Interesting read about all of the different email providers. This person goes in depth with all the email providers privacy policies etc. Surprising as some are not as private as you may think…
https://digdeeper.neocities.org/ghost/email.html
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That’s why I’m more and more convinced to host all my stuff back home.
It’s not a simple task but I’ll get there!
There was some interesting info in this talk about email tracking also:
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I made this step away from my Gmail account recently. One website was a good help for me making my decision opting for a new provider: https://proprivacy.com/email/reviews. They are reviewing various ‘alternative’ email providers and they are updating their reviews from time to time.
Why not just get your own domain, so you can host your emails at any hosting provider…? There are many focused on privacy.
That said, I really like /e/ too for email, given that it’s 5gb for free + integration with /e/ services + the whole organization focuses on privacy.
If somebody chooses VPN or Email provider, there is probably no better resource than That One Privacy Site. Just take a look: there are currently 48 email providers in its interactive comparison table evaluated by 45 criteria.
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I actually took the time to read through that page, but considering how often I see it recommended I think I’m the only one who actually did. I really don’t want to get into details (it does take a while to go through all of the options) but is just basically a big rant over and over about how services collect and/or use your data.
Some services are completely bashed: “However, the service [paranoid] has no privacy policy , so you can’t know what do they actually store.”
While other he recommends… " Autistici has no actual privacy policy ! So we have to rely on some snippets found throughout the site:"
The whole thing is full of inconsistencies like this one. It’s just a big, incredibly biased rant with absolutely no proof about many of the claims made, other than comparing the privacy policies of such services (which again, is a lot of effort and takes time and I respect that investment).
That said, I do agree with a few points like how services like Gmail are flat out designed to gather as much data as possible. But this isn’t something new, nor adds to the credibility of the site.
Hosting your email is actually not as easy as it seems: hosting your web server, running the email service, setting up your domain name, etc… that’s one thing. The tricky part comes when your emails are getting filtered as spam and may not reach their destination at all (and that includes emails sent to you as well).
I find one of the most useful and updated lists to be at Privacy Tools. They also have a very active community where you can ask questions and discuss any of the recommended services.
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I have " Never" been asked to identify myself in “Any” way by Protonmail.
This looks fake, a Phish
https://digdeeper.neocities.org/ghost/email.html#ProtonMail
I have multiple proton accounts, and have had it installed on my cell phones.
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I must say that I was never asked to identify myself either.
I had 2 Protonmail accounts and just created the third using captcha
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I also read the whole article and yes there is some stuff I don’t agree with, but you read things like this and also other such articles then you can form an opinion based on everything as a whole, not just take one piece of advice as the be all end all. I like that other people have shared other articles in this thread also cause then it can be one thread where you can get multiple sources of info to make a better informed decision when choosing an email provider. 
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Hi! It’s the first post here!
Actually, I’m quite confused about the choice of the email service. I read conflicting opinions in the links above.I was leaning towards tutanota or protonmail or posteo but I don’t know.
Given that I will use email for institutional communications, banking, and other stuff that don’t use E2E encryption, it’s important for me the zero-knowledge feature. So that incoming emails are encrypted at rest and not used for ad purpose.
What is the more trustworthy in this regard?
Hi @desk777, welcome to the forum.
If you are aware of privacy, I’d say, rather stay away from the big multi-national email providers, rather avoid US providers and rather stick to a service that you pay for, that’s a good foundation for a reliable and trustful email service.
All the options that you mentioned in your post you’d be probably fine with.
If you would like to dive a bit deeper and compare, @e.follower posted a link above to a website comparing 48 privacy focused providers. Or just check out the other links provided by users above.
Thank you @ralxx. I’ve read the comparison in the link in the first post and I was a bit scared by sentences like this: " I don’t recommend [Tutanota] anymore" or this “I do not consider the various webmail encryption methods worth much”, which exclude Protonmail and Tutanota, for example. But that report is very old so I don’t know if it is still good.
It’s a never ending discussion: who to trust nowadays?
Even if you host your own solution, can you definetely trust your ISP?
What about the DNS resolvers (all of them huge companies)?
I like the encryption solution from Protonmail and it is my official choice.
Thank you for sharing your opinion.
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If you buy a new computer, a coffee machine, or anything else you may find arguments in favour and against. But honestly if you have an email from one of the big providers, any of the mentioned service is a huge step forward. And if you pay for a mail provider it is likely that its business model is not based on selling your data.
Protonmail, Tutanota or Mailbox.org (probably others too) you may try out for free. So, just give it a try and decide later.
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Despite everything, I use proton, tuta, posteo and have an /e/ email. all used to compartmentalize. Also use msgsafe.io for throw away aliases.
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Besides the options already offered (I personally use ProtonMail and Tutanota), you can further protect your identity by using an email alias. Most providers will offer a few for free, but there are services that also offer email forwarding such as AnonAddy or SimpleLogin. An example of what you could do with this:
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Signup with ProtonMail: my-privacy-address@protonmail.com
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Create an alias: my-privacy-alias@protonmail.com
Emails sent to your alias will appear in your inbox.
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Signup with AnonAddy using your ProtonMail alias.
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Create a new unique alias for every service:
All emails that are sent to these aliases will be forwarded to your original alias: my-privacy-alias@protonmail.com, which will then be displayed in your inbox as usual.
The advantage here is that your actual email address is never revealed to anyone, and because you are giving unique addresses to each service it’s very difficult to trace each of them back to your identity. This also protects you from spam since you can simply delete an alias account that you’re no longer using.
The downside is you have to trust yet another 3rd party with your emails. Note that this model provides privacy, it does not provide security i.e.: does not encrypt your emails. Ideally all emails would be already E2EE and in that case your communications would be perfectly safe. Also worth mentioning you can self-host your own instance of these alias services.
For the record, in the example I chose protonmail and anonaddy for no reason in particular, I think either service works fine.
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