Re: google reads your mail

On 9/16/2026 9:57 PM, Bill Sloman wrote:
> On 16/09/2026 11:08 pm, Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson wrote:
>> On 16/09/2026 7:37 PM, Bill Sloman wrote:
>>> On 16/09/2026 12:34 am, Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson wrote:
>>>> On 14/09/2026 4:18 PM, Don Y wrote:
>>>>> On 9/14/2026 12:42 AM, Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson wrote:
>>>>>> On 14/09/2026 11:48 AM, Don Y wrote:
>>>>>>> On 9/13/2026 2:41 PM, Edward Rawde wrote:
>>>>>>>> "Don Y" <[email protected]> wrote in message 
>>>>>>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>>>>>>> On 9/13/2026 8:51 AM, Edward Rawde wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> "Don Y" <[email protected]> wrote in message 
>>>>>>>>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>>>>>>>>> On 9/12/2026 11:20 PM, Edward Rawde wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>> nslookup -type=MX ieee.org
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> Non-authoritative answer:
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> ieee.org        MX preference = 40, mail exchanger = 
>>>>>>>>>>>> alt3.aspmx.l.google.com
>>>>>>>>>>>> ieee.org        MX preference = 50, mail exchanger = 
>>>>>>>>>>>> alt4.aspmx.l.google.com
>>>>>>>>>>>> ieee.org        MX preference = 10, mail exchanger = 
>>>>>>>>>>>> aspmx.l.google.com
>>>>>>>>>>>> ieee.org        MX preference = 20, mail exchanger = 
>>>>>>>>>>>> alt1.aspmx.l.google.com
>>>>>>>>>>>> ieee.org        MX preference = 30, mail exchanger = 
>>>>>>>>>>>> alt2.aspmx.l.google.com
>>>>>>>>>>> Many organizations have outsourced their email to google.
>>>>>>>>>>> There is obviously value in:
>>>>>>>>>>> - mapping the relationships between communicating parties
>>>>>>>>>>> - reading their correspondence
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Those of us who don't always want our correspondence read
>>>>>>>>>> will find other ways to communicate.
>>>>>>>>> Or, ensure nothing being said needs to be shielded from prying 
>>>>>>>>> eyes!
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> [A friend used to claim he "had nothing to hide".  I noted that
>>>>>>>>> he didn't leave his financial statements "lying around"...]
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Email is a postcard -- every hand that it passes through has a
>>>>>>>>> chance to read its contents (doubly so if those hands are
>>>>>>>>> electronic in nature!).
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> So let them read about your vacation, unaware of the 
>>>>>>>> steganographically encoded message in the picture.
>>>>>>> Steganalysis can detect the presence of certain types of hidden/ 
>>>>>>> encoded data.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> /Can/ does not imply that a run of the mill three letter agency 
>>>>>> stegana-
>>>>>> lyst will.  Now, I admit I do not have any of their tool-kits, so I
>>>>>> wouldn't off hand know what they do and don't detect if they start 
>>>>>> look-
>>>>>> ing.  I am however fairly certain I can devise a method to hide 
>>>>>> infor-
>>>>>> mation undetectable by the amateur antisteganographer [1].
>>>>>
>>>>> Having access to tools and a near-endless stream of data (in digital
>>>>> form best suited to such analysis), I wouldn't doubt *someone* has 
>>>>> already
>>>>> considered (and acted upon?) the idea.  "Amateurs" likely have neither
>>>>> the tools nor the access.
>>>>
>>>> Oh, my original idea -- the one I was thinking of for the challenge --
>>>> is almost certainly /well known/ in the three letter agency world.  But
>>>> given the brief overview of a tool used by a /security expert/, I 
>>>> forgot
>>>> which or maybe it wasn't named, it didn't seem to be a standard 
>>>> feature.
>>>>
>>>> Then, if I make a custom implementation, there's no guarantee a three
>>>> letter agency tool will catch it.  Just add a little bit of twist, and
>>>> it may well bypass the filters the three letter agencies use.
>>>>
>>>> Or trigger an alert if a /well known adversary/ has used it before.
>>>> It's kind of 50/50 that way.
>>>>>
>>>>> [When I worked for KCP, a "three letter agency" approached us to
>>>>> customize a version of our product.  It was easy to see how it could
>>>>> be used -- and abused -- so we declined their "offer".]
>>>>>
>>>>>> I also feel no need to explain to the public at large how I'd do 
>>>>>> so, but
>>>>>> you are free to raise a challenge if you think it amounts to 
>>>>>> something.
>>>>>
>>>>> There are *countless* ways of "hiding information", especially if the
>>>>> bandwidth (or, total amount of data) is unspecified.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Yes, you could for example use /Linear A/, and relatively few people in
>>>> the world would be able to tell you're using English -- or another mod-
>>>> ern language -- rather than whatever language it was originally used
>>>> for.
>>>
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_A
>>>
>>> None. Linear A doesn't seem to have been deciphered yet, and there 
>>> aren't enough sample of it around to suggest that it ever will be.
>>>
>>> There weren't all that many more example of Linear B, but enough.
>>
>> Dear Bill,
>>
>> /Linear A/ is a script, not a language.  I never implied it had been
>> deciphered, but you can absolutely use it to write English.  You even
>> get to make up your sound values.
> 
> Not a trivial task.

