5 ms·

The engineer in me loves the promised End-End encryption and all the cool stuff. But, the inconvenience of "unable to search contents of emails" is a deal break

The engineer in me loves the promised End-End encryption and all the cool stuff. But, the inconvenience of "unable to search contents of emails" is a deal breaker towards encrypted email for me. My primary concern was Google/Microsoft scraping my emails to build a profile of me. My emails could give away very personal information that I do not want to be used for advertising. My money finally went to Fastmail. Excellent email service - just works and doesn't try to be super smart and take over the world.

duality 9y ago
Didn't Google stop scanning Gmail for ads targeting? https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/technology/gmail-ads.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/technology/gmail-ads.html
- nevir 9y ago
  They still scan email for product features. Travel receipts for things like "my flights" & Google Now, etc
- rurban 9y ago
  More importantly they give any government agency free access without any warrant to fulltext search any customer. US law interpretation of IMAP. Only with a POP3 service you are safe.
  - skybrian 9y ago
    "Without any warrant": what do you mean?
    - linkregister 9y ago
      Under the Stored Communications Act, law enforcement may get emails or other information under third party control with only a subpoena. Retrieving email via the POP3 protocol typically deletes the email upon retrieval, making it impossible for the third party to comply with requests for already-retrieved emails.
      - bhandziuk 9y ago
        >POP3 protocol typically deletes the email upon retrieval What POP3 client are you using that does this? I've not seen it before. It gets marked as read but that's it.
        linkregister 9y ago
        Geez, Eudora? Outlook Express maybe? I haven’t used POP3 in a decade. It used to delete from the server after downloading locally. This was when most email mailboxes had a capacity of 10MB.
        bhandziuk 9y ago
        I'm writing something that uses POP3 right now and thankfully it doesn't delete anything. I'd have to do things a lot differently if that were the case
      - xfer 9y ago
        So you think google storage systems work like your normal filesystem?
        linkregister 9y ago
        You don’t think that files can be deleted from a Google file system? Does gmail even store email like that, in flat files?
        xfer 9y ago
        They can be but not instantaneously, because of multiple replicated copies in a distributed environment.
  - datguacdoh 9y ago
    Source?
    - gr3yh47 9y ago
      all of the news about how the 3-letter agencies operate from the last decade
- paxy 9y ago
  Only for business users (i.e. custom Google Apps domains)
bad_user 9y ago
G Suite (former Google Apps) has a different Terms of Use compared with Google's user oriented products, like Gmail.com, otherwise usage wouldn't fly in most big companies, especially in Europe. In general, if you aren't paying, then you're the product.
mycoborea 9y ago
+1 for fastmail just works. good support, clean and fast web interface, plays nicely with mbsync + mutt. identities feature is a nice bonus.
seveneightn9ne 9y ago
You can totally search email contents with ProtonMail -- it just does it clientside. I just tested with my 125MB of emails and it was fast (under 1s) but maybe if you have more emails it could be slower.
- reacharavindh 9y ago
  Have you tried searching for a keyword that is only in the content of the email and NOT on the subject? I tried even now. It doesn’t work for me.
  - maxk42 9y ago
    I have: It works.
    - bhassel 9y ago
      I'm curious how? This FAQ page on their site claims you cannot search email contents, although they plan to support that in their upcoming Protonmail Bridge (which works with a desktop client to search locally): https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/search/ https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/search/ That is what I'd expect, since obviously they cannot build a search index over text they cannot read. Transferring the entire contents of your emails to your web browser to search locally would be slow and impractical on anything but a very fast connection.

duality 9y ago

Didn't Google stop scanning Gmail for ads targeting? https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/technology/gmail-ads.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/technology/gmail-ads.html

nevir 9y ago
They still scan email for product features. Travel receipts for things like "my flights" & Google Now, etc
rurban 9y ago
More importantly they give any government agency free access without any warrant to fulltext search any customer. US law interpretation of IMAP. Only with a POP3 service you are safe.
- skybrian 9y ago
  "Without any warrant": what do you mean?
  - linkregister 9y ago
    Under the Stored Communications Act, law enforcement may get emails or other information under third party control with only a subpoena. Retrieving email via the POP3 protocol typically deletes the email upon retrieval, making it impossible for the third party to comply with requests for already-retrieved emails.
    - bhandziuk 9y ago
      >POP3 protocol typically deletes the email upon retrieval What POP3 client are you using that does this? I've not seen it before. It gets marked as read but that's it.
      - linkregister 9y ago
        Geez, Eudora? Outlook Express maybe? I haven’t used POP3 in a decade. It used to delete from the server after downloading locally. This was when most email mailboxes had a capacity of 10MB.
        bhandziuk 9y ago
        I'm writing something that uses POP3 right now and thankfully it doesn't delete anything. I'd have to do things a lot differently if that were the case
    - xfer 9y ago
      So you think google storage systems work like your normal filesystem?
      - linkregister 9y ago
        You don’t think that files can be deleted from a Google file system? Does gmail even store email like that, in flat files?
        xfer 9y ago
        They can be but not instantaneously, because of multiple replicated copies in a distributed environment.
- datguacdoh 9y ago
  Source?
  - gr3yh47 9y ago
    all of the news about how the 3-letter agencies operate from the last decade
paxy 9y ago
Only for business users (i.e. custom Google Apps domains)

bad_user 9y ago

G Suite (former Google Apps) has a different Terms of Use compared with Google's user oriented products, like Gmail.com, otherwise usage wouldn't fly in most big companies, especially in Europe. In general, if you aren't paying, then you're the product.

mycoborea 9y ago

+1 for fastmail just works. good support, clean and fast web interface, plays nicely with mbsync + mutt. identities feature is a nice bonus.

seveneightn9ne 9y ago

You can totally search email contents with ProtonMail -- it just does it clientside. I just tested with my 125MB of emails and it was fast (under 1s) but maybe if you have more emails it could be slower.

reacharavindh 9y ago
Have you tried searching for a keyword that is only in the content of the email and NOT on the subject? I tried even now. It doesn’t work for me.
- maxk42 9y ago
  I have: It works.
  - bhassel 9y ago
    I'm curious how? This FAQ page on their site claims you cannot search email contents, although they plan to support that in their upcoming Protonmail Bridge (which works with a desktop client to search locally): https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/search/ https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/search/ That is what I'd expect, since obviously they cannot build a search index over text they cannot read. Transferring the entire contents of your emails to your web browser to search locally would be slow and impractical on anything but a very fast connection.