Or you could use, you know, a native client. It may increasingly become a foreign concept to the "facebook generation" but your computer is still fully capable of running a mail client on its own.
Of course you don't get to sell SaaS-subscriptions when you implement tray.io as a procmail GUI...
A native client without a user data sandbox doesn't solve the problem of networked applications leaking private data and spying on the user at all. The code needs to be open source, versioned, vetted, and only obtained via a trusted repository for every application the user wants to run each time it is updated. The user is no longer instantly able to access the latest version of the application by simply typing in a URI.
Would you be comfortable explaining to relatives, aquantainces, and the elderly in a casual conversation:
How to install, use, and maintain linux. How to install, use, and maintain their own mail server and spam filters. How PGP works. How to setup and use thunderbird+enigimail or mutt.
Compared to visiting a URI, would doing so be more technically demanding or less technically demanding for users who have not specialized in computing? Is the proportion of society which inevitably chooses not to specialize in a computing inherently more deserving or inherently less deserving of the benefits of encryption and privacy?
I think the gap in our perspective is most likely attributable to A) how widespread we wish to see encryption used by the general public in the future, or B) our expectations of the of the technical stamina of the general public when confronted with unfamiliar tasks, rather than generational effects.
Or you could use, you know, a native client. It may increasingly become a foreign concept to the "facebook generation" but your computer is still fully capable of running a mail client on its own.
Of course you don't get to sell SaaS-subscriptions when you implement tray.io as a procmail GUI...