What email providers do you prefer? I’m starting to need emails for my kids to log into the random games and such that they want to play with their friends, and I would like to give them a good start outside of the gmail/icloud eco-systems.
Bonus if the provider has decent spam filtering.
Anyone else buy their gmail invites off of ebay back in the day when it was invite only? 2004 iirc. My how google has changed since then. Edit: I hope this is an okay topic for the Coffee Break category. Can remove if it’s too far off topic.
I can’t recommend the one I use as it is quite terrible the provider I use is called GMX they are ok but if you don’t log in for more than 6 months they will just delete your account with no way of recovering it
The sad part is this: they are all bad. By that, I mean they took ESG grant money instead of offering their services at a reasonable price as opposed to no cost. They still have to pay the more well known tech firms for search engine visibility. The least slimy I have found as far as not getting involved in spying, browbeating, and exclusionary practices against their users, is Tuta. Even then, you will still have to mitigate your risk because there is no such thing as privacy and anonymity on the Internet. Until something better comes along (or you decide to host your own email), you will have to decide what is the lesser of many evils.
I am considering KolabNow, but it’s not in the budget yet. They use existing open source products and offer them as a paid service. Supporting projects directly that are not taking grants or donations is probably what is going to save FOSS.
I realize that probably doesn’t help much, but it’s where we are at now.
I use Proton right now and am pretty happy with it. If you’re looking to have multiple emails, though, you’ll have to pay for a premium account (I got one on a Black Friday deal a little while ago, and it wasn’t too bad). I also use their VPN and cloud storage. While not perfect from a privacy standpoint (because we likely can never have “perfect” privacy online), Proton is definitely better than google and apple.
Proton is excellent, but in my case, Gmail is still necessary for professional reasons. Unfortunately, with Google Workspace for Education, even young students are being directed into that ecosystem early on—which I find concerning.
I also use Proton. I like the feature of being able to create an email alias on the fly. Being able to give a separate email address that you can easily register at one place and if it starts drawing a lot of spam, change it to another one and delete the previous one is really nice.
Of course doing multiple accounts won’t work with the free accounts, but multiple accounts for a small fee is worth it in my opinion.
@Thomas-Cee I can offer two options. Back in the day, I used Kattare for hosting services when I had a web site design business. At this point, I’m really only maintaining my old domain name so I don’t lose it, but I still have an email address there that costs me only $2 a month. They are pretty reasonable and the email works well.
The other option is what I opted to do for my author website. For that, I have two Linodes, but you can use any cloud provider (I’ve heard good things about Vultr). One Linode runs a static website that has PHP for a contact form. The other Linode runs an email server I set up using iRedMail and some help from a Luke Smith video.
Of course, having your own email server opens up a world of possibilities. You can put as many accounts on there as you want. I already mentioned a PHP-based contact form. This uses my email server to send me an email if somebody wants to contact me about my book. I also have a couple Nextcloud instances (one for my church, one for my family) that use the email server to send notifications.
Okay interesting and good to know thank you. Also Kolab looks very interesting. Will explore their pricing.
Yes @wes, agree; there is a world in which a gmail account used for a few items is helpful/necessary depending on the use case/work, whatever. I’ve got a Proton email (also @WilsonPhillips and @LeeTalbert), but haven’t explored it extensively, but maybe it’s time to change that and pay for their service.
Interesting @sez11a; setting up my own email is something I’d thought about, but never done. iRedMail made me think of Red China originally, but I see it’s RedHat they are referring to lol. Huh, that’s a very interesting option to consider if I went that route.
I’m sure I’m not the only one with the ‘problem’, but the annoyance of having so many emails from so many different providers that have collected over the years does get bothersome. Then throw in work and old education accounts that are still alive for continuing education and it’s quite ridiculous If I can save my kids some of that pain and get them started on the right foot that would be nice.
I recommend two, for the most part, and add a bonus that is semi-recommended.
The two I recommend are:
Fastmail — Great service overall, your data is encrypted at rest but they have the encryption keys, so it’s not E2EE by any means, but it is secure and you have a reasonable expectation that the company itself is not invading your privacy.
Proton Mail — I am a visionary user here, have accounts for all of my immediate family (spouse and kids). Compatibility with “traditional” email apps is doable but you need to use their mail bridge. It is possible to use tailscale combined with the mail bridge to basically make a “traditional” email server you can connect any email client to from anywhere in the world. Your data is E2EE.
The bonus is Tuta. I pay for an account with them to support their continued development, but I don’t think I’d use it as my full time email account. I do have some emails going to there though and continue to evaluate it.
I would not recommend Proton services, and I especially would not pay for them. They received a lot of grant money from intel agencies and have since adopted a CoC and joined the ESG grant programs (basically, if you pay taxes you are paying for their services whether you wanted to or not):
Respectfully, if we use this standard to judge services by, then the earliest SELinux was developed by the NSA, and Tor had its roots in the Office of Naval Research with funding from DARPA. The government was using early forms of “the internet” before it was generally available. I guess my point is, a lot of the things we use regularly, and rely on heavily, can be traced back to have some form of shadowy influence or funding at some point in its life. I don’t think there’s been any concrete evidence put forth that Proton specifically is not to be trusted.
