Does GMX Read Your Emails ?

[InquiringMind]

A US based friend is looking for a new free email that can be accessed by IMAP. I know that this has been discussed often in the various forums here. One of the choices is GMX.com

In Tutanota's ads they claim that GMX was described in the past in a German publication as reading clients' emails.

https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/gmx-tutanota-comparison

https://www.bluebit.de/news/web.de-u...erten-31410791

Is this still true ? Does GMX read their customers' emails ?

TIA

[jeffpan]

Originally Posted by InquiringMind

A US based friend is looking for a new free email that can be accessed by IMAP. I know that this has been discussed often in the various forums here. One of the choices is GMX.com

In Tutanota's ads they claim that GMX was described in the past in a German publication as reading clients' emails.

https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/gmx-tutanota-comparison

https://www.bluebit.de/news/web.de-u...erten-31410791

Is this still true ? Does GMX read their customers' emails ?

TIA

they read email by machine for ADs promotions.
read by manual? I don't think so. but, if DE or EU gov/org has the requirements, 1and1, as well as t-online, gmail, yahoo, hotmail, will be possible to read user's emails and return them back to GOVs.
If the strictest privacy is a must, I suggest to use the dedicated encrypted services such as proton, Tuta, Skiff etc.

[webecedarian]

I can only tell you this: They sure as hell don't read emails addressed to them. Or, at least, they don't respond.

[InquiringMind]

Originally Posted by jeffpan

they read email by machine for ADs promotions.
read by manual? I don't think so. but, if DE or EU gov/org has the requirements, 1and1, as well as t-online, gmail, yahoo, hotmail, will be possible to read user's emails and return them back to GOVs.
If the strictest privacy is a must, I suggest to use the dedicated encrypted services such as proton, Tuta, Skiff etc.

Thanks for the reply.

Tuta and Skiff do not allow IMAP for security reasons. Proton has the "bridge" for IMAP, but my own experience with Proton's free account is that notifications for new emails come about 6 hours after receiving a new email. Really long delay.

My friend does not need encrypted security. They just want something for friends and family emails. But if the email host is reading your emails, you wonder if you become at risk for ID theft.

[InquiringMind]

Originally Posted by webecedarian

I can only tell you this: They sure as hell don't read emails addressed to them. Or, at least, they don't respond.

LOL !!

I have FOUR paid Fastmail accounts and tech support is for all intents and purposes NON-EXISTENT. Many days after requesting support I get a "we'll look into it." That is as far as it goes.

Does any email host actually respect its customers? I have never found one. It is either no answer or a derisive "I am not going to waste my time answering your question, mate. P-off !"

There are days I wish I could just use Signal for every communication. It just works with no fuss.

[jeffpan]

Originally Posted by InquiringMind

Thanks for the reply.

Tuta and Skiff do not allow IMAP for security reasons. Proton has the "bridge" for IMAP, but my own experience with Proton's free account is that notifications for new emails come about 6 hours after receiving a new email. Really long delay.

My friend does not need encrypted security. They just want something for friends and family emails. But if the email host is reading your emails, you wonder if you become at risk for ID theft.

if your friend have a VPS I can
help setup a mailserver for him
then he owns the full data and privacy.

[JeremyNicoll]

Originally Posted by InquiringMind

LOL !!

I have FOUR paid Fastmail accounts and tech support is for all intents and purposes NON-EXISTENT.

Yeah, it's sad. And yet they now employ people whose only job seems to be to write marketing guff.

Originally Posted by InquiringMind

Does any email host actually respect its customers? I have never found one. It is either no answer or a derisive "I am not going to waste my time answering your question, mate.

Half my emails go to Fastmail, but the other half go elsewhere, to a London based ISP who've long had a solid technical grounding.

I pay them just for an email account & to host a couple of domains for me, and use a different company for my internet connection, which is possibly unusual. I became a customer of theirs in 2003 or a little earlier, I think (I've deleted my old notes but found "2003" literals in some backed-up config files.)

Their technical support is still good. I would totally expect them to do things like dig info out of their server logs for me, and to be willing to discuss why their systems behaved in a particular way.

