Mailpile Search Integration
Personal email search engine
Mailpile is an e-mail client and personal e-mail search engine, with a strong focus on user autonomy and privacy. This project, "Mailpile Search Integration", will adapt and enhance Mailpile so other applications can make use of Mailpile's built-in search engine and e-mail store. This requires improving Mailpile in three important ways: First, the project will add fine-grained access control, so the user can control which data is and isn't exposed. Second, enabling remote access will be facilitated, allowing a Mailpile running on a personal device to communicate with applications elsewhere on the network (such as smartphones, or services in "the cloud"). And finally, the interoperability functions themselves (the APIs) need to be defined (building on existing standards wherever possible), implemented and documented.
- The project's own website: https://www.mailpile.is/
Why does this actually matter to end users?
One of the things people enjoy the most about the internet, is that it enables them to talk to others remotely almost without limit. Internet allows anyone to keep closely connected with friends and family, and help their kids solve a math problem while they are at work. People collaborate with their colleagues from the couch of their living room, the cafe where they enjoy lunch or on their cell phone on the bus to the gym. Businesses can easily service their customers where this is most convenient to them, without having to travel themselves. This is so convenient, that some businesses have already moved entirely online. Internet communication has become the nerve center of whole neighbourhoods, where people watch over the possessions of their neighbours while these are away for work or leisure.
Email to this day is among the most popular online communication services and is used by governments, companies and organizations to talk to clients and share files. Even though email was designed without privacy or security in mind. When you send an email, anyone that can gain access to your mail server or the mail server of the recipient can read your mail, from top to bottom. And copy it, for later usage. Or modify it. It is often compared to sending a post card, and of course in many cases there may be little harm in others reading what the weather is like in Athens. But what if you want to use email to send something confidential, something you do not want to share with others? Like a love letter, a political rant or an important contract? And what if you can't actually trust the mail man, for instance because the other party is using a free email service known to search through everything? Or what if you live in a country that has an unhealthy interest in bringing down certain political voices, or are part of a cultural minority that is at risk?
Users should be able to send, store and search their email privately, without giving up ease of use or important email features. Mailpipe does exactly this with a personal webmail client and search engine that users can host themselves. Mailpipe supports user-friendly email encryption and helps users sort through their usually overflowing inboxes with a powerful search engine. This project opens up the Mailpipe email client and search engine to other applications, while the user can still control what data can actually be accessed. Such features can make Mailpipe a more complete user-centric email alternative to existing 'free' email services that leak unnecessary amounts of information and data.
Run by Mailpile ehf
This project was funded through the NGI0 Discovery Fund, a fund established by NLnet with financial support from the European Commission's Next Generation Internet programme, under the aegis of DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology under grant agreement No 825322.