Again, I mean this with all due respect, I’m not trying to be divisive. I just see a lot of people throw Proton under the bus for things like this when in reality, I don’t think it amounts to anything.
Is Proton perfect? No, but it is not gmail and it is not hotmail. The only perfect email is self hosted, and I don’t want the issues of keeping hackers out of my server.
Not to mention, when it comes to self hosting, it’s nearly impossible to maintain domain reputation with the “big guys.” I have hosted a mail server for over a decade, I constantly make sure the domain reputation stays high. However, some overzealous spam lists will include my IP because they are including bigger blocks of IPs from other people, who are in fact spamming. Aside from that, Gmail regularly likes to reject mail from my server, for no good reason. It’s very, very difficult to self host email anymore, unfortunately.
I am surprised that nobody has yet mentioned GnuPG / GPG signing and encrypting their email contents before those emails ever leave their email client, hit their remote mailboxes and hop across the internet (you need to be using an actual email client and not any kind of webmail to work with GPG).
If people are worried about privacy of their email contents, the simplest way to at least be assured that only intended recipients can read the contents of emails sent to them is to encrypt and sign each email before it ever goes near your outbox so that only the intended recipient can decrypt the contents to read it (of course the recipient also needs to have GPG setup for encrypted email conversations to work).
Most people are lazy rather than proactive and do not want to take the minimal steps to setup GPG in the first place and instead think that an email provider alone will secure their mailbox for them, email providers only care about securing access to their services to protect their own reputation, their sales and revenue streams, ultimately in that situation they hold the security keys, not the customer.
It is also a culture thing where people are accepting propaganda as verbatim such as all the falsehoods around and some outright fake claims of E2EE being shoved down everyone’s throats by big-tech which has been going on for years and is installed into the minds of populations ad nauseam.
Back to GPG, for anyone interested in setting up GPG so they can at least have the ability to encrypt and sign their emails then this site is about the best and most straightforward guide to doing that - https://emailselfdefense.fsf.org
Even if you are self-hosting your own email services it is always worth having GPG set up in your email client so that you have the ability to encrypt your emails should you need to.
I have jumped through all the hoops to get encrypted email set up and have never sent a single encrypted message. No one can open one on the other end. The only places that matter are my bank, and they send me unencrypted emails to tell me to log into my account to read the important message they are sending me.
I think nobody has mentioned GPG because the OP was about providers specifically, however, GPG is a good thing to set up if you’re wanting to maximize your privacy. It also removes a dependency on provider in terms of, it literally doesn’t matter what service you use, none of them will be able to read your mail (though they will still have all of the metadata, the who, when, to whom, from where, etc—which as the EFF says, is important as well: Why Communication Metadata Matters).
That said, most “normies” are never going to bother with it. Additionally, email was never designed to be a secure protocol—it wasn’t even that long ago that emails crossed the internet in plain text, unencrypted format. Only in the last few years have providers started making TLS and SSL connectivity with mail services standard.
None of this should be seen as a deterrent to people considering using GPG/PGP, just stating facts.
Honestly, services like Protonmail wouldn’t need to exist if it were easier to set up GPG for normies. But as @WilsonPhillips said, the technically inclined can set it up for every account they have, but Grandma, Aunt Susie, or Biff from the alumni association are not going to go through the process of key exchange so they can email you securely or receive your messages, which limits who you can securely email.
For me, I’m easily distractable, so I absolutely despise webmail. I’m trying to keep apps out of my browser, not put more in. KMail manages my GMail accounts, both personal and work (this also keeps out the stupid ads) as well as my other accounts. I’ve actually tried switching email clients many times, but I can’t get away from KMail, since I’ve been using it since 1998 or so—originally on Mandrake Linux.
I had a fiery reply written then I re-read everything and toned it down a bit
Yeah, part of the reason I’m asking is so I can hear all your input on topics I was unaware of and make a choice (thank you for all your perspectives). I know Proton has some brand recognition and is pretty widely used; I don’t doubt for a second it’s way better than gmail/iCloud/whatever.
However: A primary goal of Proton Community is to be inclusive to the largest number of contributors, with the most varied and diverse backgrounds possible. As such, we are committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, ability, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and religion (or lack thereof).
The PRIMARY GOAL. Wild their primary goal can’t be like, you know… Create great privacy tools in a severely lacking arena. So dang annoying.
No weapons will be allowed at Proton Community events, community spaces, or in other spaces covered by the scope of this Code of Conduct. Welp, I’m done. Good for them they can be so high on their horse and can turn up their noses at people men OR women who need and pursue options to legally protect themselves; not to mention areas of the world that are particularly dangerous. It’s ironic that I was using my Proton email for all my firearm forums/continuing education. Yeah if Proton wanted to hit a nerve that was it. Thank you for linking that trashy CoC. I get it I can’t avoid all of them, but I WAS asking because in the case of email, there are a few choices thankfully.
Again, I fully realize they are a great alternative to google/iCloud, and that I can’t avoid all CoCs. But I can avoid that one.
Hilarious Rich so true ha ha!
How do you get around that @uro? I’ll read those links thank you for sharing them. Do you just utilize it when you can; and not worry about it when emailing grandma, to borrow Rich’s example?
If I can save my kids some of that pain and get them started on the right foot that would be nice.
