Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

As long as data is concerned, http://google.com/dashboard will tell you about everything tied with you account.

I'm currently trying to do this as well and the only viable solution sounds self-hosted email. I tried a bit with hushmail and Tor (also look at hushmail's Diceware for password encryption) but it has a tight limit of 25MB for free accounts.

Good luck.

Lavabit is pretty good. I've been with them (Personal Account plan) for about 4 years now. No downtime, IMAP and a stated goal in caring about their users privacy. The webmail interface is pretty modest, but they do provide a way to set pretty advanced regex server-side filters. You have to upgrade to a paid plan if you want decent SPAM filtering though. They're also planning a surprise upgrade soon.

http://lavabit.com/

Zohomail is an interesting alternative. They say that they do not sell ads because they are a profitable subscription-based service. Email is free for personal use, has good IMAP support and a decent webmail interface. You can also use your own domain for free. The only problem I've found with them is that the email filtering is limited to a few common fields (e.g. no specific headers).

http://www.zoho.com/mail/

Just out of curiosity, which aspect of Google's privacy policy seems fishy to you?

I think any way you look at it, there is a basic compromise you make with Gmail: either Google holding all of your info, or someone being able to hack into your account due to security vulnerabilities. Also, not to mention the tools and email filters Google provides.

I'm just curious -- what specific privacy intrusions are you worried about? Google lists its privacy policy here[1]. Also, web based email services can always look at your personal content, if not today, tomorrow. If you really need absolute privacy, I'd recommend setting up your server. You can retain your Gmail address, by just setting up the right forwarding options.

[1]: http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/

Why not host your own? It's not that hard. I run my own using exim4 + dovecot. It's pretty easy to set up. Plus, as a bonus I set up mutt on my server as well so when I am somewhere else I can just ssh into my box and read my mail.