Cutting Google out of your life (2019) • Hacker News Board

Re: Cutting Google out of your life (2019)

#121

Post by Narkov » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 3:10 AM UTC

sjwright wrote: post #97

elagost wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fastmail is great, but as this list is supposed to be "privacy focused", Fastmail (company from Australia) is not a good alternative. https://www.wired.com/story/australia-encryption-law-global-...

Privacy from whom though? I’d contend that more than 99% of people reading this would, in all honesty, consider their adversaries to be non-state actors—marketers, hackers and identity thieves. For the less than 1% of us for whom their adversary is a state actor, I would contend that any implementation of SMTP is non-viable, period. If you’re sufficiently paranoid, the only thing you can say for certain is that there…

This is the key. Model your threat and act accordingly.

There's (mostly) no reason for Joe Bloggs to want to protect themselves from a well funded state actor but they may want to prevent themselves being locked out of Google services because some bot triggered a threshold.

Re: Cutting Google out of your life (2019)

#122

Post by sjwright » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 3:17 AM UTC

im3w1l wrote: post #107

sjwright wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you fear the Russian legal system though? Are you really doing anything so controversial that you’d motivate Russian Intelligence to care about a foreigner?

I'd be more concerned about being blackmailed by Russian intelligence services.

To what end? Seems like a lot of work for a tiny return relative to the size of their Government.

Re: Cutting Google out of your life (2019)

#123

Post by crdoconnor » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 3:30 AM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #49

dempedempe wrote: post #29

I'm surprised to see that Fastmail is not listed as a Gmail alternative. I've tried it, Protonmail, and Zoho as replacements. IMO, Fastmail has the simplest interface and best suite of tools. I had trouble setting up an alias with Protonmail. Fastmail provides very clear instructions for this right on the app. Zoho was cool in that it lets you use a custom alias for free, but it just felt too cluttered. I also rememb…

I resisted switching to Fastmail for a long time because I believed Google's spam filtering was best-in-class. The reality is, for my accounts, I get more spam in gmail than in FastMail.

I've had countless false positives from Google's spam filter - everything from train tickets to cinema tickets to invitations to parties have been swallowed by it.

About 1 out of 15/20 emails that get flagged are legit. Most are newsletters I signed up to and don't particularly care about, but they're still not spam.

Re: Cutting Google out of your life (2019)

#124

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 3:39 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Cutting Google out of your life (2019)

#125

Post by dade_ » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 4:02 AM UTC

dempedempe wrote: post #29

I'm surprised to see that Fastmail is not listed as a Gmail alternative. I've tried it, Protonmail, and Zoho as replacements. IMO, Fastmail has the simplest interface and best suite of tools. I had trouble setting up an alias with Protonmail. Fastmail provides very clear instructions for this right on the app. Zoho was cool in that it lets you use a custom alias for free, but it just felt too cluttered. I also rememb…

I've been using mailbox.org for over a year. Very happy with the mail service - no reliability issues, supports Active Sync, built in support for PGP, works great with my own domain. They also accept bitcoin for payment. Their cloud storage uses OX Drive, but the sync clients range from bad to awful. I found the Windows client slow, the Android client awful and there isn't a Linux client.

I migrated to a self-hosted Nextcloud, which I love - wonderful client software and very flexible customizable. I didn't have any difficulties setting it up, it all seems very polished and quite mature.

I have found nothing that comes close to replacing Google Maps yet, but I hope that OSM has a bright future.

Re: Cutting Google out of your life (2019)

#126

Post by throw434324 » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 4:12 AM UTC

dempedempe wrote: post #29

I'm surprised to see that Fastmail is not listed as a Gmail alternative. I've tried it, Protonmail, and Zoho as replacements. IMO, Fastmail has the simplest interface and best suite of tools. I had trouble setting up an alias with Protonmail. Fastmail provides very clear instructions for this right on the app. Zoho was cool in that it lets you use a custom alias for free, but it just felt too cluttered. I also rememb…

> I also remember reading somewhere on HN that the creators of Protonmail have some dubious ties (and work in the same office) to a shady European data collection agency. Can't find the link atm.

Fastmail too is insecure by being run out of Australia - a strident member of the 5 eyes.

Re: Cutting Google out of your life (2019)

#127

Post by wrycoder » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 4:12 AM UTC

leejoramo wrote: post #110

epanchin wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the iOS app necessary/worthwhile? I’ve never thought to use it, just the standard mail app, which does cache.

The Fastmail app is very nice, but not required Using Apple’s iOS apps will give you better integration with the whole Apple ecosystem, Fastmail‘s app has better integration with a few of their specific features The biggest advantage of using Fastmail’s app is that searching emails is MUCH faster and flexible

I normally use the iOS Mail app to connect to Fastmail. This allows me to use the very useful VIP “inbox” to filter email. But, the Fastmail web interface also works great in iPhone Safari and provides their search facility.

On my Air or Linux workstations, I always use the Fastmail web interface, it’s better than a mail app, unless I’m doing something specialized - then it’s Mutt or even Gnus.

You can be logged into Fastmail from several computers simultaneously and processing email. It’s seamless, there is never a conflict. I believe they use Cyrus IMAP.

Re: Cutting Google out of your life (2019)

#128

Post by wrycoder » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 4:14 AM UTC

crdoconnor wrote: post #123

reaperducer wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I resisted switching to Fastmail for a long time because I believed Google's spam filtering was best-in-class. The reality is, for my accounts, I get more spam in gmail than in FastMail.

I've had countless false positives from Google's spam filter - everything from train tickets to cinema tickets to invitations to parties have been swallowed by it. About 1 out of 15/20 emails that get flagged are legit. Most are newsletters I signed up to and don't particularly care about, but they're still not spam.

Gmail sends “featured” spam.

Re: Cutting Google out of your life (2019)

#129

Post by throw434324 » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 4:16 AM UTC

ignoramous wrote: post #39

dempedempe wrote: post #29

I'm surprised to see that Fastmail is not listed as a Gmail alternative. I've tried it, Protonmail, and Zoho as replacements. IMO, Fastmail has the simplest interface and best suite of tools. I had trouble setting up an alias with Protonmail. Fastmail provides very clear instructions for this right on the app. Zoho was cool in that it lets you use a custom alias for free, but it just felt too cluttered. I also rememb…

> I also remember reading somewhere on HN that the creators of Protonmail have some dubious ties https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21680293 Interestingly, u/protonmail's contributions is littered with comments trying to defend ProtonVPN against such allegations here on HN. I guess, user paranoia is the bane of privacy-as-a-service upstarts. Re: Zoho: As a Zoho user myself, I must point out that though India isn't…

> Internet freedom and is a surveillance state.

I think these terms as understood by Americans becomes quite meaningless for people of a country that is victim of a civil war led by both the Islamists and the Left-Loonies (see the latest staged "false-flag" operations at Delhi's universities).

Re: Cutting Google out of your life (2019)

#130

Post by throw434324 » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 4:18 AM UTC

jeena wrote: post #16

I almost successfully cut Google out with one exception, YouTube, I don't seem to be able to find what I get there anywhere else. Fun anecdote: Google is very smart, because I've been a paying customer of YouTube for a long time they gave me a Google Nest Mini for Christmas free of charge. And it fills another niche which I can't really find a meaningful alternative for: Speech to text hardware/software which can be…

YouTube has become phenomenally boring of late no ? The censorship is really starting to kick with our SV overlord syndicate turning into the de facto Ministry of Truth.