Meeting Notes - 22 July 2014

by **bdahm** Wed Jul 30, 2014 3:59 pm

“Eat so we can meet” - Since the Airport Greenery has been providing us free use of the restaurant on Tuesday afternoons for close to three years now, it would be fitting if we patronized the place by buying food and/or drink while we are there. Eric suggested that for those who do not wish to partake of anything that they make a small donation either to the wait staff or in the tip box at the check-in counter in the lobby.

Sending Large Files
Currently if you try to send a file or attachment over 25 MB on most email services you are just out of luck. Now there’s a way to get those files to whom you want to send them. There are several services that will do this for free, one of which is called WeTransfer. You can send up to a 2 GB file.

https://www.wetransfer.com

The way this works is that you upload the file to the WeTransfer cloud and they provide you with a link that you send to the other person in an email. The other person clicks on the supplied link and the file downloads. Pretty basic stuff. Your file will remain on WeTransfer site for 7 days after which time it will be deleted. If you want something more permanent or additional features and files, up to 10 BG, a paid option is available.

Secure Email
We’re all reeling from the Edward Snowden revelations of NSA spying. People are scrambling to secure their email and protect their privacy. A service called Proton Mail does a pretty good job of this. One of the things that distinguishes Proton Mail from other services is that it utilizes “Zero Access” encryption. What this means is that the data is encrypted on your device, be it computer or mobile device, and those encryption keys remain with you. Your email is already encrypted by the time it gets to Proton Mail’s servers and as they don’t have the keys, they cannot provide them to the government even if ordered to do so.

Most secure email services require involved set-up procedures that non-techie people shy away from. In addition both parties must use the same service and its tools. With Proton Mail you can send secure mail even to people on other services, by providing them with a key to unlock it. They cannot, however, reply to you in secure form unless they are using the Proton Mail service.

https://protonmail.ch

The service is based in Switzerland and is therefore out of the reach of the Feds. The service is free and there is a lot of interest in it. As a result there’s a waiting list to get onto the service. Several Chiang Mai Computer Club members are interested in using the service and as soon as we have had a chance to do so, we will report back .

Shhhhhh. Don’t tell anyone, but that’s a wrap. See you next week.

-Bill