7 ms·

> The single team that has navigated the insanity of the email space well as a small company is Fastmail. They are brilliant, ethical, and pragmatic. I'm curio

> The single team that has navigated the insanity of the email space well as a small company is Fastmail. They are brilliant, ethical, and pragmatic. I'm curious to know if you have also examined Posteo, Mailbox, Tutanota and ProtonMail in this respect. At least the first two of those seem to be handling things quite well while charging a fraction of what Fastmail charges (per mailbox). Posteo has many other things going for it on the social responsibility, privacy and ethical angles. I haven't seen another email provider match that.

Tomte 9y ago
I understand why Posteo doesn‘t allow you to use your own domain (customer lock-in), but I don‘t find it particularly ethical how they lie about it („technically impossible“). OTOH, I like that Posteo is not a corporation, but actually run by a natural person with full personal liability.
- newscracker 9y ago
  I don't know where you got that "lie" from. Posteo doesn't allow custom domains in order to have as less information about the customer as possible (what it calls "data economy", meaning it doesn't want to store data wherever it can be avoided). I have seen the FAQ multiple times, where Posteo has had this answer for not allowing the use of one's own domain. [1] I don't like that Posteo doesn't offer custom domains, even if someone is willing to make the tradeoff that Posteo believes it to be. But I don't see anything wrong in its ideological position. _____ > Can I use Posteo with my own domains? > No. We are an email provider with a particular, privacy-oriented model – and this is not compatible with incorporating own domains. One of our emphases is data economy: we do not collect any user information (names, addresses, etc) of our customers. We always answer requests from authorities for user information in the negative. On the other hand, own domains need to be registered to the name and address of a person. If you were able to use own domains with us, this would affect the entire concept of Posteo: we would need to start saving user information for all customers who use their own domains with us – and to provide these to the Federal Network Agency to be provided on request to the authorities. > Even if only the MX record pointed to us, we would still need to store the assignment of the domain in your Posteo account as user information. Thus we would possess your user information and be required to give it out. For this reason, we have decided not to offer this possibility and instead to use data economy. We certainly understand that having your own domain is very important in the commercial industries, but from our privacy-oriented perspective, the disadvantages prevail. It is, however, possible to add various other email addresses with external domains as senders in the webmail interface and thereby to send emails with Posteo using external domains. In order to be able to read replies to these messages, you need to set up forwarding to Posteo for the external address. _____ Also please see its stance on privacy [2], where it emphasizes minimizing the data collected from the customer. [1]: https://posteo.de/en/site/faq https://posteo.de/en/site/faq [2]: https://posteo.de/en/site/privacy https://posteo.de/en/site/privacy
  - Tomte 9y ago
    They told me by mail. This FAQ entry came later and is obviously a rather misleading answer. How is storing the domain part of the mail address so very different from storing the local part?
    - lxst 9y ago
      Please read the cited FAQ entry again: > On the other hand, own domains need to be registered to the name and address of a person. If you were able to use own domains with us, this would affect the entire concept of Posteo: we would need to start saving user information for all customers who use their own domains with us – and to provide these to the Federal Network Agency to be provided on request to the authorities.
      - detaro 9y ago
        That sort-of makes sense for why they do not offer you domains, but not why they do not have a "bring your own domain" plan (like e.g. mailbox does). There somewhere being a registrar knowing who I am doesn't change what they have to do, they do not need to have or look at that data in any way.
        timvdalen 9y ago
        I think they're arguing that, if you bring your own domain, they still know what domain they're storing email for (by checking the reverse lookup) and they could look up the name behind it in the registry. They don't want to be put in the position where they know what natural person a certain email belongs to.
        detaro 9y ago
        They could also put the e-mail address in Google and find out who I am... I get and respect that they want to provide a way to use their service without identifying yourself, but stopping a customer from voluntarily identifying themselves is fairly futile, and counter to how many people intend to use e-mail. (Indeed, they offer payment by bank transfer or paypal, so clearly they do not insist on full privacy) Well, luckily they have direct competitors that offer the full range, so while I'd love more players in this segment I'm not directly affected by them not wanting such customers (and I find the argument questionable enough to reconsider recommending them in the future)

