browser goes through Amazon. For what reason would it? That would just increase traffic on Amazon's servers to no purpose. Why wouldn't the browser work like any other browser? Does anyone know for sure that this is true, and why it works that way, if so?

[RainingLemur]

I like m.gmail, personally. Makes responding to quick emails rather easy.

[russellmz00]

thanks for the suggestions! i am trying out the mobile versions suggested.

[travfar]

Originally Posted by alsaan

Not really, the use of encryption and certificates makes impossible for any third party to snoop on the data being transmitted. The session key is known only by the client and server, so there is nothing Amazon can do with the data besides relaying it. They can't impersonate the mail server either without triggering an invalid certificate error.

You're making the assumption that when the little lock shows up that the cert you are using is google's if you are using gmail. How do you know? I can't find a way to look at the cert. Many proxies don't work that way. The proxy sets up a SSL connection with the website and the proxy might set up one with your browser. As I said, it could be that Amazon is the one with the SSL connection to Google and you just have a SSL connection to Amazon. Thus Amazon relays everything and does have full access to your data. Like I said earlier, it really depends on whether Amazon just routes the packets or acts as a full proxy. From what people have observed, they act as a full proxy.

Also, saying that it's "impossible" to snoop SSL data is not accurate. Encryption just makes it harder, not impossible. I remember having this out with the Netscape engineers way a back in the day. Their keys were only 64 bit. They claimed it would take so long to crack that no one would bother. A couple of weeks later, a hacker posted his algorithm to crack any 64 bit SSL message in a couple of hours. They upped it to 128 bit.