Something i'm realizing more and more... What the hell do I <i>really</i> need remotely hosted mail for?<p>We all know mail is insecure. Unless you look <i>really really hard</i>, you aren't sure if the mail you received was spoofed or modified, a child can spoof mail and any MitM can modify it. So in general you can't trust your mail anyway, even if it's received by a reputable company. Sending mail is almost just as subjective... a random ISP's mail smarthost is just as good for getting your mail delivered as a hosted mail provider.<p>All I <i>really</i> need is a way to get my mails, once. Once you have the mail, you can back it up to an infinite number of places (Git repository, anyone?) if in the future you need to search it.<p>So really, the only thing I need is 1) to receive mail, 2) to filter the spam, and 3) to keep a backup of my mail somewhere.<p>Considering this, why do we even need domain-specific mail? Like, myusername at Gmail dotcom, for example. I don't <i>need</i> it sent to GMail... I need it sent to <i>me</i>. I don't care what server receives it. I don't even need to store my mail there once i've read it - I can keep it offline, and back it up to remote repositories to search. With a format + protocol like Git, this would be fast, efficient, reliable, secure, and compatible.<p>So really, if we just had a distributed decentralized peer-to-peer mail network, a unique address system, and a retrofitted mail storage protocol (IMAP5?), we could send mail anywhere, receive it anywhere, store it anywhere, and spam could be filtered by whatever product or company was hosting your Git backup. With the new address system we could even build in personal crypto keys and teach people how to send real, honest-to-god, secure mails, potentially even anonymously.<p>Now somebody tell me how someone already thought of this and how it won't work :-)