Yandex and the European Union
 

Hi,

I have a question. I have checked out Yandex's services(namely Yandex connect, to which I can hook up my domain), and they look great, but I have a problem - Yandex is a Russian company, and as I see it, relations between the EU and Russia are becoming more and more tense. I would not wish to fall behind a curtain or a wall so I can't access my files or e-mails in the coming future, so would like a thought on how serious the situation is and if Yandex will stay available in the EU. It is a NASDAQ traded multinational company, so that should help it somewhat, but still, your thoughts?

Thanks.

AIUI, they do have offices in the EU (I think either in Germany or the Netherlands) so you should be OK.

Personally, I would be very wary of using Yandex based on the track record of other Russian companies like Kaspersky. The Russian government is actively involved in infiltrating and using these companies.

Yeah, fortunately "western" companies are completely free of government involvement.

Ignoring the political aspects, which bring nothing constructive to the thread, I would ask myself:

If I have doubts about the viability of a service (for whatever reason) should I seek a more suitable alternative?

Is the attraction to Yandex the ability to use your own domain and/or the overall product offered?

You have to choose your email priorities, and for me #1 is reliability, meaning 99% up time, great deliverability, great spam filters, a great track record, and a solid company and location. Maybe your priorities are different. For example, many people prioritize cost, or possibly something else.

The real story is very interesting. Israel spying on Kaspersky. An NSA contractor took the hacking toolkit home, Kaspersky AV flagged it and upload it. Kaspersky saw what it was (oops!) and deleted it.

Kaspersky: Yes, we obtained NSA secrets. No, we didn’t help steal them

Hi,

Well, it's appealing as it's basically google from the east in terms of:
- availability and reliability (huge company, huge server farms, state of the art technology)
- price
- own domain (you also get 10GB disk and Office online is integrated within it).

So that's basically why.

I have been using Yandex as prime email service since 2013 and up till now I have NO complaints. Their uptime is very impressive and also the other (free and paid) services they offer. I dont think they will vanish anytime soon as its realy a big company. I am just waiting for the moment when they come with their own OS for android Cellphones...then I can ditch Google for good:-) One big plus they have its that their webinterface shows NO ads whatsoever..!! What also is a huge plus is that their customer service actualy responds to emails..!!:-) Try that with Google...mmmm NOT good.

Another Russian company which provides (free and paid) email services is mail.ru. They are also very good and I can recommend them highly.

my 2 eurocents.

Dutchie.
ps: I dont work for Yandex nor mail.ru,-)

Thumbs up for Yandex. Great service. Love the ability to easily schedule email reminders and such. Drive is good too.

I also use their linux browser and its quite nice. If they had permanent desktop mode on their Android browser I would use it too.

Technically, Yandex is very good email service. Practically, you do not want to use email provider which is under jurisdiction of authoritarian (and, in many aspects, totalitarian) state as Russian Federation. You do not know how your emails will be affected and how they will be used by this state. I do not want to discuss it here, but it may be really dangerous even if you do nothing that violates your country's law or Russian law.

In addition, considering current relations between Putin's regime and the West, you have a chance to see your mailbox lost/deleted/blocked etc as result of political developments and economic sanctions imposed on Russia.

Another point: Russian authoritarian state wants to control everything. At some point they may require you to upload your national ID card or passport or your email account will be limited/blocked. Do you really want it?

I know what I am talking about, I have some friends in Russia, I understand the logic of Russian authorities (as former citizen of former USSR) and I really do not recommend to use any of Russian services (not only email).

This post applies also to mail.ru: great email service but, unfortunately, should not be used for political reasons.

Good post. Made me think about facebook and their bs. You would think it was based in Russia. Doesn't seem to deter the masses from using it.

Despite the fact that some are apparently terrified of using an email service based in their own country, that does give you many more legal rights with regard to it, including standing in court, etc. if something dire went wrong. Email based in another country--not so much. However, most of us are afraid of the wrong things for the wrong reasons, and I do believe that what we really should be afraid of is ordinary deliverability issues, security of our private email account, spam, phishing, etc. The companies that do the best in those regards get my business. I have yet to find a company that prevents spam or phishing as effectively as Gmail, and I have tried several. Using Gmail I almost never see an unsolicited email in my Inbox. Phishing and other types of malicious emails are really what you should be worried about. If you are worried about state-level actors snooping on your emails, I can't help you, and I suspect you can't expect protection anywhere if you are doing something nefarious.

Just today I registered new yandex.com email and I was not able to send and receive email despite the fact that I added phone number (Google Voice) for verification. I got strange error "invalid contact: while sending email from @yandex and "invalid mailbox" error while trying to send email from gmail to yandex (return to sender email with invalid sender error).

Same happened with mail15.com service (also Russian email service), but errors were slightly different..

I am afraid Russian is closing their digital services to foreigners because authorities do not have mechanism to authenticate non-russian phone numbers.

Tell you what.....you do NOT need a cellphone number to open a new Yandex account..!!!
Did you try it?
But I think the "west" is closing its internet borders for Russian IT services; we can discuss if this is legit or not....thats my opinion. Yandex has offices in Switserland,Germany and the Netherlands...pretty soon they MIGHT have also servers located fe in Norway or in Iceland or other European countries...would NOT surprise me at all.

Dutchie.