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Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

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Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#41

Post by mseebach »

TANSTAAFL. Google doesn't not respect your privacy, but there is a risk that could change. Personally, my money is on that Google's ad revenue is best protected by them respecting their users privacy.

Any mail host carries the risk of a privacy breach, either accidental, such as a hacker attack, less so, such as selling the service to someone who cares less or completely on purpose - simply turning around and selling your data.

All of these scenarios are vastly less likely to happen for Google in my risk analysis.

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#42

Post by sarnowski »

Maro wrote: post #39

Microsoft's Office 365 online office suite has an Outlook webmail client which was flawless well when I gave it a shot using Firefox. I think it costs $6/mo, no ads, no spying, because you pay for it. I don't know how well the search and spam filters work. http://www.office365.com Here's a demo video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOpCmUXLmTA Note: This is _not_ the same thing as Hotmail.

Just because you are paying for the service does not mean that they respect your privacy. You can also pay for Google Apps, but what you get is not worth the money. Depends more on the company than on the pricing model.

(This is just a general hint - not against Microsoft. I don't know how they do their job.)

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#43

Post by dnlk »

sbarre wrote: post #33
corkill wrote: post #28

You can use https://www.google.com/takeout/ to see and download a lot of the data you have in Googles services. In the dashboard all the options are down the bottom to delete all your info etc.

Darn I was hoping Gmail was in that list. Purely out of curiosity I'd love to download the 20,000 messages I have in there to do some analysis..

Gmail is not in that list, because they have IMAP access (http://www.dataliberation.org/google/gmail).

You can just setup your account in for example OSX Mail, after synchronizing your messages will be in ~/Library/Mail (albeit not in a really nice folder structure like pure mbox or maildir, but you should be able to convert them without much hassle). Or you could use offlineimap (http://www.offlineimap.org), which gives you an IMAP dump/backup of your messages (in maildir format if I'm not mistaken). That said, the possibilities of getting your mail from IMAP are almost endless, just choose whatever suits you.

Btw, keeping 20000 mails just about anywhere might be convenient, but I really wonder what for (to clarify, I have maybe 300 mails right now on my own server and I regularly dump old stuff, while dumping for example registration mails right away due to security reasons)?

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#44

Post by Arelius »

tluyben2 wrote: post #17
mapleoin wrote: post #4

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.c…

Sorry, but for real work the ZOHO web interface is unusable. I'm not the only one who thinks that :) Especially if you are used to Gmail, ZOHO works like it has been written by drunk people. Lavabit seems quite interesting. Anyone going to write a Gmail clone for installation on your own servers finally? I would pay quite a bit for that.

Isn't Lavabit just using a skinned squirrelmail instance?

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#46

Post by porkbird »

Apple's iCloud. It's free (up to 5GBs), no ads, and Apple is not in the ads business, hence, they have no use of your personal data (as opposed to Google). I have no idea how good are they in actually protecting your personal data, but I don't recall significant breaches of mobile.me/icloud in the past year.

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#47

Post by dwyer »

Depends on what you consider respect of privacy. If you mean any provider that doesn't use software to scan your email for keywords, then that rules out any that incorporate a spam filter, and I can't think of any that don't.

I personally don't see how targeted advertising is any more intrusive than spam filtering. Sophisticated spam filters scan for keywords and classify words based which emails you read and reply to, emails from contacts whose emails you read and reply to, etc.

It's all automated in either case. Nobody at Google is reading your mail.

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#48

Post by stroboskop »

mseebach wrote: post #41

TANSTAAFL. Google doesn't not respect your privacy, but there is a risk that could change. Personally, my money is on that Google's ad revenue is best protected by them respecting their users privacy. Any mail host carries the risk of a privacy breach, either accidental, such as a hacker attack, less so, such as selling the service to someone who cares less or completely on purpose - simply turning around and selling…

Could you tell us more about your analysis? I would especially like to know if you consider the extent of Google's collection of users' private data.

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#49

Post by [deleted] »

[deleted] wrote: post #23
wicknicks wrote: post #8

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/pri…

[deleted]

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#50

Post by Maro »

sarnowski wrote: post #42
Maro wrote: post #39

Microsoft's Office 365 online office suite has an Outlook webmail client which was flawless well when I gave it a shot using Firefox. I think it costs $6/mo, no ads, no spying, because you pay for it. I don't know how well the search and spam filters work. http://www.office365.com Here's a demo video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOpCmUXLmTA Note: This is _not_ the same thing as Hotmail.

Just because you are paying for the service does not mean that they respect your privacy. You can also pay for Google Apps, but what you get is not worth the money. Depends more on the company than on the pricing model. (This is just a general hint - not against Microsoft. I don't know how they do their job.)

Microsoft advertises Office 365 / Outlook by saying that unlike Gmail, they don't "peek" at your email for ads.

The "Gmail man" ad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXqrTfOWx60

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