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Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

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Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#371

Post by bookofjoe »

catwell wrote: post #234
simfoo wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing to keep in mind about Fastmail is that all their servers are hosted in the US and they have no plan about changing this (I asked). Post-Snowden this means you can be quite sure that all mails will end up being analysed by the US authorities

> all their servers are hosted in the US Not true, they have a lot of servers in Europe (Amsterdam). That doesn't make the issue less valid though, since I think they have a full copy of all the data on both sides of the ocean.

All their servers are belong to us. I know humor here is frowned upon, but I couldn't resist. Sorry.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#372

Post by jsmeaton »

fps_doug wrote: post #318
jsmeaton wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont think this is true. I don’t believe there is any evidence that the US government is analysing all emails hosted by all US companies. Rather, if the US government asks for a particular individuals emails the provider must grant the request provided there is a valid (possibly secret) warrant.

Post Snowden I wouldn't safely assume that the govt/three letter agencies don't do something just because there is no evidence. Snowden was years ago, the NSA surely didn't sit on their hands in the meantime, especially now with SSL being deployed everywhere. "Oh right what we did was evil and wrong, let's stop everyone"

The claim made was that they do. You don’t get to say that without providing evidence. You can say they might be, but that’s a different claim.

Also, capabilities matter. I have no doubt if they could they would. The Snowden revelations mainly revealed partnerships between service providers and gov agencies. Simply existing in the US does not mean your data is automatically available to 3 letter agencies. It could, but there is no evidence to suggest that it is.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#373

Post by [deleted] »

brongondwana wrote: post #246
catwell wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all their servers are hosted in the US Not true, they have a lot of servers in Europe (Amsterdam). That doesn't make the issue less valid though, since I think they have a full copy of all the data on both sides of the ocean.

We are moving away from Amsterdam - so it will be full copies on both sides of the USA, and nothing in Amsterdam any more.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#374

Post by distances »

nicolasp wrote: post #227
wffurr wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's £25 a year or £2 a month.

The standard plan is $5 per user per month, so for 5 users that's $25/mo.

The basic is $3 though. I have migrated all my private emails I've ever sent or received (some tens of thousands, starting from 90s) to Fastmail. Still well under the 2GB limit of the basic plan.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#375

Post by jgeraert »

JoshuaAshton wrote: post #271
vbrandl wrote: post #146

I'm self-hosting my mail server using mailcow[0] for little over a year now and everything works fine. It comes with a admin interface to manage accounts and the SoGo webmail client[1]. Getting it up and running was also pretty easy. Create some DNS records as described in the documentation, cloning the repository and starting everything using docker-compose. [0]: https://mailcow.email/ [1]: https://github.com/invers…

I'd much prefer it if there was just 1 docker container and not a whole compose stack. I much prefer 1 docker container == 1 service.

Well, there are multiple services involved in an email stack so I guess it does what you ask for.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#376

Post by billysielu »

davemp wrote: post #342
_jcwu wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should be using your own domain anyways.

I do this and make a new alias for everyone I give an address to (such as hn@domain.com). It can be interesting to see who leaks/sell your email address. You can also shut down alias that get out of control.

I do this too but sometimes companies reject my replies because the from address isn't the same address they have on record. Maybe there's a way to make the "reply's from" the same as the "original's to" but idk.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#377

Post by fwsgonzo »

gcatalfamo wrote: post #172
SuperNinKenDo wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gmail is not free, you just pay in non-monetary terms. It's up to you to decide how you want to weight your priorities.

Privacy is important, but money is a non negotiable priority if you don't have it.

In a way that is a very sad thing. I am thinking of all the people who have no choice but to use everything free, and then be the product.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#378

Post by bachmeier »

brongondwana wrote: post #360
ersiees wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why isn’t it actually possible to just encrypt saved emails on server? So that government does not have access. Couldn’t one use a hash of the password as key for the data for the data and not save that hash to check password but another one. This way (practically), at least if the password is not eavesdropped and saved by the mail provider, it would be much harder to give away emails.

Apart from the "users lose their passwords all the fricking time" problem (seriously, before we implemented https://fastmail.blog/2017/12/06/security-account-recovery/ , lost password was always in the top 3 most common support requests of the week report) Impementing per-message-encryption would turn us into a dumb blob store. The whole point of FastMail is the value add - fast search, ability to deal with a lot of…

> we require people to create app passwords

I like that, because it at least feels more secure to have a password that can only be used once, combined with the ability to go into the settings and shut off any device if it gets lost.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#379

Post by microtonal »

brongondwana wrote: post #356
dijit wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes me sad, but I'm sure there are reasons for this. Would it be possible to explain them (or link me to a document explaining them)?

Basically the problem was datacentre network reliability, power reliability, and the pointlessness of having one EU datacentre which isn't reliable enough to run production out of. We'd still need to replicate to a second datacentre for multi-site safety. At that point, why bother? We'd have to run two EU datacentres to have data only in EU, and we'd still be under the same actual legal jurisdiction (Australia) eithe…

We haven't ever given data to US authorities directly, we point every single request from anyone to the Mutual Assistance Treaty with Australia, and that would be the same regardless of where servers are.

The EU is outside the jurisdiction of FISA courts, whereas New York is not. I am definitely not an expert or lawyer, but I would think this is not just security theater.

I was always hoping that Fastmail offer hosting that is fully in the EU. To me being affected by the Australian, EU, and US jurisdictions is worse than just the Australian and EU jurisdictions. Of course, I would prefer EU-only.

I am extremely happy with Fastmail. But if there was an EU e-mail provider with feature parity, I would probably switch. Not that I expect that that'll happen anytime soon (subdomain addressing and iPhone push notifications are killer features).

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#380

Post by brongondwana »

bachmeier wrote: post #378
brongondwana wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apart from the "users lose their passwords all the fricking time" problem (seriously, before we implemented https://fastmail.blog/2017/12/06/security-account-recovery/ , lost password was always in the top 3 most common support requests of the week report) Impementing per-message-encryption would turn us into a dumb blob store. The whole point of FastMail is the value add - fast search, ability to deal with a lot of…

> we require people to create app passwords I like that, because it at least feels more secure to have a password that can only be used once, combined with the ability to go into the settings and shut off any device if it gets lost.

Yeah, it's by far the best of the options that use standard username/password authentication support. Basically make the password be another server-provided factor rather than user-chosen.
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