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Ik.me: a free email address for life developed and hosted in Switzerland

infomaniak.com

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Re: Ik.me: a free email address for life developed and hosted in Switzerland

#121

Post by tribaal »

netsharc wrote: post #35
infomaniak wrote: post #2

With 20 GB of storage, this Swiss-made messaging system allows you to repatriate and store the emails of a lifetime. Access to kDrive with 3 GB of storage is also included for photos and online collaboration on Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. Currently restricted to Swiss citizens, this offer will soon be extended to the whole of Europe. For further details: https://news.infomaniak.com/en/free-swiss-email-addre…

Citizens (like you write here), or residents (like what it says on the website)? 25% of Swiss residents are not citizens (i.e. they have a permit to live in the country but hold a foreign passport), so that's an important distinction.

Right now, it means "person who has a Swiss phone number" since that's the only they seem to check (I just signed up).

Phone numbers are available to all residents.

Re: Ik.me: a free email address for life developed and hosted in Switzerland

#122

Post by jdndbfbf »

merlinscholz wrote: post #65
systemvoltage wrote: post #45

Folks - pay $5/month for Fastmail, Migadu, ProtonMail, or self host + your own domain name. Companies like this come and go, it’s a good chance you’ll still own the domain name. There is no such thing as free. They’ll nag you for hosting on their site. UI will degrade over time. Something will give, if not now, at some point in the future. Lifetime is a bold claim. I’m being cynical but this smells like an attempt to…

Is there any reason to switch to fastmail from an Microsoft 365 business account? Microsoft offers mail, 1tb cloud storage and more for essentially the same price.

Privacy

Re: Ik.me: a free email address for life developed and hosted in Switzerland

#124

Post by dejan »

Fnoord wrote: post #120
dejan wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Posteo is not very transparent there. They do not mention SMTP/IMAP/POP access on their 2FA docs. 2FA is not supported by any email client for generic IMAP/POP/SMTP[1]. Just think of that experience, providing a token on every sync or sending. This is why we sometimes take such a harsh stand in our copy. You need to tell users about these things and not throw marketing BS counting on information asymmetry. We (Migadu…

> You have been mislead by Posteo intentionally it seems. I don't like such tone. TL;DR I didn't verify how Posteo's TOTP works. FWIW, I've never used Posteo; I have some German friends who are happy with it. I'm staying local, using Soverin as my primary e-mail provider. The reason for using a token for authorization is that the user can revoke the token (e.g. when device is lost), instead of having to change their…

> I don't like such tone.

Corrected, not intention to make a "tone", just pointing out that information is intentionally omitted.

> Its perfectly possible to get IMAP to work with TOTP

Yes, but that's not available in generally available email clients. There are OTP extensions to IMAP.

> I don't trust webmail at all because I don't audit the JavaScript

This. We are working on one that uses no JS or just conditinaly for enhancements.

> Then again, I also don't trust e-mail authenticity because the protocol is broken by design, and nobody has come up with a suitable alternative.

Glad I am not the only one thinking that =)

> A lot of people are using a weak password as first factor, btw. Do you protect against such?

No, we set a minimum 6 char password. However we think it is less secure to have a complex one you canot remember than one of average strength.

Re: Ik.me: a free email address for life developed and hosted in Switzerland

#126

Post by jlelse »

crossroadsguy wrote: post #113
omnimus wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also german ones mailbox.org, posteo, tutanota and norwegian runbox. Mailbox has been around since early 90s ive been happy user for a longtime. You make good point that Swiss (German also) laws should protect your privacy more than US laws. That includes fastmail and icloud.

I would advise everyone to stay away from services that also provide and allow use of an email address on their (provider) domains i.e. user-name@service-provider.tld (e.g. name@mailbox.org) but don't have any free tier (even the bare minimum). So the moment you stop paying you are cut off and if you had been using email on their domain you might be less inclined to migrate away even if better competitors are around…

AFAIK you can use a custom domain with mailbox.org.

Re: Ik.me: a free email address for life developed and hosted in Switzerland

#127

Post by tallanvor »

merlinscholz wrote: post #65
systemvoltage wrote: post #45

Folks - pay $5/month for Fastmail, Migadu, ProtonMail, or self host + your own domain name. Companies like this come and go, it’s a good chance you’ll still own the domain name. There is no such thing as free. They’ll nag you for hosting on their site. UI will degrade over time. Something will give, if not now, at some point in the future. Lifetime is a bold claim. I’m being cynical but this smells like an attempt to…

Is there any reason to switch to fastmail from an Microsoft 365 business account? Microsoft offers mail, 1tb cloud storage and more for essentially the same price.

Not that I can see. Both lets you setup multiple domains and aliases. Since Fastmail's datacenters appear to be in the US (New York region and Seattle), they'll end up falling under the same laws as Microsoft.

Theoretically you might save a bit with Fastmail - it seems like you can have 1 standard account that is $5/month and owns the domain and then other basic accounts at $3/month that have an alias for the domain, but I don't know how that works in practice. For a large family the savings could add up.

Re: Ik.me: a free email address for life developed and hosted in Switzerland

#128

Post by gaegt »

omnimus wrote: post #83
systemvoltage wrote: post #45

Folks - pay $5/month for Fastmail, Migadu, ProtonMail, or self host + your own domain name. Companies like this come and go, it’s a good chance you’ll still own the domain name. There is no such thing as free. They’ll nag you for hosting on their site. UI will degrade over time. Something will give, if not now, at some point in the future. Lifetime is a bold claim. I’m being cynical but this smells like an attempt to…

Also german ones mailbox.org, posteo, tutanota and norwegian runbox. Mailbox has been around since early 90s ive been happy user for a longtime. You make good point that Swiss (German also) laws should protect your privacy more than US laws. That includes fastmail and icloud.

I advice against tutanota. I was surpised to learn that they try to scam customers into paying for longer than was intended.

They refuse to accept cancellations of their paid premium services for when the paid for duration ends.

They insist you to login the day the duration ends to switch to the free mode. If you miss the date (by not much), they say they'll cancel and reimburse you.

The intent of this scam is clear, they hope you miss the date and pay for one more year. However, they have absolutely no legal standing in refusing the cancellation.

I'm engaged with customer protection organisations against this scam by tutanota.

Re: Ik.me: a free email address for life developed and hosted in Switzerland

#130

Post by vinay427 »

rafram wrote: post #63
dgiol wrote: post #16

Mmm, "privacy-friendly". It asks for a phone number (it's mandatory during sign up), which can only be obtained with an official ID...

> only I vaguely remember Google making moves toward killing it, but last I tried it, Google Voice let you get a number without providing any ID whatsoever. And only postpaid phone plans require ID in the US.

The context is Switzerland. In Switzerland, and much of Europe (except the UK, CZ, and several other countries), current ID is required to get a mobile phone number. Even on a postpaid plan after proving identity, anyone with indefinite residency must keep their status up-to-date.

The US and aforementioned European countries (among others)/are better about this because anyone can just get a SIM/number.

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