7 ms·
Ask HN: What's your email setup?
Do you use Gmail like almost everyone out there?
If not, you must be someone who cares about their privacy. How do you cope with the fact that almost everyone you email to uses Gmail? In other words, if the people you interact with on email don't use secure/encrypted email, how does whatever effort you put into help?
- Philomath 9y agoI use namecheap for email hosting. A while ago I read quite a lot and it was my preferred option. Maybe there is something better now. Regarding your other concern, although theoretically they shouldn't map my custom email with my usage of chrome or Google maps, I have to admit that most likely they can do some correlations and target me anyway. Still, they will not know about what I buy or where I go (flight emails etc)I, and that's already something.
- Jamescarlsen21 9y agoStill namecheap is the best eamil hosting service provider.
- feistypharit 9y agoI use migadu. https://www.migadu.com/en/index.html https://www.migadu.com/en/index.html
- cweagans 9y agoSame. It's been great. Their spam filter needed a little tweaking from the default settings, but other than that, I've had no problems with the service.
- ac29 9y agoHad to drop them after a my first year due to lots of deliverability problems (even with inter-organizational emails hosted on the same service). Its cheap, but 98% reliability isnt good enough for business.
- seanot 9y agoI've been pleased overall with Migadu as well.
- rfreytag 9y agoI use mail-in-a-box: https://mailinabox.email/ https://mailinabox.email/ on a small linode. Has been serving me well for years. For one other email I use Rackspace Email at $2/month: https://www.rackspace.com/email-hosting https://www.rackspace.com/email-hosting
- SkyLinx 9y agoI've had a bad experience with Rackspace Email. I found their service to be very limited IMO
- closed 9y agoBased on a recommendation from HN, I switched to fastmail.com. I create aliases for most new services I sign up for, and treat the actual email address like a secret. Being able to "turn off" annoying services is a delight!
- corobo 9y agoI use Fastmail to punt all of my domains' catchall inbound mail into my Gmail account. > you must be someone who cares about their privacy That's quite an assumption. I care about privacy but use Gmail. Email is not, has never been, will never be private. It's a postcard protocol.
- kotrunga 9y agoI use ProtonMail, and tell people that if they care about secure email, they should too. I looked in to other services, like FastMail, but from what I've seen, they aren't as secure. I'm no security master, but according to these: https://www.fastmail.com/about/privacy.html https://www.fastmail.com/about/privacy.html https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/07/australias-fastmail-secure-email-nsa https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/07/australia... FastMail is subject to the Australian government, so if a "properly authorised Australian law enforcement" person comes, there goes your privacy. Do others use ProtonMail? Or is there another email service that's as secure? I'm no master, just trying to go after security. However, email is email, so you can only be so secure, especially when emailing people with gmail accounts, etc.
- invalid_ 9y agoProtonmail when under DDOS attacks routes their traffic through servers owned by mossad. Which again is an "observer" in the global five eyes surveillance network
- bartbutler 9y agoIt's BGP routing, and requests only (not responses). Radware, which is not Mossad, does not do our TLS termination--we do.
- chmielewski 9y agoThe “security as in Swiss” concept ProtonMail uses is a marketing tactic. ProtonMail is a US company. Do some research on the Patriot Act, Liberty Act and the omnibus rider passed in DEC2015.
- bartbutler 9y agoProtonMail is not a US company.
- K0nserv 9y agoI use Fastmail after switching away from Gmail and Google pretty much entirely. The core issue with Gmail and other free services is that since you aren't paying for the service they need to sustain in some other fashion(mining your data for example). With Fastmail I know that it's in their best interest to do what's right for their customers. I use an alias system so I can have email addresses for specific purposes and signups. Also have a bunch of other assorted email addresses.
- wilsonnb 9y agoGoogle does offer a paid email service through their G Suite product. It's generally aimed at businesses but the cheaper options are $5 and $10 a month which is comparable to Fastmail.
- _RPM 9y agoThe problem with the G Suite product, is that it's overwhelming. You get access to the entire suite of Google products. When you only need Email, Calendar, Contacts.
- webmaven 9y agoIf you use G Suite For Your Domain, then the admin can enable/disable most of Google's services (I think only the user directory service can't be disabled) for those users (globally, individually, departmentaly): https://admin.google.com/ac/appslist/core https://admin.google.com/ac/appslist/core https://admin.google.com/ac/appslist/additional https://admin.google.com/ac/appslist/additional There is also a setting that determines whether new services are turned on or off by default when Google adds them: https://support.google.com/a/answer/82691 https://support.google.com/a/answer/82691
- 333c 9y agoI switched to Fastmail from Gmail at the end of 2017. While it's of course not as privacy-oriented as ProtonMail, it is sufficient for my needs. Like you, I realized that Google's interests didn't line up with my own, and I would rather pay for a service with money instead of personal data. As a cherry on top, they host a static homepage for me for no extra cost, but that didn't really factor into my decision.
- oblib 9y agoI also use mail-in-a-box: https://mailinabox.email/ https://mailinabox.email/ Honestly, after 20 years of using 3rd party services I got tired of being subjected to their whims and issues. The straw that broke my back was when Mandrill was taken over by MailChimp. Not that there's anything wrong with MailChimp, my problem was with investing my time learning how to do things "their way" and exposing myself once again to a 3rd party's whims and issues. It took me some time to go through all the necessary steps to get mail-in-a-box set up and secured but it was worth the effort and I learned a lot in the process and got a lot more than just email for my efforts. And it was a lot easier than I'd expected. The mail-in-a-box team has done some great work on that project and the community support is solid.
- Random_Person 9y agoI have old yahoo addresses that refuse to die. My "main" email is Gmail, but all of my domains are hosted on Dreamhost and have email, so I have addresses on all of them also, but forward to my Gmail for reading/cataloging. Work uses a Microsoft account.
