Anyone have experience with atMail? ( http://atmail.org/ )
My ISP uses AtMail. It's decent, almost never get spam but the interface is a bit weird, I suppose you could get used to it though.
Ask HN: Gmail alternatives?
111–120 of 142 posts
Re: Ask HN: Gmail alternatives?
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the Gmail UI is excellent and I love it, but I'm starting to have privacy concerns.
Not to restate the obvious, but e-mail goes around in plaintext. Whatever Google is doing with your e-mail can also be done by your ISP (and your recipients' ISPs, and anyone between). One could make the case that hosting on Gmail has greater privacy in this respect, since if you send to any other Gmail address, the e-mail probably stays within the Google network.
But as someone pointed out in another subthread, it doesn't matter if Google is the best secured, least spammed provider in the world (and they may well be), if they turn around and leak your contacts lists. The comments in the big long buzz thread about peoples' client lists becoming aware of each other was pretty egregious.
Re: Ask HN: Gmail alternatives?
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but if it's in your house, you at least know it happened and can try and fight it. If google hands over your data you may never know. I think in many cases they'd likely be barred from telling you even if they wanted to. Note: IANAL
On the other hand, Google has a lot of resources and lawyers to fight off the government if they come knocking, and they've been known to fight to the max in the past. You? Not so much. If the FBI shows up at your door, you're toast.
Like this guy? http://w2.eff.org/legal/cases/SJG/
(Hint: the opposite. The government had to pay him damages for seizing his computers.)
Re: Ask HN: Gmail alternatives?
#114Run your own mailserver. If you don't trust Google with your data, there's nobody else I would trust. There are plenty of open-source webmail apps if that matters to you.
There is a high possibility that Google's server is 10 times more secure than any average Joe's mail server. Even more secure than a security expert's server as well: http://www.darknet.org.uk/2009/08/dan-kaminsky-kevin-mitnick... Do you have time to manage and keep your server secure? Can you patch a new 0day in an hour, possibly not. On the other hand when men-in-black asks to Google yes they might give it away, wh…
Google's server may be 10 times more secure, but it's probably targeted about 10000 times as much as my own server.
Re: Ask HN: Gmail alternatives?
#115Run your own mailserver. If you don't trust Google with your data, there's nobody else I would trust. There are plenty of open-source webmail apps if that matters to you.
deal with spamming sucks.
Re: Ask HN: Gmail alternatives?
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the other hand, Google has a lot of resources and lawyers to fight off the government if they come knocking, and they've been known to fight to the max in the past. You? Not so much. If the FBI shows up at your door, you're toast.
Like this guy? http://w2.eff.org/legal/cases/SJG/ (Hint: the opposite. The government had to pay him damages for seizing his computers.)
I was skeptical but I'm really swayed by a victory that occured six years prior to the PATRIOT act.
Re: Ask HN: Gmail alternatives?
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
On you own server you decide what and for how long data will be stored. In the government wants your server you can format your hard drive if you want (or whatever you think is fit). I bet you can't do that if your mail is on google (or yahoo, msn, etc for that matters)
In the government wants your server you can format your hard drive if you want. That is illegal and ineffective. Full-disk encryption provides much more safety, both legally and technically. (They could still sneak into your house and install a hardware keylogger that gets your encryption passphrase, and then seize the disks. But this is real life, not a movie.)
Well, they do have hardware to seize a running server without shutting it down (by splicing into the power cables/power lines at the wall plate and introducing battery power). How secure is a running machine sitting in a forensic lab? If you're receiving mail from the net your disk is necessarily unencrypted, right? I guess you would also need some sort of dead-man trigger. Suggestions?
Re: Ask HN: Gmail alternatives?
#118http://www.lavabit.com/ They (claim to) use some sort of encryption scheme such that they do not have access to the data on their own servers. I don't know enough about crypto to verify, but if your concern for moving away from Google is privacy and/or security, it's probably worth at least a cursory glance.
Here's the description. Can anyone tell us if this seems secure? http://lavabit.com/secure.html
It doesn't seem very secure that they give out their security measures. I mean, "To increase the randomness of our hash outputs...combines the password with the account name," so now I know they use an account name so what is the point in that tiny part? Many little parts of this just give away stuff that should be secret in my opinion. That doesn't necessarily make it insecure, just a dumb idea if something ever did go wrong. Overall the process sounds good if you just want to store data on their server and not have it be readable if someone happens to come across a "dead" HDD that lavabit threw away.
Oh, on a similar note: how do they decrypt these messages after you have verified your user/password during sign in if it requires the plaintext password to decrypt each message? By storing the password in a plaintext session database?
Re: Ask HN: Gmail alternatives?
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any recommendations for open-source webmail?
I use RoundCube, and I'm very happy with it so far. It has a very active developer base, and it offers the closest thing to an email client experience. I'm currently working on an "Outlook" theme for it, which should be done soon. My mail server stack looks like: Linode + Postfix + Dovecot (w/mySQL & imap) + RoundCube + SpamAssassin + managesieve. With this setup, I get more powerful mail filters than Gmail, a better…
It would be great if you created a Linode StackScript. This would allow anyone to replicate your configuration on their own Linode easily.
Re: Ask HN: Gmail alternatives?
#120Zoho Mail offers most of the Gmail feature set (including support for custom domains) with an adequate user interface.
How is spam on zoho mail?
(Disclosure: I am the CEO of Zoho).
We use Zoho Mail for our own 1000 employees. My company email address has been around and active for 13 years. I get 450 spam messages a day. Zoho Mail typically misses catching 1 or 2 a day; far more important to me, I can trust is not to have false positives (genuine mail going into spam).
We invite you to try it out.
On our business model: Zoho.com is free for individuals, without advertising. For businesses & domain based email, first 10 users are free, again without advertising. We charge $50/user/year (note: per YEAR) from the 11th user.
We do not believe in the advertising model for Zoho. Our business model is subscription based, with a generous free edition. We find this model to be financially viable.