[Privsec] Re: How safe are Plaxo and other online address books as protections against tracking?

[Ralf Bendrath]

Claude Almansi wrote:

> Yesterday I received an e-mail from a human rights militant in a 
> country where the internet and e-mail are heavily monitored and 
> censored by the government: she sent it through her Plaxo address book 
> as a security measure.
> 
> I don't know much about tech, but if this is a safe way of avoiding 
> e-mail monitoring, then this could be a legitimate use of online 
> address books, maybe?
I don't know Plaxo well, have never used it. I would generally say
that if you store personal information on a server that is beyond your
control, it is more of a risk than if you send from your own local 
machine. If you really want to be safe, you should be using encryption 
tools like PGP and an onion routing system or something similar.

But in the end, it all depends on the risk analysis. If country X is 
surveilling Internet traffic within and across its borders, than it might 
make sense to use a heavy-traffic service like plaxo.com or even yahoo.com 
which is based in country Y to sneak through unnoticed. Sometimes using 
encryption is even more of a risk, as you might pop up as somebody who 
seems to have something to hide.

I think our member Robert Guerra should be able to answer in a more 
qualified way, as he is doing consultancy in exactly this field.

Best, Ralf