I use Protonmail as they offer quite a bit of privacy, offer lots of features, and are free. I particularly like that they protect from tracking pixels notifying the sender you read their email.
Privacy
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
Proton gang checking in. So much so that I pay them π (actually needed paid features)
Same. Proton gang.
I have plenty to criticize about their lack of creature comforts, but alas.
Yeah.... I love proton but their android app also needs work. They'll get there!
Yeah, the Android app is total garbage.
I don't know if it'll ever "get there" because they've not demonstrated that they're putting in any effort at all. It's currently on version 3.0.16. According to ApkMirror, they released 3.0.1 in June of 2022. So that's over a year of "stability improvements and bug fixes". Meanwhile they launched Proton Pass, Proton captcha, desktop clients for Drive, introducing new plans, etc.
Honestly, I just want threaded conversations on mobile.
They released the rewrite as a beta apk at the weekend for testers. So it's definitely going somewhere.
It's faster and has conversations on the app too.
https://proton.me/support/mail-android-beta
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/16veha9/join_the_new_proton_mail_beta_on_android/
Indeed, same here but while using my own domain name, this way if some day, for whatever reason, either they go "bad" or I find "better" I can switch without much worry.
Protonmail and SimpleLogin has been a great combo.
Posteo.de - 100% renewable energy. Full industry standard encryption. No tracking, no adds. Annual transparency report. Supporting social and environmental efforts. Great treatment of their employees.
mailbox.org is quite good. I prefer them over protonmail because I want to use my own client. If you don't care about using a web UI, use protonmail, otherwise use mailbox.org. you can also take a look at tutanota
Also comes with an XMPP account built in, although they should probably update their Ejabberd sometimes π
Opinion on the price changes? 1 eur plan doesn't work with custom domains anymore so I'm looking for alternatives.
Tbh I did not realize their prices increased. I'm happy to pay for their service though. It's the only subscription I pay.
Strictly speaking it's not a price increase, the 1 EUR plan is still there. However, support for custom domains has been removed and is only available from 3 EUR plan and upwards under the new pricing scheme.
I'm kind of grandfathered into the old 1 EUR plan that still supports custom domains, but I can't extend it any further. This means when my account credit dries up I need to choose one of the new pricing schemes ( 1 eur w/o custom domain vs 3 eur ... etc.)
I'm oldschool.
I've had my own domains and mail servers for the past 3 decades and will maintain them for as long as I live.
And these days, all but the storage runs of Pi3, so it's barely using any power either.
How is your deliverability? I've heard private servers are often blocked outright by the big providers but don't have any first hand experience with it myself.
Never had any big issues, as there have always been providers here that stood by having an open network for its subscribers, even in the dialup age.
And because they existed, the major providers don't tend to do that either (at least not anymore).
Most ludicrous thing is that the one time I DID have issues with port blocks (port 21/53/80/443 aka ftp/dns/http/https) was the first time I switched from a domestic line to a business one with one of the largest providers here. They did that as a default unless you called them to unblock everything.
But in the past decade, on fiber, never had an issue, the providers that were first to deliver fiber were new ones that broke from two of the major ISPs respectively owning ALL the coax and ALL the copper in the country, which allowed them to set their own rules.
And their competitive edge wasn't on price, but on giving you a ludicrously fast and stable connection with the only limitation being what the fiber could carry, although now, when the major ISPs are also finally providing fiber, their pricing compared to my own ISP is kinda ludicrous.
My current ISPs advertised philosophy is "security is your responsibility, a stable fast connection ours". And so far, they've held true to that.
Besides that, almost as long, I first rented and now own a box at a datacenter, which among its secondary tasks runs a backup NS and backup MX as I had the box anyway. To this date, the only times that backup had to do anything was when I was moving and when there are announced network maintenance or other works (of which the longest I can remember was 1 hour and only happen 2 times per year).
I get that if I lived in the US, this would not be quite as practical to achieve.
I worked for a US ISP in the early 00's, was looking to provide WIFI in rural Texas areas. Setup the hardware and backend for them. Became quickly apparent from what they were demanding from the backend, that their focus wasn't particularly to bring access to rural areas, but to milk the shit out of providing WIFI to rural areas.
Don't get me wrong tho, I still have several Gmail addresses that are as old as the service itself is. I rather use a gmail address to sign up to sites and have them deal with the subsequent deluge of spam, than to have that shit tax my own system :P
Is self hosting a valid answer?
I host my own email.