- Elect2 9y agoI'm using Gmail and considering host my own email server. But the only/big thing stopped me to do that is how to filter SPAM. Gmail is really useful for SPAM filtering.
- sosilkj 9y agoIf you care about privacy, use PGP. You can use PGP with a gmail account.
- chmielewski 9y agoI agree that if you are located in the US, there is no difference between doing this and using ProtonMail, for instance.
- atsushin 9y agoI use Gmail for most things. I also use ProtonMail, and I want to migrate things to there because I do care about my privacy but it seems to be too much hassle and I don't have enough time.
- kdv 9y agoThese days you pretty much have to choose between privacy (e.g Protonmail, Fastmail, self-hosted) and security (Google). Account security should matter more since your primary email address probably holds the keys to the kingdom for the rest of your digital life. Oh, and privacy as you know it is essentially dead.
- 333c 9y agoWhy do you say that? My email provider (fastmail) supports two-factor auth. Beyond that, I use a long password generated by my password manager. Why am I less secure than a Gmail user? I think security is much more dependent on user configuration. If my password is "passw0rd" then I'll be fairly insecure regardless of my provider. Likewise, since I have 2FA set up, I'm better off, regardless of provider.
- kdv 9y agoThat's a reasonable question. You're absolutely correct that security is often highly dependent on account configuration, but Google has invested more into security than any other mail provider and my ridiculous prediction is that their anomaly detection powered by their all-powerful compute network is only going to create a bigger gap there. For most people, the biggest risk is a troll abusing account recovery or weak 2FA settings to hijack your email account, pivot to other accounts, and wreck your online life. In those cases, you're probably safe w/ a strongly configured Fastmail account (although there have been some recent issues brought to light around Fastmail's account recovery practices [1]) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15855081 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15855081
- SkyLinx 9y agoThe past year I've tried to leave Google and have tried, in order, Zoho, Rackspace Email, self hosting and am currently with Fastmail. However I've planned moving back to Google this coming weekend. I just miss many features and services and the integration between them.
- Willox 9y agoMay I ask why you stopped using Zoho? I'm using them currently, but only to forward my emails to a google account. You mention a lack of features, but of course with a forwarding setup that is not a problem.
- stunpix 9y agoI setup my mail server manually from scratch with my own scripts. I never had such experience before, so it was total pain and I spent about 2 weeks to get fully working healthy server. Now I know what is behind curtains and how complex mail serving nowadays. At the moment I'm deciding: stay with my own server or trow this headache and buy a service like Migadu or fastmail.
- johnklos 9y agoI've run my own email server since the mid 1990s. While it's not trivial, it's certainly not all that difficult. What I find strange and suspicious, though, is how quickly and readily people go out of their way to actively discourage others, and how there's this crazy push to move everyone and everything in to the "cloud". This even happens in places where running one's own email server is expected, such as the selfhosted reddit channel. There are two problems with that, broadly speaking. One, if we care about privacy and security, the "cloud" doesn't have that. Google can genuinely try all they want to keep things secure, but we know without doubt, thanks to Mr. Snowden, that people who actually work for TLA agencies are working at Google (and Amazon, and Microsoft, and Yahoo, et cetera). So is our data REALLY safe? Even if they're not interested in our data specifically, the data can't be said to be safe. The other problem is that email with Gmail and others is not deterministic. In the real world of email, you either get an email or you don't. If you don't, you can look at your logs and see why. You'll end up with a precise reason why delivery failed. With Gmail and friends, though, they might simply not like the choice of subject, or they might not like the attached picture, or they may simply not like the cut of the sending server's jib. I've been told that access to email logs for businesses is better than it used to be, but do you think a user who gets free Gmail gets to know why a specific email wasn't delivered? Finally, I think Gmail accounts shouldn't be usable for WHOIS and for abuse addresses because they can't accept abuse complaints. I consider any WHOIS or any Internet service provider which uses Gmail to be amateurish and unprofessional. There's nothing less professional than setting up an email for incoming abuse complaints that filters abuse complains.
- LinuxBender 9y agoI agree with everything johnklos said and I do the same for the same reasons. I enforce TLS for certain domains and sometimes for all domains, depending on if I am subscribing to something for the first time and unsure if they support TLS. I read emails with strings and more. If there isn't a plain text version, I just delete it.
- johnnycarcin 9y agoYou were probably waiting for this, but how do you handle IP reputation? I REALLY would like to host my own e-mail server but when I've previously tried this on the various vendors platforms (Digital Ocean, AWS, Azure), I naturally end up with an IP that has either no rep or bad rep. I did everything I could with regards to proving my mail server was legit but still ran into issues with my e-mails being flagged as spam. I know I could use someone like SendGrid or whatever to handle my outgoing e-mail, but now I'm back into the whole privacy concern area...
- buffaloo 9y agoI don't see a lot of love for Office365; any particular reason why?
- TwoNineFive 9y agoIn a word; Microsoft. http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-tightens-email-privacy-policy-after-taking-fire-over-hotmail-incident/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-tightens-email-privac...
- dundercoder 9y agoI’ve been toying with the idea of a postfix/dovecot/spamassasin/opendkim solution. I don’t need one more thing to do, but the big G has me worried.
- 0kto 9y agoI am a posteo [1] subscriber. Superior set of features [2] (privacy, security, encryption), runs on green power, no ads / tracking, groups in address book, nice staff -- for 1€ per month. Also supports mandatory TLS transfer (or doesn't send the email), if wanted. Couldn't be happier since ~5yrs! [1] https://posteo.de/en https://posteo.de/en [2] https://posteo.de/en/site/features#featuresprivacy https://posteo.de/en/site/features#featuresprivacy