This guy can be pretty harsh at times, but he’s clearly very knowledgeable..

However, not all providers have a recent review, and his priorities are skewed heavily to the “paranoid” side of the tech world. For example, he considers being able to mail cash to a provider a significant pro. The overwhelming majority of users aren’t mailing cash to pay for their email.

Overall, it’s good info that’s worth sharing.

  • 1984@lemmy.today
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    1 year ago

    I enjoyed the read. I’m a fastmail user and I didn’t pick it for real privacy but because it’s not Google. It’s better than Gmail, more features, looks better, faster etc.

    I don’t know how any email provider can provide real privacy since they have to scan for spam, malware, and so on.

    Fastmail is part of the 5 eyes surveillance network as well: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes

    • BansheeOP
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, his requirements for an email provider are well above what most people need.

      Email is not a secure means of communication in most cases. If the recipient isn’t encrypting, then your communications to them are vulnerable anyway. And in the vast majority of cases, they probably aren’t.

      Really, the best thing about getting a more privacy conscious provider is not giving all your data over to Google.

      • TurtleTourParty
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, I switched to Posteo mainly so all of my emails aren’t scanned by an advertising company.

        The main thing I dislike about the encrypted email providers is that I can’t use my own client, I’m stuck with whatever features they want to give me.

      • 1984@lemmy.today
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        1 year ago

        Yeah and getting away from Google is worth so much actually. People don’t seem to realize how important it is to simply not use Google and block their tracking scripts (on the web), and don’t use their free email service, naturally.

    • Myrbolg@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Exactly my reasoning. Get away from Google and advertising (though they said they are not using Gmail for that), get a better interface, masked emails. Fastmail is great.

  • WardPearce@lemmy.nz
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    1 year ago

    Thought this comment he made was odd about Proton mail.

    The site is filled by beautiful black screen without JavaScript enabled.

    Like yes, its a bit difficult implementing local encryption or decryption without js enabled.

    Has some good messaging, I’d say most of his comments are pretty widely known concerns or limitations.

    Like obviously web apps still rely on trust from the host, but it minimizes the attack surface massively.

  • Akip@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    Seems a bit nearsighted to accuse every service of malice and then completely ignore that tutanota fixes lackluster pgp encryption by also encrypting the subject line.

    This works virtually identically between both providers, except that Tutanota encrypts both the message body and subject line, whereas ProtonMail only encrypts the message body. This doesn’t pose a huge risk if you use the former service. Just make sure that your subject lines don’t contain any sensitive information. source

  • LucyLastic@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Laugh all you like, I’ve had the same AOL email address since 1997 and haven’t had problems with leaked information or spam. It doesn’t cost me anything, so I’m just going to carry on using it.

    • BansheeOP
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      1 year ago

      I’m glad you like it, but I’m just going to point out that Yahoo, which the AOL privacy policy page refers to, has probably the single most invasive email policy of any major provider.

      Yahoo analyzes and stores all communications content, including email content from incoming and outgoing mail. This allows us to deliver, personalize and develop relevant features, content, advertising and Services.

      They allude to telemetry, and use additional tracking even when not signed in. I hate saying this, but even Google has a better privacy policy.

      That’s kind of the point for a lot of us who opt to pay for an email. When email is free, it’s because your data is the product.

      • LucyLastic@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        That’s a shame, though being in the EU I wonder how much they’re legally allowed to keep.

        I guess I should make better use of my Proton mail account

  • dottedgreenline@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Great article. I was looking for a way to start degoogling myself. It seems Disroot and Riseup are their favoured services and Riseup requires an invite.

    Any recommendations for mail apps (on android) to use with disroot?

  • MarcDW@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Any idea how old that article is? Couldn’t find a date but the mention of Windows 7 tells me it’s not recent.

    I still have my netscape.net address (AOL) and all the others (Yahoo, MS Live, Outlook). Also a second GMail address that was created/converted when TheBat service shutdown.

    I use Thexyz and Purely Mail for normal use though.

    • BansheeOP
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      1 year ago

      It’s got updates from earlier this year. It appears to be updated periodically since it was first written. Some sections are old, while others are fairly new.

  • MotherFlocker@jlai.lu
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    1 year ago

    can use any email provider other than G, just make sure you isolate email. For example, use personal stuff for mail 1, use work related to mail 2 and anything else to mail 3 or so.