Not that many people use email much anymore, but as you often need an email address to sign up for other shit… anyway, I need a better option than gmail, I’m sure you can appreciate why. Email is so old school at this point that most of the time I don’t even think about it anymore.
Anyway, I need some email options that aren’t gmail or otherwise attached to a billionaire. I’m not really interested in non-email methods of communication, I’m specifically asking about email.
Thanks in advance.
Most if not all non-paid options will have privacy concerns similar to gmail, so you’ll have to pay. I pay for Proton, and though I’m not thrilled about some of the political bullshit their CEO has been up to recently, I think I’ll stay with them for now since they’re still good for privacy, and their other services are solid. They’re also very upfront about what they charge and why, and I think they still plan to transition to a non-profit.
It’s not just the pro-trump stuff though, there’s also the case of being very pro-cop in that they helped get info about a french activist against their will or settings, we believe.
God, I can’t believe people are still spreading this nonsense. Proton complied with a legal warrant. Name another company on the planet that will receive a legal warrant and refuses to comply. I’ll wait.
And the fact that their internal information even can reveal any information indicates a lack of true privacy. Here is an example of setting up a system so you cannot comply.
how the fuck do you run an email provider without storing anything on disk, first of all?
next point is mullvad is ready to close shop if that’s what they need to do after a raid. but of you’re storing people’s data for their request basically, like Proton, you can’t just do that because everyone will be mad for losing their data and access to the email service.
finally, Proton does provide a way to use their services in secret, as they run their onion site. login over Tor, done. but probably also create the account over Tor, and never log in through clearnet with that account
I was answering
Name another company on the planet that will receive a legal warrant and refuses to comply. I’ll wait.
No you weren’t. Not having the information is not the same thing as refusing to comply.
Preemptive prevention of access is a form of noncompliance
Mullvad doesn’t host email. The warrant pertained to emails, not a VPN.
Not having logs helps a ton with anonymity, and your question didn’t have that requirement.
Because it didn’t need it. Email cannot function with the same level of logging as a VPN. My question was about refusal to comply, which Mullvad did not do.
k.
sure, they must have shut down all services instead, that would have been the real solution!!
Unironically this.
That definitely sounds concerning, do you have a link or anything? Any company would have to comply with a legal court order regardless of their preference or ideology, so how they comply comes down to the amount of information they store and for how long. Just saying, the fact that they helped the cops (as much as I hate the cops in general) doesn’t necessarily mean they handed everything over or volunteered anything they weren’t legally obligated to provide. But I don’t know the specifics of the case you mentioned.
Several links, here:
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58476983
https://www.wired.com/story/protonmail-amends-policy-after-giving-up-activists-data/
Hope this helps!
Thank you!
For everyone who doesn’t want to read the links: important to note is that had the french activist accessed his protonmail account using any vpn (including proton) or the protonmail .onion site, they would have had nothing useful to report. also, it looks like they only logged the IP after being ordered to monitor access to the mailbox.
It also seems that they were quite frustrated that they couldn’t resist in this case, mentioning the inappropate usage of anti-terror laws against what in reality were squatters (which in turn compelled the swiss judges to grant the monitoring).
Sure, happy to help! 🙂
Yes, about this case of I remember well they provided the IP address of the activists.
Any email provider has to follow the law and will have to provide the information they have. The only diffidence of that in the case of proton the information they have is the IP address you used to connect to their service. For another provider the information might be all the content of your email.
The imprompted praise to Trump from proton CEO on the other hand is more concerning.
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I’m an anarchist so inherently against governments etc. So I would, I don’t comply with cops of my own free will.
Having something taken from me against my will is not complying.
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Think what you will.
I don’t think leaving Proton due to their CEO approving Trump is that reasonable
Not that many people use email much anymore
Where do you live, because I want to go there immediately.
IDK, what else do they use? Email has to be the least bad option. At least with email you can choose your provider (or be your own).
Any of the dozens of federated chat services.
I would assume Whatsapp or equivalent.
Ah great, so a messenger run by a data hoarding giant that resists usage of anything but the proprietary non-free client.
Yeah? I didn’t say anything positive about it. I said that it’s likely to be the alternative to email in a lot of places.
Definitely not.
Many parts of the world use Whatsapp as their primary form of communication. It’s depressing.
I agree.
Who’s not using email? I’m green with envy, but I think it’s a ludicrous premise to think not many people are using email.
I also wondered what kind of rock OP lives under. I use email every day, multiple times per day. I probably send more emails than texts.
i don’t use email much at all, only signups at a few places.
at work, communications with my coworker or clients is by phone or in person, not email or very rarely sms. email is mainly the required communications with the state (business registrations, taxes and shit) and invoices and receipts for things we use or buy online. plus lots of spam. lots and lots of spam. oh, and scams. lots of scammers and phishers too.
