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.
Protonmail.
I have over 25 different online accounts/identities (each one for a different topic gaming, movies, music, coding etc.), all Protonmail based.
Absolutely. But one thing I didn’t like was it locked me from using Proton services (even free plan) once my premium plan ran out until I paid $6 cancelation fee BS.
LOL. Proton is absolutely not run by a fascist.
You should learn what fascism is and what they do.
Proton CEO is way WAY more tame than actual fascists. It’s actually not even close IMO.
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.
Oh, shut up already with that misinformation bullshit. Don’t even for a moment pretend if your government showed up with a warrant for information that you would be some fucking noble idiot and refuse to comply. And if you even dare pretend otherwise, you’re a fucking liar.
They gave the Swiss his IP and nothing else, and loudly complained about having to do so and how it was government overreach. Even if they had chosen to immediately shut down, they still would have had their servers seized and been given no choice to comply.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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).
The ProtonMail CEO recently said that Trump “fights for the little guy”. I know that’s not a substantial critique of their privacy policy or encryption standards, but I wouldn’t trust a company that says something so baseless, divisive, and in support of a fascist oligarch.
Honestly, I know this is entirely subjective, but I never liked the vibes from proton especially in the last year. I’m going to use my animal instincts and just avoid them.
That said, I really need new email service so looking at options
And frankly, even if he’s not a facist himself, the CEO saying something that fucking stupid makes me think that you shouldn’t trust him to run the slurpee machine at a 7-11, let alone something sensitive like your email.
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.
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?
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.
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
I use Fastmail with my own domain. Not free, but worth it given how much I rely on my email/calendar. There’s a 30-day free trial before committing though, so you can kick the tires before deciding.
I’m currently using Migadu. It’s $20/year for their cheapest plan. They give you a lot of control over the email service, so it might not be the best if you’re a noob. In fact, they require you bring a domain name. But, they let you create unlimited users, aliases, have fancy routing, etc.
If you do decide to get a custom domain, just some tips:
get something that ends in .net or even better .com because shitty companies with shitty IT departments will block other TLDs (I’ve had this happen with FedEx and my local garbage company). There is no spam folder for them, the email just explodes.
probably don’t pick a domain with one of your names it in for better anonymity, unless I guess you have a popular last name? john@smith.com looks cool, but consider if you want random sites like lemmy to have that data.
don’t pick a homophone or weird word because at some point you’ll have to speak your email to another human and it’s really awkward to tell your bank that your email is john@piggy.park or john@maill.com or was it john@male.com?
Also, the web interfaces of some of these other email services might not be as good as Gmail’s UI. It helps to use an email client instead. Thunderbird is fine or you could use something simpler like claws-mail or even something like mutt.
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).
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i currently use tuta. it has a free tier, offers encryption, is open source, gdpr-compliant, and is 100% powered by green energy.
i have used mailbox in the past, which is paid (cheapest tier is ~€12/yr). i can recommend it as well.
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.
Tutanota or disroot.
Protonmail. I have over 25 different online accounts/identities (each one for a different topic gaming, movies, music, coding etc.), all Protonmail based.
Proton has a good service
Absolutely. But one thing I didn’t like was it locked me from using Proton services (even free plan) once my premium plan ran out until I paid $6 cancelation fee BS.
Proton is run by a fascist. Its only a matter of time until they too will Start sucking Trumps balls
LOL. Proton is absolutely not run by a fascist. You should learn what fascism is and what they do. Proton CEO is way WAY more tame than actual fascists. It’s actually not even close IMO.
he is at least a very dumb person if he believes Trump sides against bigtech
do you know of alternative? I wanted to leave them because of this but found they most other options were not as close as good.
look up what fascist means dumbass, it’s more than just someone you disagree with.
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.
There’s also Tuta if you’re looking for an alternative.
I don’t think leaving Proton due to their CEO approving Trump is that reasonable
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.
Oh, shut up already with that misinformation bullshit. Don’t even for a moment pretend if your government showed up with a warrant for information that you would be some fucking noble idiot and refuse to comply. And if you even dare pretend otherwise, you’re a fucking liar.
They gave the Swiss his IP and nothing else, and loudly complained about having to do so and how it was government overreach. Even if they had chosen to immediately shut down, they still would have had their servers seized and been given no choice to comply.
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.
Yeah, ok, sure bud. You’re a fucking liar.
Think what you will.
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
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.
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.
Several links, here:
https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/06/protonmail-logged-ip-address-of-french-activist-after-order-by-swiss-authorities/
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58476983
https://www.euronews.com/next/2021/09/07/protonmail-criticised-for-passing-arrested-french-climate-activist-s-ip-address-to-police
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! 🙂
The ProtonMail CEO recently said that Trump “fights for the little guy”. I know that’s not a substantial critique of their privacy policy or encryption standards, but I wouldn’t trust a company that says something so baseless, divisive, and in support of a fascist oligarch.
Honestly, I know this is entirely subjective, but I never liked the vibes from proton especially in the last year. I’m going to use my animal instincts and just avoid them.
That said, I really need new email service so looking at options
Agree. They’ve been very persistent to sell their paid plans, e.g. the first thing I see after logging in to Proton Mail is their pop-up ads.
And frankly, even if he’s not a facist himself, the CEO saying something that fucking stupid makes me think that you shouldn’t trust him to run the slurpee machine at a 7-11, let alone something sensitive like your email.
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.
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.
tutanota is pretty good
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?
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.
I use Fastmail with my own domain. Not free, but worth it given how much I rely on my email/calendar. There’s a 30-day free trial before committing though, so you can kick the tires before deciding.
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!
https://www.privacyguides.org/en/email/
I’m currently using Migadu. It’s $20/year for their cheapest plan. They give you a lot of control over the email service, so it might not be the best if you’re a noob. In fact, they require you bring a domain name. But, they let you create unlimited users, aliases, have fancy routing, etc.
https://purelymail.com/ looks interesting too. And is cheaper at $10/year.
If you do decide to get a custom domain, just some tips:
.netor even better.combecause shitty companies with shitty IT departments will block other TLDs (I’ve had this happen with FedEx and my local garbage company). There is no spam folder for them, the email just explodes.john@smith.comlooks cool, but consider if you want random sites like lemmy to have that data.john@piggy.parkorjohn@maill.comor was itjohn@male.com?Also, the web interfaces of some of these other email services might not be as good as Gmail’s UI. It helps to use an email client instead. Thunderbird is fine or you could use something simpler like claws-mail or even something like mutt.
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).