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Blocklist-Update.sh

Blocklist-Update.sh is a script that I wrote to manage blocklists from bluetack etc to be used in conjunction with Transmission torrent downloader in Linux/MacOS. The script can be taylored to work with Qbittorrent as well, but the placement of the blocklists means you'd have to redirect the blocklist to go somewhere locally manageable as Transmission uses its own blocklist directory in .config. I believe there are about 10 lists there now. It works well for my needs. It can be ran weekly using crontab in standard user profile.  To download:  blocklist-update.sh To download the others:  Github
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ARE YOUR EMAILS PRIVATE? SHOULD EMAILS BE A THING OF THE PAST?

There are becoming an increasing number of privacy concerns in regards to email and communication in general. Popular Text apps are hopping on the trend of end-to-end encryption and so too are many web mail sites. There is even an email service that uses a disposable, throwaway system, such as Mailinator. Communication has come a long way, from the first working electric telegraph, using static electricity, built by Francis Ronalds, in 1816, to the first computer network in 1969. Communication separated our primal ancestors from other early hominids. But as the internet of things continues to fill our lives, we often forget who or what we are talking to, and through what intermediary we make that connection.

In the early parts of the 2016, United States elections, emails containing sensitive material were negligently leaked over insecure networks. The emails were supposed to be sent using PGP encryption but this failed to be implemented. Later on we read in various articles about Yahoo! being hacked, this right on the verge of a merger between the tech giant and Verizon. Even later still, Yahoo! was in the news again for a similar breach. The breaches leaked millions of persons email information worldwide. Finally, Google have had their issues in the past, but they have stepped up their game as of late with regards to web emails. This isn’t to account for someone who is personally targeted while using an email application such as Thunderbird insecurely.

Privacy-centric options do exist, one such email provider with privacy in mind is Protonmail. Protonmail are an email provider based in Switzerland. They, like the text apps mentioned earlier, use end-to-end encryption. As far as I know, the only way to use them is through web mail and while you can make a plethora of changes to how your inbox works, Protonmail is for regular users or businesses who just want a safe way to communicate through email. Protonmail owes its early creation to Dr. Andy Yen, Dr. Bart Butler, Jason Stockman, and Wei Sun. Protonmail came into being around 2013 at CERN research facility. If you go to www.protonmail.com, the site offers a brief section of overview as to what the goals are and what they do. Further reading can be found on Wikipedia.


 I will be curious to see what the future might hold for the email clients and text apps in the up and coming years. I wonder if any of the will truly become private and even more accessible to everyone. If you wished, maybe you could share your thoughts with me via email or comment. I am also thinking of writing an article on programming languages possibly in the future, so stay tuned!  

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