What if you left Fastmail?
 

After reading this thread:
http://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?t=78803
one question came to mind. What would I use if I left Fastmail?
Truth is I'm not familiar with other services like Runbox or ProtonMail.
What about you? Do you have already an alternative?

That referenced thread is about new Australian laws that might impact Fastmail customers. But, what email provider doesn't follow local laws, and would you really want to use such an outlaw provider? I suspect every country has laws that allow law enforcement to get warrants that require email providers to provide them with information. The only protection against this is to analyze the laws in various countries to determine which ones you most agree with, and then how they will impact you if you are not a citizen of the country where the email service is based. That is not easy to do! The reality is that nothing we do on the Internet is all that private and if state-level authorities want to access that information they can and will no matter what service you use and no matter what country it is located in. Sure, some people are willing to roll their own email servers with end-to-end encryption and then only communicate with people doing the same, but most of us would not be able to do that and wouldn't find it very useful either. I suspect in many cases there are backdoors that allow even encrypted commercial providers to provide significant amounts of information to the authorities. It's not really very different from the good old days when criminals would communicate by passing letters from hand to hand instead of using the postal service, or they might resort to coded letters that sounded innocent. The rest of us knew there was a possibility that any mail we sent might be read by authorities, but it was too useful not to use. I have read that even today one of the most likely avenues for identity theft is that thieves simply steal your mail from your mailbox or trash. Think of all the new credit cards, bank statements, government documents, etc. that still arrive via snail mail. Here in the USA there are some agencies that will only send incredibly important documents via snail mail, like hospitals and the IRS for example. I helped my father set up automatic payment of his taxes and it required the mailing of a PIN code to him from the IRS--no other way to obtain the code.

I am just about to dump FastMail for GMail.
Privacy with email doesn't exist and I am just sick of paying companies like FastMail, ProtonMail etc for a so-called private service that doesn't exist.

^^This^^ I say choose your email provider by its security, reliability, features, and cost. Frankly, I would be more worried about privacy using the smaller providers that can talk all they want about privacy but how do you know they aren't just reading your email?

For those interested in all things internet security/privacy etc I recommend Rob Braxman channel on YouTube.
He is a real techie, not someone paid to promote ProtonMail, Tutanota etc...

Exactly, I feel the same way about smaller companies. It can almost be guaranteed that they are snooping on customers' data.

Firstly, I wouldn't give up Fastmail yet because of the change of law. The new law is lamentable and to be challenged. However, I have no reason yet to believe that my own account is likely to be compromised more than with any other service.

Secondly, the feature set of Fastmail is 'just right' for me and my family and has served us well for a number of years. To me it's worth the price. YMMV.

If ever there were a compelling reason to leave, my choices would be first (by a long way) Runbox and secondly Polarismail. If I wanted a free (or rather no extra cost) option it would be what Gandi offers with its domains.

That's my take as well.

I currently have a legacy plan with FastMail, but if the company decided to force everyone onto its current plans, it would cost more than I'd be willing to pay for my relatively simple needs. It got me thinking about the topic of this thread and spurred me to investigate alternatives in case I ever decided to leave.

I actually just signed up for a Runbox trial last night. I tried out Polarismail a few months ago. It was acceptable, but I'm liking Runbox better so far. Currently, though, they too are my top two choices.

One benefit of looking into alternative and trying them out was to get a better appreciation for the features FastMail does provide.

I would say gmail is about the worst, it tracks all your movements and sends you advertising relating to your movements.

Does fastmail send you advertising? NO

Also Fastmail as not received any directive from the police or the Australian government about the so called security laws....end of story, most of what you read from the media is wrote by misinformed p[eople looking for a new story.

Why limit yourself to just one?
 

I've been considering the things discussed here too, and I'm coming to the conclusion that more than one email service might be the best solution (for me).

Very occasionally I do want E2EE, so I have a ProtonMail account.
Most of the time I want easy access to aliases that can be used for both sending and receiving as well as created on the fly, so I have a Fastmail account.
Because I have domains with Gandi, I have access to Gandi mail. Although I don't have much use for it, there is one important contact I have who uses one of my Gandi mail accounts. I can easily update my email address with that contact, and might one day, but, really, it's not that urgent as it's not a big deal to check it.

My point is, you're not under any obligation to have all of your email with one provider. Even convenience isn't really an argument because services like Fastmail and most email clients will let you send and receive emails through multiple/other email services (although admittedly there are some exceptions).

Of course there are all sorts of privacy switches you can turn off and on, including location tracking and history. You should do that on your phone if you object to location tracking. And, I don't get sent advertising from Gmail--do you mean advertising emails? They don't scan your Inbox if that's what you mean. Sure, if you purchase something in the store or a service you can receive ads in your email, but you can also opt out like any other advertiser. Google collects a lot of information about your interests and serves you ads, but not specifically in Gmail. So does every other online service. I use an ad blocker in my browser, and Gmail does a great job of blocking spammy ads, phishing, hackers, etc., so I rarely see an email I have not signed up for.

https://policies.google.com/privacy?...US#infocollect

Yes get ebay and a few other gmail ones....I dont use it much now, just my fastmail account but have others for Ms etc.

I only get spam to one fastmail domain, so I am going to turn that off.

If you see advertising in your Gmail Inbox you can turn it off in Settings by going to Labels/Categories and deselect Promotions and the other categories. No more ads at the top of your Inbox! I find that categories didn't work accurately anyway and wasted my time searching through essentially three or four Inboxes instead of just one. Every day something I wanted to see was buried in Promotions. I like everything in one Inbox in chronological order with starred emails moving to the top of the list. I have achieved Inbox Nearly Zero by trying to choosing to delete, archive, or star emails as they arrive. With Gmail's search I can find anything quickly in the archive going back to 2006.

Going from private 'except for government interference' - to just handing over all the information about you for another company to data-mine in order to MAKE MONEY off your personal interests, private correspondence, location, web activity, personal interactions, personal connections, ---- literally ANYTHING that could possibly be known about you -- well -- that's just nuts.

NO Company has a right to EVERY detail about my life. Of course I use Google, however, I try very hard, to keep a firewall between various datasets. Google, for instance, has no right to any of my personal and private communication.

It's not about "Google sending anyone advertising" or "Seeing ads in Gmail" either --- It's about you, and your private communications, and then Google SELLING that information about you, your most intimate information, to any company, willing to buy. -- Google and advertisers are able to predict, with great accuracy, people who are sick with very specific diseases, people who are pregnant, people who have kids of certain ages, people who are.... you name it. There was a story about someone who started seeing ads for pregnancy, before they even knew they were pregnant. Unfortunately, that girl's father saw the pregnancy ads, and was wondering why his daughter was getting ads for pregnancy... well... you guessed it what happened next...

"Free" is never "free". If you've noticed, it costs about $50 per year, to provide email service. That's the going rate. Google, therefore, is estimated to make $50 per year, per user, in order to cover it's costs - associated with providing service to you --- it's 'product' --- and to hand you - the product - over to it's customers - ANY company choosing to purchase ads.

I'm sorry, that's not acceptable. All this has real world consequences. And with the tools they are given, advertisers can pretty much pinpoint you down to your exact address. This is DESPITE google's insistence that your information is 'randomized' -- its well documented that despite the 'advertising ID' that advertisers can find out exactly who you are and where you live.

I have email going back to the 90's in Fastmail. Search is brilliant. I can find anything I want in a manner of moments - and no one is datamining my life.

Oh, the horror of seeing ads! What is the world coming to? Some of us have the ability to ignore advertising if we don't actively block it, but there is always a huge market for tinfoil hats.