Good News!

"Congratulations!  Thanks to you [me] and 2975 other backers, Lavabit's Dark Mail Initiative has been successfully funded."

 

It will be very interesting to see what develops.

Google vs. Bing?

To protect my privacy when I surf the Web, I use a proxy server that I set up on a Linux virtual machine which is hosted in the cloud.  To the best of my knowledge, the virtual machine is hosted on a physical machine in NYC. 

Interestingly, Google is confused by this setup.  Here's a screenshot of Google News.  Notice that it is placing me in Kendall Lakes (FL?).  That's fine.  I don't want them to know where I am!

More problematic, however, is that often when I do a Google search, I get this back instead of a results page:

Does this mean that if they cannot track me, they aren't going to let me see the results?  I'll never know for sure.  That's when I go to Bing.  Bing is content to show me results when Google isn't.

Dark Mail @ Kickstarter

The founders of Lavabit and Silent Circle have started a new Kickstarter Project to develop a protocol for default, user-friendly, end-to-end encryption of email.  They are calling it Dark Mail, "because Black Mail has bad connotations."

I am supporting this project.  I encourage you to as well.  Find out more about it here: http://kck.st/HrENd0.  The window to sign up closes November 22nd.