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Fastmail is not a good privacy first solution. People do share it as a great Google Mail alternative, but it's not more privacy friendly [1]. [1] https://www.q

Fastmail is not a good privacy first solution. People do share it as a great Google Mail alternative, but it's not more privacy friendly [1]. [1] https://www.quora.com/Fastmail-or-Protonmail-Which-one-is-truly-more-secure https://www.quora.com/Fastmail-or-Protonmail-Which-one-is-tr...

detaro 8y ago
"Privacy friendly" is more than a binary "has end-to-end encryption or not" when it comes to e-mail, especially given the issues laid out in the quoted document (which the quora answer then dismisses, arguably not having understood the basis for them or at least not properly establishing why they think it still provides a benefit). In nearly all cases you have to trust your provider in the end, so the more important question is "which organization do I trust the most".
samcday 8y ago
It's a good point. As an Aussie who vaguely follows Aussie politics. I know that at the very least the current ruling party has some pretty funny ideas about internet privacy [1][2]. So it kinda scares me that Fastmail is based there. That said, I'm currently using Fastmail since switching to it from Gmail a few months ago. The service itself is excellent. As far as I can tell, they don't seem to actively scan the contents of your email to build a profile on you like Google does [3]. So, at least for now, there's that. [1]: https://www.cyberscoop.com/australia-encryption-backdoors-law-passes/ https://www.cyberscoop.com/australia-encryption-backdoors-la... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Austral... [3]: https://www.fastmail.com/about/privacy.html#sharing https://www.fastmail.com/about/privacy.html#sharing
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  > they don't seem to actively scan the contents of your email to build a profile on you like Google does [3]. So, at least for now, there's that. I thought G stopped doing that for mail?
  - samcday 8y ago
    Really? That must be recent, because when I stopped using Gmail late-ish last year, it was still doing that kinda-cool-but-still-pretty-creepy thing of overlaying airline reservation information gleaned from emails onto Google Maps.
    - jankeymeulen 8y ago
      You'll still get the overlay but information from Gmail but aren't served ads anymore based on the contents. It changed somewhere in 2017 iirc.
  - mfer 8y ago
    "Consumer Gmail content will not be used or scanned for any ads personalization after this change." is what they said in places like https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in-the-enterprise-g-suites-gmail-and-consumer-gmail-to-more-closely-align/ https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in... This does not say they will stop using the metadata for ad personalization. I would love for someone to correct me on this one.
  - wll 8y ago
    Google parses and collects purchase history (purchases, subscriptions, reservations) from Gmail. See https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/7673989 https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/7673989, or go to https://myaccount.google.com/purchases https://myaccount.google.com/purchases, https://myaccount.google.com/reservations https://myaccount.google.com/reservations, https://myaccount.google.com/subscriptions https://myaccount.google.com/subscriptions.

detaro 8y ago

"Privacy friendly" is more than a binary "has end-to-end encryption or not" when it comes to e-mail, especially given the issues laid out in the quoted document (which the quora answer then dismisses, arguably not having understood the basis for them or at least not properly establishing why they think it still provides a benefit). In nearly all cases you have to trust your provider in the end, so the more important question is "which organization do I trust the most".

samcday 8y ago

It's a good point. As an Aussie who vaguely follows Aussie politics. I know that at the very least the current ruling party has some pretty funny ideas about internet privacy [1][2]. So it kinda scares me that Fastmail is based there. That said, I'm currently using Fastmail since switching to it from Gmail a few months ago. The service itself is excellent. As far as I can tell, they don't seem to actively scan the contents of your email to build a profile on you like Google does [3]. So, at least for now, there's that. [1]: https://www.cyberscoop.com/australia-encryption-backdoors-law-passes/ https://www.cyberscoop.com/australia-encryption-backdoors-la... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Austral... [3]: https://www.fastmail.com/about/privacy.html#sharing https://www.fastmail.com/about/privacy.html#sharing

yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
> they don't seem to actively scan the contents of your email to build a profile on you like Google does [3]. So, at least for now, there's that. I thought G stopped doing that for mail?
- samcday 8y ago
  Really? That must be recent, because when I stopped using Gmail late-ish last year, it was still doing that kinda-cool-but-still-pretty-creepy thing of overlaying airline reservation information gleaned from emails onto Google Maps.
  - jankeymeulen 8y ago
    You'll still get the overlay but information from Gmail but aren't served ads anymore based on the contents. It changed somewhere in 2017 iirc.
- mfer 8y ago
  "Consumer Gmail content will not be used or scanned for any ads personalization after this change." is what they said in places like https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in-the-enterprise-g-suites-gmail-and-consumer-gmail-to-more-closely-align/ https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in... This does not say they will stop using the metadata for ad personalization. I would love for someone to correct me on this one.
- wll 8y ago
  Google parses and collects purchase history (purchases, subscriptions, reservations) from Gmail. See https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/7673989 https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/7673989, or go to https://myaccount.google.com/purchases https://myaccount.google.com/purchases, https://myaccount.google.com/reservations https://myaccount.google.com/reservations, https://myaccount.google.com/subscriptions https://myaccount.google.com/subscriptions.