Hushmail 2.0

Hush Communications sent us a press release, which I'll spare you from reading. Normally press crap gets deleted with prejudice, but Hush says they've made their encrypted web-based email compatible with OpenPGP, which would be great news. Does anyone use Hush? Good experiences, bad experiences? (Note that a UK civil liberties group also has a Hush-based site at cyber-rights.net, nice domain name for your email.)

Comments

Use it? I love it.

[Chacham]

I've been using hushmail for quite a while, and I love it. They are rarely ever down, they almost never send anything to you, and they reply quickly (day or so) to questions.

I get the feeling that they are committed to giving you good service.

One thing I don't like, however, is scheduled maintenance. This upgrade to 2.0 happened yesterday, with no warning as the when it would happen timewise. They've been mentioning it, but nothing exact. And, they were then down for a few hours, only to say when that time was up, that they'd be down for a few more hours. Currently, they're forcing the upgrade to 2.0 on everyone. I like the old look better, simple and sweet.

Right now my upgrade is failing. I hope they're in working order soon.

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Re:Does it work? Well, let's see

[DaveHowe]

yes, I got that error too - it is related to the downloaded (cached) copy of the client. to fix this, go into c:\windows\downloaded program files and delete the hushmail app you will find there. when you try again, you will get the online (non installed) version which does work.
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Hush 2.0 - first impressions

[DaveHowe]

Ok, I thought I would give this the once over - noting in passing that the uk "cyber-rights.org" version is not yet on the conversion path.

1. Upgrade
   Actual upgrade went smoothly; I was presented with a upgrade applet, which (once given some mouse movements to generate a few numbers) calculated my key for me and then threw me into a conventional-looking login screen. One minor glitch - one of the intermediate screens has a different server key to the main site, so a anti-spoof web browser throws an error.
2. First Impressions
   At first glance, everything looks pretty and shiny; in a similar display to Outlook and many mail clients, Hush now has a folder list down the left edge (with number of unread displayed) and a toolbar along the top with check mail, compose, contacts (address book) and quit.
   that the app does not take you to the inbox on start or on "check mail" is a little surprising, but I can live with that. compose works smoothly, and there is a little "options" tab at the top right that will take you to the now integrated "pager" and "change password" functions.
3. Testing - OpenPGP
   well, obviously the big test of the system (and the major change) is pgp. For testing purposes, I did the following:
   1. sent two messages from a conventional mail client, signed with keys long established on the keyservers (youngest is two years old) - one each of RSA and DSS.
      results were disappointing - not only did the program fail to verify either key, but no options are available to display signature info (time/date and so forth) to manually specify a key, or to specify a keyserver to check for keys.
      Ok, I thought - possibly you have to add the sender to your contacts list. yes? no. a careful search found no way to add the sender of the current message to the contacts. ok, so lets do it manually. copied the address data into the clipboard, then contacts->add. hmm. I can add a contact easily enough (nickname, full name, email, much as always) but no sign or concept of key or default encryption. very odd.
   2. sent mail from Hush to the named recipients
      Manually composed messages to the recipients, and hit encrypt. no dice... "no key". oh. ok, I will send a unencrypted, but signed message to one of them, and see what it looks like on receipt. oops, hangs indefinitely. this is not good......
   3. send mail hush-->hush
      a bit shaken, I decided I had better test the functionality that was working before - encrypted mail from a hush user to another hush user. results were the same as to a non-hush encrypted user - encrypt fails with a no-key error, sign hangs the system

I am a bit disappointed in this initial rollout, but am assuming it is still in the teething stage and a few bugs are to be expected (I also have none of my previous mail, but they apologised for that in advance and said it will be moved to the new server soon) however, I think it is unworkable for the short term, and will be waiting to see what happens in the next few weeks.
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