Are you referring to the decipherment of Linear A?  For some light read-
ing, you can pick /The Code Book/ by Simon Singh from your shelf.
Alternatively, a bigger book on the same subject is /The Code Breakers/
by David Kahn.  Those two book should serve as an introductory material
on the subject, and the former is amusing -- I haven't read the latter
yet it is still on my shelf; it's a matter of tsundoku.  I hope you
don't need to look that word up, being erudite and all.

> 
>> Now please direct yourself to the nearest juniour high school, and work
>> on improving your reading comprehension.
> 
> Your own needs some work. I never claimed that linear A was a language - 
> it's a writing system. It will have been devised to write down elements 
> of at least one language - the roman alphabet we use is used to write 
> down several.

You now need to explain and expostulate [1] to yourself why you used the
the word /none/.  You see, I was talking about using Linear A to write
English, and there are indeed people -- or at least people who claim
they are -- able to discover it's not the original language but a modern
one.  The books I referred to in the previous paragraph explain how, in
practice, such is done with statistical analysis.  Even though they're
not a good introduction to the practicalities of modern cryptanalysis.

For that, you might want to read /Differential Cryptanalysis on Hash
Functions: Theory and Practice/ by Tao Xie, and Fanbao Liu; or other
books on the subject of modern code breaking.  I admit I haven't read
this one either.  It's on my tsundoku shelf still.

> 
> My late wife was a world class psycholinguist and I don't think a junior 
> high school would have much to teach me.

Well, presumably she could have told you that it's not polite to assume
nobody can do something, just because you can't.

> 
> American secondary education isn't wonderful, and it probably wouldn't 
> have taught me any more than Tasmanian secondary schools did back when I 
> was reading about the  decipherment of Minoan linear B.

I take it you were reading /The Decipherment of Linear B/ by John Chad-
wick.  Have you thought about buying yourself the corpus of Linear A,
and attack the problem heads on?

> 
>> Best wishes, and happy reading!
> 
> Wishing me into an American junior high school isn't a good wish. I've 
> been reading happily for many years now, but selectively, and reading 
> the nonsense they they serve up - about America being a exemplary 
> democracy - would not be a pleasant experience. Occasionally amusing, 
> but I'd have to hide my amusement.
> 

Oh, don't worry about the American juniour [sic] high school, you can
now study /popular culture/ in universities.  I bring you a link to your
very own University of Texas,

  
https://texasconnect.utexas.edu/2025/09/29/swifties-trekkies-and-other-devotees-unite-in-ut-class-rhetoric-of-fandom/

and I wouldn't know how to react, if I were forced to take such a course
in this day and age, when I hardly like any of the current crop of popu-
lar amusements, and mostly read [or listen to] space captain dramas.  At
least that branch of literature still has men in the lead role, and
manly adventures -- in space.

Now, if that isn't enough hobbies to get you started, you can always
create an account at cryptohack.org, and start doing -- in Python --
instead of reading.  I myself only started today, so don't read anything
from my current low score.

   https://cryptohack.org/user/myrkraverk/

And for that, I've added comp.lang.python to this discussion.  People
there are welcome to share their Cryptohack profiles, and we can have
a friendly competition in cryptographic practicalities!


Best wishes, and happy deciphering!


[1] Yes, I believe this word fits nicely, even though I'm not entirely
sure if Merriam Webster is current on the meaning of it.
-- 
Johann | email: invalid -> com | http://www.myrkraverk.com/blog/
I'm not from the Internet, I just work there. | via Easynews.com
https://bsky.app/profile/myrkraverk.bsky.social | for ( ;; ) _:;