Where do you host that's reasonably priced and still has an IP pool that isn't immediately blacklisted by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft?
Proton (free - 1GB storage, 500MB before doing 4 "tasks") for family, friends, and business types uses, although I'd rather have an integrated calendar (instead of it being a separate app).
Tutanota (free - 1GB storage) for bills, purchases, etc., basically everything else, because I'm never going to say "my email is xxxxx@TUTAmail.com" to anyone I know, especially business acquaintances. So far, I like Tutanota more than Proton, especially the integrated calendar, but that name...... sounds like something my mother or grandparents were scammed into using.
On desktop, I'm currently using Thunderbird (TB) for a couple of older gmail accounts (in the process of transitioning away from), although I hate the recent update to TB. Haven't tried the Tutanota desktop app yet, but web version of email & calendar work adequately. Maybe I'll transition from TB now, after their recent changes.
Considered mailbox.org, but I'm not going to pay for it (no free version), especially when they don't at least have a cell app. Skiff may be worth looking at. Can't recall why I didn't try them.
EDIT: I've now installed Skiff (free - 10GB) as well and liking it so far. Using webmail seems easy and straight forward, cell app looks about the same (but haven't spent too much time on it yet). REALLY like that you basically get 4 email accounts (1 main and 3 alias account names), which is different than Tutanota and Proton. With the different aliases, this gives me an option to use Skiff for everything (if I choose to "put everything in one basket" at some point). Skiff sounds a little better than "Tuta" for business acquaintances as well, but not by much. No integrated calendar, but significantly larger storage is a plus.
I use Fastmail - not too expensive, really good webmail client, has working shared calendar that isn't OWA, and isn't advertising scraping my e-mail. I would have liked a more private service, but back when I moved from self hosted to a service, that was about the best I could get that also had calendaring.
Any email with cock in the name will trigger filtering. It also has the side effect of making me unemployable
I tried Proton, even paid for a year. But hot damn the Android app is garbage. So I've moved to Fastmail and I like it a lot. The app is snappy and I love that it has calendar, contacts, mail, notes, and files storage all in the same app. I used a custom domain with Proton so wasn't hard to switch to a different provider. Just wish I would've known how bad the mobile app was before I plunked down the money.
They are rewriting android app from scratch rn
I've heard that. Boy does it need it. But I'll admit I don't like that their focus seems to be on introducing new products instead of making their existing lineup more reliable/performant. And not making many strides in the Linux world.
Proton because it came with the vpn.
Email has no privacy, almost all my email communication is with companies I buy things from.
Moreover, I like that it removes power from google.
I use protonmail, simplelogin (for email aliases) and tutanota.
This one isn't for daily private use, more like a throwaway email service for when sites and services have no earthly business asking your email other than to track you and send junk mail...
dispostable.com
Edit: You don't even have to register an account with them, just make up an email with them and it should just work for most sites.
I use irrelevant at dispostable dot com to use Walmart's free WiFi, the password on Walmart's side is Walmart1 hahahaha!
Iβm gonna steal your walmart wifi
this is a sometimes useful website for sharing logins - especially for websies that shouldn't need logins.
Protonmail, but not really because of encryption. I just liked their Android client and webmail the most. I've had sensitive backups on Proton Drive for a long time, so that also played a role in the choice.
I hosted my own server for quite a few years, but the SMTP clients (Thunderbird, Evolution, K9 mail) all doing things slightly differently made me give up. Biggest push was that K9 mail didn't really move deleted mail to trash. These were probably dovecot configuration issues, but I got tired of searching for solutions. Never had any deliverability issues.
Tutanota. I used to use Proton, but they donβt encrypt folder names, which is a deal breaker. Tutanota does, and theyβre also a privacy respecting, reputable, decent service.
$10/year.
Every provider out there encrypts mail at rest. You're exchanging emails with Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail anyway. Pretending like your email is any safer with Proton or clones is a waste of money imho.
I'm in the process of migrating to Proton from Gmail and Outlook. All 4 mailboxes imported, now just the tedious job of updating credentials on all the websites remains...
I use runbox. It costs money, but is affordable. They also take privacy and security seriously, and they take steps to help the environment when possible.
Selfhosted mail-in-a-box solution. Easy to maintain and configure.
- It just works
any competently run service that gets you away from the tech conglomerates will work
fuck proton mail, bring your own encryption
Paid Proton Mail with my own domain name and own PGP keypair. Although it now has a way to securely search mail, I use the bridge service to allow Betterbird mail to sync my mail to my PC for searching.