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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

#61

Post by jonknee »

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

Ads can be disabled for Google Apps accounts, but as should be obvious any provider that provides spam filtering will already be "peeking" at your email. Perhaps in part to their ad relevancy system, Google's spam detection is best of breed.

http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6...

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#62

Post by andrewcooke »

runbox - http://runbox.com/ - seemed best when i looked for a replacement. they're based in norway, but not free. however, i eventually decided to run my own (on linux, using mutt terminal reader and mairix search (nice and fast); mail delivery by forwarding through my isp).

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#63

Post by jonknee »

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..

http://www.yippiemove.com/ is pretty good at doing stuff like this. Costs a little bit, but if you figure the time savings into the equation it's an easy sell.

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#64

Post by jonknee »

goodside wrote: post #54
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.

This will be the case for any mail provider. If you host yourself you still count on the fact that traffic to your server isn't being snooped on and always have the possibility of the authorities going in and snatching your box if they need to see your email (that won't happen with Google, but Google will comply with any requests and turn over your mail).

Encrypt your email if you want privacy. For even better privacy, don't use email at all (encrypted or not the headers need to be in the clear).

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#65

Post by huggyface »

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.

and Apple is not in the ads business, hence, they have no use of your personal data (as opposed to Google).

Aside from the fact that Apple is in the ad business (to limited success and motive thus far, though if the hardware sales profit train slowed down you can guarantee they would grow more interest), even if they weren't they still are incredibly interested in data about their customers. All businesses are interested in slicing and dicing and categorizing and maximizing sell through, etc.

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#66

Post by ciudilo »

During last few month Google has shown its true face and it is not pretty. It is very clear now that they are under the impression that there are no viable alternatives to their services. My main reason for moving off Gmail is a need for clear relationship with my provider. I want to pay for the services I receive in order to be able to complain when something goes wrong or when there is something I don't like. I don't want 'but it is free...' argument showed in my face when new design is forces upon me, email is down for a whole day or there are drastic changes to privacy policy.

If you are looking for Gmail replacement definitely try out fastmail.fm

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#67

Post by 54mf »

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/

Cmd-F "fastmail"

I've been using them for a few months now, definitely worth the price. Really quick and easy to add new virtual domains, and the spam filter is decent enough for my inbox. Highly recommended.

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#68

Post by Kenan »

tluyben2 wrote: post #55
Arelius wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Overall gist: http://i.eho.st/pp22pqgf.png

When you view an email, only text is shown. You can "View as HTML", but images are blocked. http://i.eho.st/pp2fukzy.png

Personally, this renders the web interface useless to me, so I view my email through Outlook.

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#69

Post by viraptor »

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.

Any examples of web interface not being good enough? I know it's far from perfect, but couldn't really blame it for anything more specific than "general polish" at the moment...

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#70

Post by Estragon »

ortatherox wrote: post #53
Maro wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, just looking at mail to model spam is one thing. Looking at it to model the user's life and interests is quite another.
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