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Vessal—Looking for Feedback!

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Vessal

Hi all,

I'm Connor, founder of Vessal, and wanted to (1) share with the group and (2) collect any feedback or suggestions you all may have.

Briefly, Vessal aims to make transportation private and secure. In some ways, it can be equated to a "VPN for transportation."

We are still relatively in our infancy, and therefore may be a little clunky sometimes as far as usability. Of course, we are always striving to improve!

Thanks for your time and taking a look, and again, we appreciate any feedback or suggestions you may have.

Connor

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  • You're going to become fast friends with the postal inspector. They will most likely require you to maintain a list of every sender and receiver.

    Ignoring that, let's compare this to the standard I don't want you to know where I live strategy: a post office box. Let's say a streamer or some famous YouTuber who doesn't want people to actually have their home address.

    Anybody can send to a post office box, they just need the address. It's not entirely clear, but your service would require both the sender and receiver to have an account and relationship with you.

    The privacy conscious person cannot take packages directly home from the post office, they need to be scanned for trackers, air tags etc, or opened in a neutral location. Your service would send directly to a destination address, so a single air tag would destroy all privacy, unless the destination was a PO box, but at which point what is the customer benefiting from?

    I think it's an interesting service, but I don't see it working. The closest I would see it to is virtual post mail, or other virtual mailbox services. They scan mail when it comes in, and then email or reship that to another destination up to you. That's kind of the privacy arbitrage layer. Otherwise there's the post office boxes for people who want to receive without giving away their location.

    If two people want to have a transaction without any third party knowing, shipping it via the post is always difficult. Labels are scanned at every office. And I think your service will quickly have tracking requirements put onto it, quite frankly your early adopters will almost certainly only be sending illegal material.

    • Thank you @jet@hackertalks.com! Really appreciative of you giving your time and laying out your thoughts.

      I'll address your points one by one below:

      1. Ignoring that, let’s compare this to the standard I don’t want you to know where I live strategy: a post office box. Let’s say a streamer or some famous YouTuber who doesn’t want people to actually have their home address.

        Anybody can send to a post office box, they just need the address. It’s not entirely clear, but your service would require both the sender and receiver to have an account and relationship with you.

      • Correct, and I see your point. I think the main draw here is that currently our service is ephemeral, while a PO box is persistent. We do plan to add some persistent options for users in the future, but that's a discussion for another time.

        Additionally, once agreed upon (i.e., within reason), we are willing to meet the Receiver wherever; whether it is at their home, a public brick-and-mortar—we are able to execute the final leg of the delivery on the Receiver's terms.

      1. The privacy conscious person cannot take packages directly home from the post office, they need to be scanned for trackers, air tags etc, or opened in a neutral location. Your service would send directly to a destination address, so a single air tag would destroy all privacy, unless the destination was a PO box, but at which point what is the customer benefiting from?

      • We have thought about this, and I think this can always be a potential issue for the Receiver under any circumstance. It's preferable to have an established thread of trust between the Sender and Receiver, and if there is not, I would think the Receiver would meet in a public place and do exactly what you mentioned.

      1. I think it’s an interesting service, but I don’t see it working. The closest I would see it to is virtual post mail, or other virtual mailbox services. They scan mail when it comes in, and then email or reship that to another destination up to you. That’s kind of the privacy arbitrage layer. Otherwise there’s the post office boxes for people who want to receive without giving away their location.

        If two people want to have a transaction without any third party knowing, shipping it via the post is always difficult. Labels are scanned at every office. And I think your service will quickly have tracking requirements put onto it, quite frankly your early adopters will almost certainly only be sending illegal material.

      • Agreed, there are many unknowns regarding the post, and I appreciate your candidness.

        As for remailers (I think virtual mailbox services are kind of a different animal altogether as far as privacy), the main benefits that make us stand out are (1) the ephemeral/persistence use case as touched on earlier, (2) the existence of relays, and (3) ensuring both the Sender and Receiver's privacy and security throughout the entire process from points A to Z.

      Thanks again for taking the time and providing valuable feedback!

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