A while back I had timeouts refreshing the view in their webmail client (which is Roundcube and I don't think all that many of their customers use it), caused in part by me having hundreds of folders. They did look into this, considered (or actually did - I can't remember & don't want to trawl though the emails about it - changing the backend database they used to make it faster and/or changing the server it ran on) and also installed a newer version of the webmail server application. It took a while ... but they did do it ... and they were polite and professional and kept me informed throughout. I do remember that when they were testing the new software versions they gave me access to those as well as their normal production server.

I can't remember how I found out about them, but I used to be a keen user of usenet, and they used newsgroup: uk.net.providers.aaisp to host discussions of their services. Nowadays that's only used for status messages, I think. They also have an IRC channel and although I rarely use it it's possible to alert staff to problems there instantly (during normal working hours) and see if any other customers also have problems. Weekend support is a little slower but not non-existent.

The company concerned is Andrews & Arnold - https://www.aa.net.uk/

It's not cheap, though for peace of mind etc (having an alternative to FM) I think it's worth it.

[TenFour]

Does any email host actually respect its customers? I have never found one.

Check out Purelymail. Small, simple, cheap and a one-man operation but I have received swift and knowledgeable help via email the few times I have needed it. You can't really know if any email provider is reading your emails unless they are encrypted before you send them.

[InquiringMind]

Originally Posted by jeffpan

if your friend have a VPS I can
help setup a mailserver for him
then he owns the full data and privacy.

Thank you. That is very kind and generous of you.
He is a novice when it comes to computer issues. It would be beyond his abilities. He usually calls me when complex things come up and I only have a moderate amount of computer and internet knowledge.

I am curious about what is involved. Could you please point me to forum threads, or websites, or books that discuss how it is done? Thank you for whatever guidance you wish to offer.

[InquiringMind]

Originally Posted by JeremyNicoll

Yeah, it's sad. And yet they now employ people whose only job seems to be to write marketing guff.

Half my emails go to Fastmail, but the other half go elsewhere, to a London based ISP who've long had a solid technical grounding.

I pay them just for an email account & to host a couple of domains for me, and use a different company for my internet connection, which is possibly unusual. I became a customer of theirs in 2003 or a little earlier, I think ...<snip>...
Their technical support is still good. ...<snip>...

... and they were polite and professional and kept me informed throughout. ...<snip>...

Weekend support is a little slower but not non-existent.

The company concerned is Andrews & Arnold - https://www.aa.net.uk/

It's not cheap, though for peace of mind etc (having an alternative to FM) I think it's worth it.

I too have been receiving Fastmail's marketing emails and have thought wouldn't it make more sense to get some tech support people to fix current users problems?

Andrews & Arnold sounds outstanding. Thank you for the info. I will look into them for domain and email hosting for someone I know who has a business.

[InquiringMind]

Originally Posted by TenFour

Check out Purelymail. Small, simple, cheap and a one-man operation but I have received swift and knowledgeable help via email the few times I have needed it. You can't really know if any email provider is reading your emails unless they are encrypted before you send them.

Thank you for the recommend. I will look into them. I agree in theory about encryption, but the last time I tried to use GPG it became apparent that getting a desktop GPG email to decypt on an Android GPG app and vice versa required Gandalf the White and a team of Hobbits to assist. I exhanged several messages on Github with app developers who basically told me, "Mate, it works from phone to phone and desktop folk can just P-Off." I guess it required a bribe of Pizza and Beer that I could not provide. Sad.

[hadaso]

Originally Posted by InquiringMind

But if the email host is reading your emails, you wonder if you become at risk for ID theft.

If you're worried about email being used for ID theft then you probably should worry about the security of the DNS and the mail servers. Now end to end encryption will help if email routing can be compromised. End to end encryption is not used when resetting the password to your bank account.

[Bamb0]

Originally Posted by jeffpan

they read email by machine for ADs promotions.

All email providers have a right to read outgoing emails....... (Yes you also Jeff )

Its how they protrect thier server from beng abused........ (And being added to spamhaus,etc)

[guest2k]

every email services read your emails, not by human though.