Tomte 9y ago

I understand why Posteo doesn‘t allow you to use your own domain (customer lock-in), but I don‘t find it particularly ethical how they lie about it („technically impossible“). OTOH, I like that Posteo is not a corporation, but actually run by a natural person with full personal liability.

newscracker 9y ago
I don't know where you got that "lie" from. Posteo doesn't allow custom domains in order to have as less information about the customer as possible (what it calls "data economy", meaning it doesn't want to store data wherever it can be avoided). I have seen the FAQ multiple times, where Posteo has had this answer for not allowing the use of one's own domain. [1] I don't like that Posteo doesn't offer custom domains, even if someone is willing to make the tradeoff that Posteo believes it to be. But I don't see anything wrong in its ideological position. _____ > Can I use Posteo with my own domains? > No. We are an email provider with a particular, privacy-oriented model – and this is not compatible with incorporating own domains. One of our emphases is data economy: we do not collect any user information (names, addresses, etc) of our customers. We always answer requests from authorities for user information in the negative. On the other hand, own domains need to be registered to the name and address of a person. If you were able to use own domains with us, this would affect the entire concept of Posteo: we would need to start saving user information for all customers who use their own domains with us – and to provide these to the Federal Network Agency to be provided on request to the authorities. > Even if only the MX record pointed to us, we would still need to store the assignment of the domain in your Posteo account as user information. Thus we would possess your user information and be required to give it out. For this reason, we have decided not to offer this possibility and instead to use data economy. We certainly understand that having your own domain is very important in the commercial industries, but from our privacy-oriented perspective, the disadvantages prevail. It is, however, possible to add various other email addresses with external domains as senders in the webmail interface and thereby to send emails with Posteo using external domains. In order to be able to read replies to these messages, you need to set up forwarding to Posteo for the external address. _____ Also please see its stance on privacy [2], where it emphasizes minimizing the data collected from the customer. [1]: https://posteo.de/en/site/faq https://posteo.de/en/site/faq [2]: https://posteo.de/en/site/privacy https://posteo.de/en/site/privacy
- Tomte 9y ago
  They told me by mail. This FAQ entry came later and is obviously a rather misleading answer. How is storing the domain part of the mail address so very different from storing the local part?
  - lxst 9y ago
    Please read the cited FAQ entry again: > On the other hand, own domains need to be registered to the name and address of a person. If you were able to use own domains with us, this would affect the entire concept of Posteo: we would need to start saving user information for all customers who use their own domains with us – and to provide these to the Federal Network Agency to be provided on request to the authorities.
    - detaro 9y ago
      That sort-of makes sense for why they do not offer you domains, but not why they do not have a "bring your own domain" plan (like e.g. mailbox does). There somewhere being a registrar knowing who I am doesn't change what they have to do, they do not need to have or look at that data in any way.
      - timvdalen 9y ago
        I think they're arguing that, if you bring your own domain, they still know what domain they're storing email for (by checking the reverse lookup) and they could look up the name behind it in the registry. They don't want to be put in the position where they know what natural person a certain email belongs to.
        detaro 9y ago
        They could also put the e-mail address in Google and find out who I am... I get and respect that they want to provide a way to use their service without identifying yourself, but stopping a customer from voluntarily identifying themselves is fairly futile, and counter to how many people intend to use e-mail. (Indeed, they offer payment by bank transfer or paypal, so clearly they do not insist on full privacy) Well, luckily they have direct competitors that offer the full range, so while I'd love more players in this segment I'm not directly affected by them not wanting such customers (and I find the argument questionable enough to reconsider recommending them in the future)