Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#451

Post by bogomipz » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 2:42 PM UTC

fovc wrote: post #430

lvillani wrote: post #86

FastMail. It's one of the few third party hosts to support push email on iOS with the native Mail app (it's a custom protocol based on APNS), since Mail doesn't implement IMAP IDLE [1]. They are also the main sponsors behind the JMAP protocol [2] and some open source projects such as the Cyrus IMAP server. [1]: https://fastmail.blog/2016/12/21/what-we-talk-about-when-we-... [2]: https://jmap.io

Just to provide some balance to the feedback: I've been using FastMail for 2 years and am mostly "meh" on it. My issues are with the web interface (which is largely why I use them instead of running my own server): - No delay send/undo send. Allegedly in the works for ages - Very buggy editor. Randomly slows to a crawl while composing, scrolls up and down erratically - Cannot handle very long threads very well. (sinc…

Good to know, thanks. Can you say how is the search functionality and indexing on the inbox on Fastmail?

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#452

Post by aidenn0 » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 2:44 PM UTC

ryukafalz wrote: post #398

bad_user wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an European, but I don't mind. First of all when making such a choice, you have to identify who the enemy is. If you're talking about global enemies, like the NSA, then IMO without end-to-end encryption you're screwed. And if you're targeted directly, you're screwed regardless, given they have the capability to use whatever vulnerabilities they can find in your router, your phone, your OS, your browser, etc. If i…

>Organizations like EFF have been historically anti-government, but very pro corporate and private companies. I don't think I'd call EFF either anti-government or pro-corporate. Rather, they have a set of positions around surveillance, the public domain, etc. and side with or against governments or private companies based on those positions. I donate to them, and in my experience they've been pretty consistent on the…

They do see government surveillance as a greater threat than private surveillance, particularly if the private surveillance is disclosed. This makes sense as it is much harder to opt-out of your government than a contract with a private company.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#453

Post by lucb1e » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 2:44 PM UTC

I self host using hMailServer (open source) and Thunderbird. It's so user friendly, if you are capable of installing software generally, you'll also manage this with no problems (maybe some reading up if you don't know the difference between IMAP and POP3, but that's about it).

The issue is that HMS is Windows-only, but the ease of use is superb compared to anything I've seen on Linux. And it's open source so I'm moderately happy keeping this legacy system running in a VM until it's ported or a manageable alternative comes along.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#454

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 2:48 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#455

Post by dailen » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 2:52 PM UTC

plicense wrote: post #302

rajuvegesna wrote: post #94

Zoho Mail is a strong option. Comes with mobile apps, supports all standard protocols (IMAP/POP/ActiveSync), includes Calendar and many other modules. Zero tracking. Zero ads. Beyond Mail, Zoho offers several apps that can replace most of what Google offers. From Docs to office suite, note-taking to chat and many more. (Disclosure: I am with Zoho)

To be honest, I would stay away from Zoho. I know a couple of friends who work there and they frequently mention having access to raw email contents with minimal supervision. That's now how I want my email to be treated by the company hosting my email services.

Most email providers have some sort of ability to seeing raw data. That's the problem with email protocols, not the company. When necessary it's largely used for legal purposes (i.e. think subpoenas or court evidence in general), virus tracking (finding who got the first one or first to open "that email"), technical issues, etc.

I can personally say I know how sift through probably 5 or 6 different email systems or providers for this kind of data. It may seem "creepy", it did to me at first, but after awhile you realize, in business at least, there's really nothing of interest. Probably only like 99.999% of emails exchanged will have nothing incriminating, embarrassing, or even worth reading. It's kind of like being the key holder for a safe. Someone's gotta be the keyholder and be able to access the data for when necessary. Sometimes there's an inherent level of trust required and usually they just dgaf what's there.

It's kind of like a virtual manifestation of the "IT Closet" that almost all companies have. A bunch of places I've worked there's a office or closet where all the old PCs, laptops, and hard drives get stashed away. All the IT staff get access, and yes the could go rummaging around looking for personal pics, old tax records, etc, most of the time it's just not a valid concern worth anyone's time to steal or protect.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#456

Post by infogulch » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 2:52 PM UTC

simfoo wrote: post #432

bad_user wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an European, but I don't mind. First of all when making such a choice, you have to identify who the enemy is. If you're talking about global enemies, like the NSA, then IMO without end-to-end encryption you're screwed. And if you're targeted directly, you're screwed regardless, given they have the capability to use whatever vulnerabilities they can find in your router, your phone, your OS, your browser, etc. If i…

Thanks for you comment. I agree that the NSA is not _my_ enemy and I am probably not being targeted. However, as more people start thinking like that, those that _are_ targeted (journalists, lawyers, activists etc.) will have less options to hide among users of more privacy-aware service providers. In a way, by using these providers you shield those who need their services the most

This strikes me as a kind of herd-immunity argument but for privacy.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#457

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 2:54 PM UTC

tkim90 wrote: post #435

Can anyone expliain why G Suite (the paid version of Gmail) is not considered safe for data privacy? From the site it says they are encrypted, regularly audited by 3rd parties and not used for ads. https://gsuite.google.com/faq/security/

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#458

Post by born2burn » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 2:55 PM UTC

Protonmail. It is a free service from a company in Switzerland with end to end encryption. To add your own domain it charges few bucks a month. I used to self host but have moved to it completely.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#459

Post by daxorid » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 2:57 PM UTC

jsmeaton wrote: post #372

fps_doug wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, b…

> You don’t get to say that without providing evidence

Put a parakeet in a windowless room and close the door. I can reasonably make the statement that the parakeet is perching, looking around, and/or preening its feathers, because that's what parakeets do. I wouldn't need direct observational evidence to make this statement.

Panopticon-level spying is what intelligence agencies do. It's what they've striven to do, as much as possible, without getting caught. The Binney and Snowden leaks corroborate this, and there's no reason to believe they've suddenly stopped trying to. OP doesn't need evidence to make the reasonable claim that intelligence agencies spy on us, and likely do it by hoovering up our data for analysis.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#460

Post by brongondwana » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 2:58 PM UTC

ahje wrote: post #426

brongondwana wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, as a self-hoster your email is much more prone to metadata analysis than anybody who is hosted at one of the big providers and has most of their email transferred to other big providers down TLS-protected port 25 streams.

Absolutely! Everyone has their own usage case, and one has to adapt accordingly -- even me! :) My point was that simply selecting an email provider outside the US does not make email safe in any way and that end-to-end encryption is the only way to prevent providers from accessing the content.

Absolutely. Our argument (and to be fair, we are a provider) is that if you don't trust your provider then they're basically just a dumb blob transit pipeline. There's not much value add you can do there.

So we have focused on building the best thing we can for people who _do_ trust their provider, and also on having a business model which means that we can be a trustworthy provider because we have no secondary "customer" who is actually paying the bills. We don't have split loyalties.