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.
Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail
71–80 of 150 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail
#72Is Gmail for Business any different privacy-wise than free Gmail? (The free part is less important to me.)
Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail
#73A 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
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The question is, does this undeniable loss of privacy matter and can we know how great that loss will eventually be? I think it does matter, partly because we cannot know or control the extent of the loss and we cannot easily take it back (if at all).
There's also a great security risk if so much sensitive information is stored in one place. Google is certainly more competent than I am in securing their database. But the incentive for someone to steal it from them is orders of magnitude greater as well.
Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail
#75I'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…
"We use the information we collect from all of our services to provide, maintain, protect and improve them, to develop new ones, and to protect Google and our users".
Develop new services sounds pretty open ended to me.
Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail
#76TANSTAAFL. 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…
Their economic incentives are aligned in exactly the opposite direction. The more they know about you the more money they make, ergo the recent privacy policy changes which now tie your data across all of their services. In my opinion this is already a privacy violation, even if they don't sell my data to unscrupulous marketers. It should be opt-in. I believe the relevant quote is from Eric Schmidt, ""Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it."
If you read their privacy policy, there is an entire section called "Information we share" that is worth reading. It's short, so that's good.
But still, I don't completely buy the notion that as long as Google doesn't resell my data to some "unscrupulous" marketer they are respecting my privacy. If at some point in the future they buy-in to Zuckerbergs "everyone should be open about everything" philosophy and create another privacy policy that isn't opt-in... I guess we're all screwed.
Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail
#77True, I could move just migrate the email, contact list, and calendar somewhere else. But then I would have two contact lists that need to be synchronized between my new provider and Google Docs and forward any notifications from Gmail.
Then I realized just how much I rely on Google's email search. Finding an email within tens of thousands is instant on Gmail. It is nearly impossible with anyone else.
In the end, I abandoned trying to move away from Gmail / Google Apps. After all, there is nothing stopping the admin of any email system from casually reading inboxes or being forced to turn over data to a government authority. And Google does have some history of fighting back for information requests, where I can see much smaller providers folding under pressure more quickly due to limited resources.
And the argument against self hosting has been repeated here already, but the risk of loss of service is far, far the worst thing to happen for email. If you don't care if your email becomes undeliverable for hours or days at a time, you really don't need to be paranoid about email.
Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail
#78TANSTAAFL. 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…
"Google's ad revenue is best protected by them respecting their users privacy." Their economic incentives are aligned in exactly the opposite direction. The more they know about you the more money they make, ergo the recent privacy policy changes which now tie your data across all of their services. In my opinion this is already a privacy violation, even if they don't sell my data to unscrupulous marketers. It should…
Many people seem to have a problem with the outcome of the process being ad revenue rather than spam suppression, I emphatically do not share that concern.
> But still, I don't completely buy the notion that as long as Google doesn't resell my data to some "unscrupulous" marketer they are respecting my privacy. If at some point in the future they buy-in to Zuckerbergs "everyone should be open about everything" philosophy
My argument centres around the fact that they already have a very profitable business model based on this data and thus they are unlikely to "pull a Facebook".
If they start changing direction on the business model, chances are that it will be foreshadowed some time in advance, and luckily it's downright trivial to switch mail providers as opposed to "switching" away from Facebook.
Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail
#79Personally, I'd suggest going to gandi.net and getting a domain name from them for $15/year, which comes with email: 5 real accounts, umpteen forwarding accounts, IMAP, SMTP, and a decent webmail client (roundcube). Plus, you get an email address at your own domain, not tied to any one email provider, making it easy to switch later if you want.
Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail
#80Edit: It's not free. It costs like 2 dollars a month for the smallest account.