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I love Fastmail, but they are ultimately based in Australia. I really thought they would have moved their operations by now.

LeoPanthera 7y ago
Agreed! I'm still very surprised they haven't made any attempt to insulate themselves from Australia's anti-privacy laws.
UI_at_80x24 7y ago
This is the singular reason I have chosen their primary competitors over them. In this day & age you need to be aware of these details.
- ScottFree 7y ago
  Which primary competitors would those be? Asking for a friend...
  - mkskm 7y ago
    ProtonMail is the most promising.
    - erikbye 7y ago
      I've been using ProtonMail and ProtonVPN for over a year, paid subscription. Both web and mobile client is ok, not great. On desktop I use Outlook (Windows) and Thunderbird (Linux). I like the domain @pm.me. Overall happy with the service. Customer support has answered questions competently.
    - cotelletta 7y ago
      Protonmail has a huge gap between promises and what's delivered. Their IMAP bridge is slow and buggy, their mobile app hasn't been meaningfully updated in a year, and even as a paying user they put upsell ads in the sidebar, above your own folders. If PM is not a honeypot, they are incompetent.
  - pheug 7y ago
    Protonmail probably the most hyped, but personally I switched to Tutanota. I like their commitment to open source - you can build their webmail client yourself. They support full text search (unlike Protonmail) and also 4-5x cheaper than Protonmail/Fastmail, if you're fine with their cheapest 1GB storage plan.
- commandersaki 7y ago
  All these other companies are trying to sell you on the notion of email privacy and security. The thing is - email isn't just sitting in your mailbox to only be viewed by you. The recipient has a copy which could leak it (or via hax). Copies of email can be saved by both incoming and outgoing systems. If you need security & privacy - email is not the technology you want to use whatsoever.
umyemri 7y ago
Yeah, I just recently shutdown my account. Moved over to mailfence. I already miss fastmail's functionality, and that fea.st domain was pretty fun. Still... Australia.
dsissitka 7y ago
Why would they move? The A&A bill doesn't affect them: > Fastmail won’t be making changes to our technology or policies in response to this bill. Law enforcement has always been able to request information from us through the Telecommunications Act with a lawful warrant. Because we have the ability to decrypt all data, there is no need to make changes that circumvent encryption. Source: https://fastmail.blog/2018/12/21/advocating-for-privacy-aabill-australia/ https://fastmail.blog/2018/12/21/advocating-for-privacy-aabi... I'm just some boob on the internet that doesn't speak legalese but a quick Google suggests that Gmail [0] and Outlook [1] are subject to similar laws. [0] https://support.google.com/transparencyreport/answer/7381738?hl=en https://support.google.com/transparencyreport/answer/7381738... [1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/law-enforcement-requests-report https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/law...
- esquire_900 7y ago
  > I'm just some boob on the internet That's one beautiful quote
- Youden 7y ago
  > The A&A bill doesn't affect them You can basically sum that up as "we weren't able to protect your privacy in the first place, so you don't have to worry about this bill compromising it". The quote also misses that Australia has silent and warrantless access to data and that Fastmail's servers are in the US, so subject to America's three-letter agencies as well. > I'm just some boob on the internet that doesn't speak legalese but a quick Google suggests that Gmail [0] and Outlook [1] are subject to similar laws. The competition isn't American megacorps, it's small European companies like ProtonMail (Switzerland, as far as I can see usually requires a court order and Swiss law requires notifying the subject) or Mailbox.org (Germany, only allows disclosure with a warrant or imminent danger to life). Even if your email is left unencrypted, these countries have much stronger data protection and privacy laws.

LeoPanthera 7y ago

Agreed! I'm still very surprised they haven't made any attempt to insulate themselves from Australia's anti-privacy laws.

UI_at_80x24 7y ago

This is the singular reason I have chosen their primary competitors over them. In this day & age you need to be aware of these details.

ScottFree 7y ago
Which primary competitors would those be? Asking for a friend...
- mkskm 7y ago
  ProtonMail is the most promising.
  - erikbye 7y ago
    I've been using ProtonMail and ProtonVPN for over a year, paid subscription. Both web and mobile client is ok, not great. On desktop I use Outlook (Windows) and Thunderbird (Linux). I like the domain @pm.me. Overall happy with the service. Customer support has answered questions competently.
  - cotelletta 7y ago
    Protonmail has a huge gap between promises and what's delivered. Their IMAP bridge is slow and buggy, their mobile app hasn't been meaningfully updated in a year, and even as a paying user they put upsell ads in the sidebar, above your own folders. If PM is not a honeypot, they are incompetent.
- pheug 7y ago
  Protonmail probably the most hyped, but personally I switched to Tutanota. I like their commitment to open source - you can build their webmail client yourself. They support full text search (unlike Protonmail) and also 4-5x cheaper than Protonmail/Fastmail, if you're fine with their cheapest 1GB storage plan.
commandersaki 7y ago
All these other companies are trying to sell you on the notion of email privacy and security. The thing is - email isn't just sitting in your mailbox to only be viewed by you. The recipient has a copy which could leak it (or via hax). Copies of email can be saved by both incoming and outgoing systems. If you need security & privacy - email is not the technology you want to use whatsoever.

umyemri 7y ago

Yeah, I just recently shutdown my account. Moved over to mailfence. I already miss fastmail's functionality, and that fea.st domain was pretty fun. Still... Australia.

dsissitka 7y ago

Why would they move? The A&A bill doesn't affect them: > Fastmail won’t be making changes to our technology or policies in response to this bill. Law enforcement has always been able to request information from us through the Telecommunications Act with a lawful warrant. Because we have the ability to decrypt all data, there is no need to make changes that circumvent encryption. Source: https://fastmail.blog/2018/12/21/advocating-for-privacy-aabill-australia/ https://fastmail.blog/2018/12/21/advocating-for-privacy-aabi... I'm just some boob on the internet that doesn't speak legalese but a quick Google suggests that Gmail [0] and Outlook [1] are subject to similar laws. [0] https://support.google.com/transparencyreport/answer/7381738?hl=en https://support.google.com/transparencyreport/answer/7381738... [1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/law-enforcement-requests-report https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/law...

esquire_900 7y ago
> I'm just some boob on the internet That's one beautiful quote
Youden 7y ago
> The A&A bill doesn't affect them You can basically sum that up as "we weren't able to protect your privacy in the first place, so you don't have to worry about this bill compromising it". The quote also misses that Australia has silent and warrantless access to data and that Fastmail's servers are in the US, so subject to America's three-letter agencies as well. > I'm just some boob on the internet that doesn't speak legalese but a quick Google suggests that Gmail [0] and Outlook [1] are subject to similar laws. The competition isn't American megacorps, it's small European companies like ProtonMail (Switzerland, as far as I can see usually requires a court order and Swiss law requires notifying the subject) or Mailbox.org (Germany, only allows disclosure with a warrant or imminent danger to life). Even if your email is left unencrypted, these countries have much stronger data protection and privacy laws.