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Switching from Gmail to FastMail

maxmasnick.com

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Re: Switching from Gmail to FastMail

#171

Post by masnick »

pwelch wrote: post #166

I'm really interested in switching email providers but is there a solution for calendar? I really enjoy my calendar syncing across multiple devices and sharing with my friends and family. Anyone have some good solutions?

I actually use iCloud because the Google Calendar -> Calendar.app syncing was pretty flakey. Obviously that's a bad choice if you're not all on Apple devices, but if you are I think it works pretty well.

Based on this excellent post (https://kkinder.com/2013/05/21/leaving-googles-silo-alternat...) it seems like there isn't a great drop-in replacement for Google Calendar (except for iCloud).

Re: Switching from Gmail to FastMail

#172

Post by masnick »

dtjohnnymonkey wrote: post #165

I've had a Fastmail account for about 10 years and the spam filtering is nowhere near as good as Gmail. There are some days I'll see 20-30 spam messages in my inbox.

I've heard the same thing, but it hasn't really been a problem for me.

If it was, I'd try http://mailroute.net. Apparently it's supposed to be pretty good at handling spam.

Re: Switching from Gmail to FastMail

#173

Post by masnick »

SamWhited wrote: post #128

Great post; I'd love to try the service but I have over 10 Gigs of content in my current Gmail and can't really justify spending an extra $119.95 a year extra on email. This makes me wish I could though.

Thanks!

That's a lot of email...how much does it cost to store on gmail?

Re: Switching from Gmail to FastMail

#174

Post by johngalt »

stock_toaster wrote: post #152
johngalt wrote: post #123

Tried fastmail and wasn't impressed. Rackspace email is a great choice. Its cheap and fast. Outages are rare. Has active sync support and IMAP push works on android/iPhone. Rackspace also allows you to run exchange mailboxes alongside IMAP if you have a few users who are still tied to outlook.

I wish rackspace email had 2-factor auth and/or application-specific-passwords. :/

Secure ID token is a little much to ask for $3/month email.

Re: Switching from Gmail to FastMail

#175

Post by stock_toaster »

johngalt wrote: post #174
stock_toaster wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish rackspace email had 2-factor auth and/or application-specific-passwords. :/

Secure ID token is a little much to ask for $3/month email.

Where did I ask for SecureID? I was hoping for a TOTP-based mechanism for 2-factor.

Re: Switching from Gmail to FastMail

#176

Post by cschmidt »

tehwalrus wrote: post #5

American company, American servers, American jurisdiction. Sure they won't read your email, but the NSA will (just like Gmail.) Update: hmm, so Opera aren't american? interesting. All the servers are definitely in the US though: > "we have standard servers and a high speed connection in the US." - https://www.fastmail.fm/help/overview_about.html

Fastmail has always been an Australian company. Then they were bought by the Norwegian company Opera, who seem to have left them largely to their own devices. I haven't really noticed any changes from the acquisition. And yes the servers are in the New York, probably for latency reasons.

Here's more of the text from

https://www.fastmail.fm/help/overview_company_info.html

FastMail.FM's was started by Rob Mueller and Jeremy Howard in 1999. We are located in Melbourne Australia, we use IBM servers hosted by NYI in NYC US. FastMail.FM is now run by Opera Software Australia Pty Ltd, a whole owned subsidiary of Opera Software ASA of Norway.

Re: Switching from Gmail to FastMail

#177

Post by chipotle_coyote »

wyclif wrote: post #151
adestefan wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fastmail is owned by Opera a Norwegian company. Nice try though to inject a completely worthless comment.

It's actually not a worthless comment. Norwegian ownership makes absolutely no difference to the privacy equation wrt the NSA if Fastmail's servers are colocated in the US.

It's a kind of worthless comment, but not for the obvious reasons. :)

People are operating on the equation of "hosted in America = possibly accessible via PRISM = compromised by the NSA," which is understandable given all the recent news. Perhaps you don't trust the assurances that the NSA's computers are only scanning metadata by default, only flagging suspicious keywords that then have to be processed by a human agent before they go ahead and actually start scanning your real email which of course they will usually only do with a warrant obtained in secret from a secret court that pretty much never turns down any warrant request!

Okay, but those very reassuring reassurances actually only apply to American servers. Communication going between servers in America and international servers is just as likely to be targeted and quite possibly more likely to be subject to deep scanning. We have to throw in "likely" and "possibly" because, as with all things NSA, we really don't know. But if you're concerned about data interception, it's very likely not relevant whether FastMail's servers are located in New York, Norway, Australia, or the Fortress of Solitude.

Re: Switching from Gmail to FastMail

#178

Post by dioltas »

bowlofpetunias wrote: post #18

> their servers are in New York For us as a European business, that's a dealbreaker. It's not that we are completely paranoid and migrating off of American systems in a big hurry, but moving forward, not in the US and not owned by an American company is a requirement for any new service we use. Even if we didn't care, we have to take into account our clients, and "no data under US control" has become not just a selli…

Do you know of any good alternatives with servers outside the US?

Re: Switching from Gmail to FastMail

#179

Post by jmcatani »

pyvek wrote: post #87
adestefan wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please tell me where you think a server needs to be located were you would consider to be "safe." Please note that every European country also falls into the will be happy to spy on someone camp.

Another thing to note is that even if servers aren't located in US, data may be routed through there. Traceroute from my home connection (in India) to a Singapore IP looks like: India -> US -> Japan -> US -> Japan -> Singapore I'm not saying that the NSA has forced other countries to route their data through them. It could be due to several other reasons. But the main point is that it is hard to escape the NSA. Even…

Out of curiosity, is there direct fiber from India to the US?

Re: Switching from Gmail to FastMail

#180

Post by thrownaway2424 »

masnick wrote: post #173
SamWhited wrote: post #128

Great post; I'd love to try the service but I have over 10 Gigs of content in my current Gmail and can't really justify spending an extra $119.95 a year extra on email. This makes me wish I could though.

Thanks! That's a lot of email...how much does it cost to store on gmail?

Nothing. The free tier of gmail is now 15GB.
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