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The Future of Email

fastmail.com

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Re: The Future of Email

#71
post #10

I was hoping this would be about JMAP.

I didn't know what JMAP was but upon looking it up, I agree

JMAP's been Fastmail's future of email since circa 2016 iirc; it seems unlikely Google will ever get on board (NIH?) so it's doomed to remain not completely standard and fairly niche/popular but struggling for (technical) support.

Re: The Future of Email

#72

Are there any options left at all to self host email?

Sure, I do it, and many others. Some people say it's hard, but I think it's much easier than it used to be, technically. You have projects like https://stalw.art which make it quite easy. Single binary setup which covers all functionality you need. Setting up SPF, DKIM and DMARC is also easy. The only thing that remains is IP reputation, but even then, I haven't had major issues. People seem to receive the few emails that I send.

Re: The Future of Email

#73

I love fastmail, I switched from Proton a couple years ago after deciding the trade offs to have encrypted email were not worth it, since even if I fully trust Proton, most emails come from or go to AWS, Outlook, or Gmail anyway. I have been extremely happy with the service. Fairly priced, very fast even with a huge inbox, and they don’t add unnecessary features or bloat. I thought I would use my OS’s mail apps but t…

What were the tradeoffs with Proton?

Re: The Future of Email

#74
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To have secure email I think html /css should be dropped from email support and the inbox should work on an invite only basis. Basically you should pre-authorize the senders just like you add someone as friend on a social network.

> Basically you should pre-authorize the senders This is kinda what 'masked email' services like Fastmail's – of which I am a delighted customer – do. Until you've known the comfort of creating an address; giving it to a service; deciding that you want to end your relationship with them; just deleting that address, without changing your mailbox or infrastructure or archives or anything else … it's kinda life changing…

Damn it - ublock origin did not block this promo.

The amount of bots promoting Fastmail here is insane. What the actual ...

Re: The Future of Email

#75

Are there any options left at all to self host email?

Tonnes? I don't like to say 'just search for it', but seriously you'll get more out of that than a response here. Personally I use SES for the 'hard' bit, but there's loads of OSS if you want to self-host the actual receiving too. (Sending probably requires more time looking into getting a trustworthy static IP than software. Again, I bypass that by using SES, but that's technically only self-hosting storage & client.)

Re: The Future of Email

#76

I love fastmail, I switched from Proton a couple years ago after deciding the trade offs to have encrypted email were not worth it, since even if I fully trust Proton, most emails come from or go to AWS, Outlook, or Gmail anyway. I have been extremely happy with the service. Fairly priced, very fast even with a huge inbox, and they don’t add unnecessary features or bloat. I thought I would use my OS’s mail apps but t…

I'm using Fastmail for more than 9 years. Especially since they added offline support to their app, there's nothing left why I would even remotely consider leaving them.

Re: The Future of Email

#77
post #73

I love fastmail, I switched from Proton a couple years ago after deciding the trade offs to have encrypted email were not worth it, since even if I fully trust Proton, most emails come from or go to AWS, Outlook, or Gmail anyway. I have been extremely happy with the service. Fairly priced, very fast even with a huge inbox, and they don’t add unnecessary features or bloat. I thought I would use my OS’s mail apps but t…

What were the tradeoffs with Proton?

As a Proton user - the main trade-off for me is that you are forced to use their apps on mobile, and those apps are pretty barebones and (on iOS at least) have none of the bells and whistles of a modern iOS app, such as Home Screen widgets.

Since I use my own domain for email, I am considering moving over to another provider once my subscription term is up. I really miss widgets.

Re: The Future of Email

#78
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The gp isn't talking about spam using "secure message" as bait to open unwanted email. No, this includes all messages from my doctor/healthcare. It's not mass spam. Theoretically I could want to know what's in the message, but not enough to visit a website I've been logged out of again, perform multi-factor authentication, navigate to the message center and find the message and then back it up manually.

It must be nice to not need to use that crap, but one day you might.

I don’t understand how one doesn’t. I need to do it to look up status on health insurance claims and to access the tax documents for my financial accounts.

I guess you can avoid the email spam by just directly logging into the website when you need that stuff, but how else are they supposed to notify you when something new has happened?

Re: The Future of Email

#79
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically you should pre-authorize the senders This is kinda what 'masked email' services like Fastmail's – of which I am a delighted customer – do. Until you've known the comfort of creating an address; giving it to a service; deciding that you want to end your relationship with them; just deleting that address, without changing your mailbox or infrastructure or archives or anything else … it's kinda life changing…

I like per recipient emails, but I worried how I would know I authorized that sender to send to lonely chicken. The original site could have been compromised. That's why I bought my email domain and use @hnrobert42.com. It helps to use a password manager. I get a lot of convincing emails to linkedin@hnrobert42.com. As well as zynga, wework, etc.

> That's why I bought my email domain and use @hnrobert42.com. It helps to use a password manager.

Whenever there’s this discussion on HN, someone usually points out that can sometimes be a bother, especially when giving out the email in person, because people don’t really understand how email addresses works and ask “how did you get that email” or think you’re impersonating the service, or something similar.

I guess a solution might be to add the details sneakily. E.g. instead of linkedin@hnrobert42.com, saying robert_lkdn@hnrobert42.com

Re: The Future of Email

#80
I feel we need a "proof of work by human" for emails. Something that could be signed that attests that someone took the time to write the email, not just sent a template / used AI to auto-generate a personal looking email, etc. Sure that could be gamed as well (have an AI write characters one by one to look more human-like), but taking more time usually is a fairly good blocker for spammers / salespersons / etc.
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