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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hmm, looks like proton isn’t too bad. Unless you are living in a cave using tor and bots you are tracked.
I wish alternative services like Proton weren’t so expensive for their family plans.
Proton has been completely reworked recently and it’s now a quite good looking app/website.
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.
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.
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