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> You could also store 1GB of data for free—nearly 100 times what was available at the time. "You could also store 1GB of data in exchange for letting us read

by WA 8y ago

> You could also store 1GB of data for free—nearly 100 times what was available at the time. "You could also store 1GB of data in exchange for letting us read your emails and build an Ad profile based on everything you do in Gmail – nearly 100 times what was available at the time, because no one else dared to do something similar and had no means to profit from this data." Privacy-aware folks, it's time to move on if you haven't done already.

vcavallo 8y ago
done! proton mail is turning out to be a great though not perfect alternative.
- mft_ 8y ago
  What are the downsides of Proton Mail? I'm on Gmail currently, but interested...
  - berbec 8y ago
    For me, storage space limitations and requirement to use the Proton App or WebMail to access my mail keep me from switching. I have 15GB in gmail and proton only offers 5GB for a single user plan. You can't use a regular email client with Proton without some proxy software. [1] https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/third-party-email-client-integration-outlook-thunderbird-apple-mail-ect/ https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/third-party-em...
  - CedarMadness 8y ago
    I've been a paid user for about 4 years now, here are my main gripes: It doesn't have a calendar, so you can't send or accept meeting invites if that's something you need to do. They keep saying they're going to open source the app when the next version comes out, but development seems super slow on that front, no major app updates in a couple of years. They have a bridge app that lets you use outlook, thunderbird, etc. and it works great, but the Linux version has been in beta for about 2 years, and you have to email someone to get on the beta list.
  - cyphar 8y ago
    They don't really support IMAP -- they have an IMAP bridge which you have to run on your local machine (it doesn't support Linux -- they say they have a beta version but I don't think it's public and it's been "in beta" for a few years). This also means you can't use your own client on your phone because there's no bridge for phones (and their clients are all proprietary, with seemingly empty promises to make them open source "soon" several years ago). They also don't support sending plain-text email (a bit of an odd restriction, and it means most mailing lists will drop your emails -- making it unusable as a primary email service if you use mailing lists often). In addition much of their "secure email" features are only super useful if all the recipients are using ProtonMail (they use PGP under the hood, but all the keys are managed by ProtonMail -- though encryption is done client-side). You can set up a symmetric encrypted email for non-ProtonMail users, but that basically gives the user a link and they have to enter a password you've given them over a different secure channel (making it little more than a nice interface to gpg --symmetric). All-in-all while ProtonMail is nice, for my usage it wasn't workable. I ended up using Mailbox.org which is a more traditional email system (though they have a cool feature where you give them your PGP public key and they will encrypt all plaintext emails they receive so that they are all encrypted when stored both remotely and locally).
dmortin 8y ago
Google said two years ago that they stopped reading emails for ad profiles and they don't do it anymore.
- amelius 8y ago
  If they stopped reading emails, then why are they still registering everything else I do? What is the fundamental ethical difference?
  - dmortin 8y ago
    They still read it, just not for ads: https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/google-gmail-ads-emails-1202477321/ https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/google-gmail-ads-email...
- orhmeh09 8y ago
  It’s not much comfort when they’ll scan your emails for evidence of purchases you made. I can’t seem to disable that , and they pay a lot of money to link your CC purchases that haven’t hit their servers to your account.
  - CharlesColeman 8y ago
    > It’s not much comfort when they’ll scan your emails for evidence of purchases you made. I can’t seem to disable that , and they pay a lot of money to link your CC purchases that haven’t hit their servers to your account. I've heard that this is why Amazon purchase confirmation emails no longer list all the items in your order, and now read "You ordered Truncated Product Name... and 5 other items!") -- they didn't want another major tech company getting so much insight into their business. Google's dominance and ubiquitous surveillance is causing email email to evolve into something less useful for all of us.
synthc 8y ago
1GB was an enormous amount at the time. There were even applications out there that let to mount gmail as a drive, as a sort of free proto-dropbox
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  I used it to back up some old code in a .zip file; unfortunately, even though the email is still there, Google isn't letting me download it because it may contain malicious code according to them (probably .js files).
- WA 8y ago
  Sure, it was a lot and that’s how they got a lot of people.
panarky 8y ago
> in exchange for letting us read your emails Every email service has a computer "read" your emails. If it didn't then your inbox would be filled with spam. If it's specifically the ads you don't like, then it's probably not news to anyone here that free search, email and social networking is funded by ads. I for one am highly "privacy aware", and I've also found tremendous value in Google's search, email and docs. I found Google's products to be far superior to those from Yahoo, Microsoft and others. While I'd prefer Google's products to be both free of cost and free of ads, I trust Google more than the other guys and I'm happy with the tradeoff.
- WA 8y ago
  Sorry, but don’t you think a Bayesian spam filter that trains it’s model on emails with the sole purpose of filtering spam is way different than an Ad profile that tries to match your personality, can’t be reset, can’t be erased and is exploited for more than what it’s supposed to do (filtering spam)?

