this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
61 points (95.5% liked)

DeGoogle Yourself

7743 readers
4 users here now

A community for those that would like to get away from Google.

Here you may post anything related to DeGoogling, why we should do it or good software alternatives!

Rules

  1. Be respectful even in disagreement

  2. No advertising unless it is very relevent and justified. Do not do this excessively.

  3. No low value posts / memes. We or you need to learn, or discuss something.

Related communities

[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
Byereddithellolemmy
[email protected]
61
An exhaustive guide to Gmail alternatives (midwest.social)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
32 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

This guy can be pretty harsh at times, but he's clearly very knowledgeable..

However, not all providers have a recent review, and his priorities are skewed heavily to the "paranoid" side of the tech world. For example, he considers being able to mail cash to a provider a significant pro. The overwhelming majority of users aren't mailing cash to pay for their email.

Overall, it's good info that's worth sharing.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I enjoyed the read. I'm a fastmail user and I didn't pick it for real privacy but because it's not Google. It's better than Gmail, more features, looks better, faster etc.

I don't know how any email provider can provide real privacy since they have to scan for spam, malware, and so on.

Fastmail is part of the 5 eyes surveillance network as well: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes

[–] Myrbolg 3 points 1 year ago

Exactly my reasoning. Get away from Google and advertising (though they said they are not using Gmail for that), get a better interface, masked emails. Fastmail is great.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah, his requirements for an email provider are well above what most people need.

Email is not a secure means of communication in most cases. If the recipient isn't encrypting, then your communications to them are vulnerable anyway. And in the vast majority of cases, they probably aren't.

Really, the best thing about getting a more privacy conscious provider is not giving all your data over to Google.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I switched to Posteo mainly so all of my emails aren't scanned by an advertising company.

The main thing I dislike about the encrypted email providers is that I can't use my own client, I'm stuck with whatever features they want to give me.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah and getting away from Google is worth so much actually. People don't seem to realize how important it is to simply not use Google and block their tracking scripts (on the web), and don't use their free email service, naturally.