I use Tuta mail. It is entirely open source. There are both paid and free tiers. I started on a paid tier, then downgraded to free. I like the option of a usable free tier when money is tight. I use addy.io for aliases.
How do you use email aliases or what do you find them useful for? I’ve played around with generating unique aliases for different websites I use, but I’m not sure I did anything useful with that setup. Normally, if I get spam I usually just hit the unsubscribe link and that’s been sufficient. Currently, I just have 2 emails: one I use for businesses and such and one for random websites that I don’t care too much about. Is having more aliases better?
If an alias receives spam, I can deactivate it. Future mail addressed to that alias will not forward to my email inbox. In essence, stop the flow of water instead of repeatedly mopping around the leak. Also, I am wary of malicious unsubscribe links.
An alias can be used to see who is selling your address. If you give address B to only one organization and you get spam on B, then you know B sold your address.
Not exactly the most useful information, but it’s there.
Ah, yeah. That’s why I’m wondering if I’m missing something… Like, cool. I know B sold my address… now what? I guess it’s a neat metric to know?
I use proton and for registering on different sites I usually use addy.io. Also, I recently found a new mail service that looks nice and might give it a try soon, disroot.org
ProtonPass will also generate aliases and forward the mail to your email account. But, as someone else mentioned, the CEO’s politics seem sus.
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I second this. Fastmail has been a joy to use. Since the users are paying, the company has (less) incentives to enshittify. JMAP? Count me in!
I’m currently moving (for the last year) from Gmail to mailbox.org.
They have a free level, but I wanted aliases, so I pay $30/year. Worth every penny.
I moved from proton to mailbox a few months ago and so far I’m really happy with it too
I’ve been there for several years as well. Works great, and I get pretty much no spam.
At one point they offered “envelope with money sent via postal service” as an anonymous payment option, IDK if they still do that.
Been with MailBox.org for ages and it’s been absolutely fantastic. Proton had very limited offerings at the time, but even now I haven’t felt the need to move.
I think the most basic email offering is €1/month.
Same here. Moved from Outlook to Mailbox a year ago and I’m happy with it, using mostly custom domains with catch all. I havo also recently enabled encryption which wasn’t hard to integrate into my mail clients at all. They dont have a free plan, but the cheapest plan is 1€/month (which doesn’t allow custom domains).
Disroot - A lot of people in the know about privacy seem to really like it.
Really though email is a bullshit communication medium and unless you’re insisting on using GPG for every message and make sure your or other people’s keys never got compromised I wouldn’t rely on it.
Really hoping Dark Mail actually becomes a thing at some point. If it was that with locally stored encrypted email then email might actually be worth bothering with.
Really hoping Dark Mail actually becomes a thing at some point.
The last commit was 2 years ago: https://github.com/lavabit/magma/graphs/code-frequency
whomp
Tutanota or disroot.
PurelyMail is a great indie mail service. I love them.
if you wanna forget privacy and subscribe to a proprietary startup instead, use hey mail because it just sorts well. otherwise just use proton like everyone else said
proton.
Proton unlimited comes with unlimited everything on proton pass, including disposable email addresses
Proton have shown recently they are very much pro-cop and pro-trump and so aren’t that private or worthwhile any more.
I’ve been a Proton customer for over 4 years and I’m leaving because of this. Don’t use Proton.
They’re against censorship and in favor of free speech. If you hear about a VPN provider that blocks their users’ access to certain things based on the owner’s political beliefs that’s a shitty VPN provider
Full disclosure. I’m not a fan of Trump. I’m just a free speech absolutist and even if I hate what someone has to say I think they should be allowed to say it.
There’s already laws against threats, slander and libel and even doxing in some places.
That is not the concern. The concern is that their free speech has indicated they support cops, which means they’re more likely to be compliant. No one is talking about this speech here, but the content of it.
Also you aren’t.
They have to comply with Swiss laws, otherwise their business would be illegal.
Don’t be a scumbag and proton won’t ever be compelled to snitch on you
Alright then.
unlimited everything is not really true: storage for example
read what I actually said. Unlimited everything ON PROTON PASS obviously the storage space you get on proton mail and proton drive is finite
oh, sorry, you’re right
While I’m using Proton rn, I’m planning to migrate to Posteo with Addy.io for aliases. However they all cost money. If you mean free email that’s not tie to a billionaire, I can’t think one off my head. You can achieve “free” by hosting your own email server as it sounds you’re intended for receiving only, but the electricity still cost some, plus you are doning free labor to make sure it is happy.