by WA 8y ago

vcavallo 8y ago

done! proton mail is turning out to be a great though not perfect alternative.

mft_ 8y ago
What are the downsides of Proton Mail? I'm on Gmail currently, but interested...
- berbec 8y ago
  For me, storage space limitations and requirement to use the Proton App or WebMail to access my mail keep me from switching. I have 15GB in gmail and proton only offers 5GB for a single user plan. You can't use a regular email client with Proton without some proxy software. [1] https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/third-party-email-client-integration-outlook-thunderbird-apple-mail-ect/ https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/third-party-em...
- CedarMadness 8y ago
  I've been a paid user for about 4 years now, here are my main gripes: It doesn't have a calendar, so you can't send or accept meeting invites if that's something you need to do. They keep saying they're going to open source the app when the next version comes out, but development seems super slow on that front, no major app updates in a couple of years. They have a bridge app that lets you use outlook, thunderbird, etc. and it works great, but the Linux version has been in beta for about 2 years, and you have to email someone to get on the beta list.
- cyphar 8y ago
  They don't really support IMAP -- they have an IMAP bridge which you have to run on your local machine (it doesn't support Linux -- they say they have a beta version but I don't think it's public and it's been "in beta" for a few years). This also means you can't use your own client on your phone because there's no bridge for phones (and their clients are all proprietary, with seemingly empty promises to make them open source "soon" several years ago). They also don't support sending plain-text email (a bit of an odd restriction, and it means most mailing lists will drop your emails -- making it unusable as a primary email service if you use mailing lists often). In addition much of their "secure email" features are only super useful if all the recipients are using ProtonMail (they use PGP under the hood, but all the keys are managed by ProtonMail -- though encryption is done client-side). You can set up a symmetric encrypted email for non-ProtonMail users, but that basically gives the user a link and they have to enter a password you've given them over a different secure channel (making it little more than a nice interface to gpg --symmetric). All-in-all while ProtonMail is nice, for my usage it wasn't workable. I ended up using Mailbox.org which is a more traditional email system (though they have a cool feature where you give them your PGP public key and they will encrypt all plaintext emails they receive so that they are all encrypted when stored both remotely and locally).

dmortin 8y ago

Google said two years ago that they stopped reading emails for ad profiles and they don't do it anymore.

amelius 8y ago
If they stopped reading emails, then why are they still registering everything else I do? What is the fundamental ethical difference?
- dmortin 8y ago
  They still read it, just not for ads: https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/google-gmail-ads-emails-1202477321/ https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/google-gmail-ads-email...
orhmeh09 8y ago
It’s not much comfort when they’ll scan your emails for evidence of purchases you made. I can’t seem to disable that , and they pay a lot of money to link your CC purchases that haven’t hit their servers to your account.
- CharlesColeman 8y ago
  > It’s not much comfort when they’ll scan your emails for evidence of purchases you made. I can’t seem to disable that , and they pay a lot of money to link your CC purchases that haven’t hit their servers to your account. I've heard that this is why Amazon purchase confirmation emails no longer list all the items in your order, and now read "You ordered Truncated Product Name... and 5 other items!") -- they didn't want another major tech company getting so much insight into their business. Google's dominance and ubiquitous surveillance is causing email email to evolve into something less useful for all of us.

synthc 8y ago

1GB was an enormous amount at the time. There were even applications out there that let to mount gmail as a drive, as a sort of free proto-dropbox

Cthulhu_ 8y ago
I used it to back up some old code in a .zip file; unfortunately, even though the email is still there, Google isn't letting me download it because it may contain malicious code according to them (probably .js files).
WA 8y ago
Sure, it was a lot and that’s how they got a lot of people.

panarky 8y ago

> in exchange for letting us read your emails Every email service has a computer "read" your emails. If it didn't then your inbox would be filled with spam. If it's specifically the ads you don't like, then it's probably not news to anyone here that free search, email and social networking is funded by ads. I for one am highly "privacy aware", and I've also found tremendous value in Google's search, email and docs. I found Google's products to be far superior to those from Yahoo, Microsoft and others. While I'd prefer Google's products to be both free of cost and free of ads, I trust Google more than the other guys and I'm happy with the tradeoff.

WA 8y ago
Sorry, but don’t you think a Bayesian spam filter that trains it’s model on emails with the sole purpose of filtering spam is way different than an Ad profile that tries to match your personality, can’t be reset, can’t be erased and is exploited for more than what it’s supposed to do (filtering spam)?