Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 150 posts

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#51

Post by darklajid »

I try to get myself to start blogging for a couple days now and wanted to start with my journey away from the big G.

For me the solution is my own vps, self-hosting. I'm 90% there, having set up the new system, backed up my GMail contents, added a webmail solution and now I'm looking at the last (but so damn important) 10%: Choosing a backup solution (and I won't fully migrate until I have a backup in place that I successfully restored once).

I understand that this isn't for everyone, but for me this proved little work so far and it's really flexible (I'm authenticating via yubikey now, for example).

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#52

Post by bearwithclaws »

zyfo wrote: post #3

The reason Gmail is free is because they have ads. I wouldn't expect to find a free and good email service. Here's one that costs some money: http://fastmail.fm/

Marco Arment blogged about his switch here: http://www.marco.org/2011/04/05/let-us-pay-for-this-service-...

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#53

Post by ortatherox »

Maro wrote: post #50
sarnowski wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That was an internal video to try raise morale in Microsoft and get some people switch, it's pretty safe to assume gmail reads your emails as much as their spam filters does. But as well as doing the spam filtering on the results it does ads.

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#54

Post by goodside »

dwyer wrote: post #47

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 t…

Why do you think nobody is reading his mail? In September of 2010 an employee was dismissed for spying on the mail and Google Voice calls of four underage teenagers he had been meeting in real life. There have to be people at Google who have authority to read read the mail of users for less scandalous reasons for this to even be possible.

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#55

Post by tluyben2 »

Arelius wrote: post #44
tluyben2 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I never heard about Lavabit before, I'm going to try it out. But I have no clue what web interface they have, maybe the parent can tell?

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#56

Post by replax »

If you are lucky (fast) to get one of the first raspberry PIs, you could host your own mail server on one of those. Put SpamAssasin on there, get ssh running and the other mail programms you need (plenty of guides on the web for that), set up a rsync script for backup and then it's pretty much set & forget. Then when the SD card dies on you, you stick a new one in and resync, ta-da!

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#57

Post by shareme »

A question, what is the difference between Google reading your email and using data and the ISP eMail service you have chosen.

Seems to me that Google has a better track record than y other IPS email provider you could chose at this time.

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#58

Post by executive »

porkbird wrote: post #46

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.

> Apple is not in the ads business

Really? http://advertising.apple.com/

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#59

Post by mseebach »

stroboskop wrote: post #48
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.

First, do note that I also talk about a bet ("my money is on.."). The core of the analysis is that Google with Adsense has a revenue system that makes their interest showing me the most relevant ad. The more they know, the better the ad, the more revenue. The "bet" part is that this revenue is worth more than shady marketers would be able to extract from the data.

The best way for Google to know a lot about me is for them to not give me any good reason not to let them track me, scan my email etc. Any meaningful breach of privacy will erode that faith. Regular ads don't have that faith (an adblocker is invariably the plugin I install), Facebook don't have it (Facebook disconnect is the second one). Google can very easily be added to that list.

Also, Google is large enough and public enough that any significant erosion of privacy will trigger public intervention. A kind of "too big to fail".

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#60

Post by geeknam »

replax wrote: post #56

If you are lucky (fast) to get one of the first raspberry PIs, you could host your own mail server on one of those. Put SpamAssasin on there, get ssh running and the other mail programms you need (plenty of guides on the web for that), set up a rsync script for backup and then it's pretty much set & forget. Then when the SD card dies on you, you stick a new one in and resync, ta-da!

Or you could get a SheevaPlug (I've got a TonidoPlug). The most economical personal home server :)
Post reply on HN