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> Vote with your wallet and your conscience What alternative mail hosting provider do you recommend? Google? Microsoft? Google, in my humble opinion, is the s

> Vote with your wallet and your conscience What alternative mail hosting provider do you recommend? Google? Microsoft? Google, in my humble opinion, is the single biggest evil in the digital world today.

kube-system 4y ago
It’s not a contest, but there are plenty of companies that are more evil. Besides companies that are straight up criminal, my vote would go to traditional data brokers. Google might abuse their wealth of data, but at least they won’t happily sell it on the street corner.
- sgjohnson 4y ago
  > but at least they won’t happily sell it on the street corner. what do you imagine targetted advertising is? they will sell everything they know about you to basically anyone willing to pay in the form of "I'd like to target these particular audiences in my ad campaign", and then when you get conversions from that particular campaign, it's not exactly rocket science to dereference the click to a particular individual, provided that there's a conversion. and if you're a bit more nefarious than that, you don't even need a conversion.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    Yeah, I understand the privacy concerns with targeted advertising, and agree that it is a concern, but it’s once-removed from the type of data you can get from a dedicated data broker. At a data broker you can simply ask for the data you want and they’ll directly provide it. If Google is a chartered fishing expedition, a data broker is a fish market.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    > it's not exactly rocket science to dereference the click to a particular individual How?
jacooper 4y ago
Email; ProtonMail, Tutanota
- sgjohnson 4y ago
  ProtonMail is known for completely arbitrarily closing user accounts with 0 recourse. > Tutanota Never heard of them.
  - shakna 4y ago
    Tutanota have been around for a bit over a decade. They close unused free accounts after six months inactivity. Their main focus is end-to-end encrypted email. When sending encrypted emails outside of their ecosystem, they used to send a link to a temporary account, so as to reduce the chance of a leak. They've never been hugely popular, but their name pops up a fair bit in circles where legality of things might be a bit gray. Like countries where certain human rights are suppressed, or where Tor is needed to workaround only getting government approved sites, etc.
  - jacooper 4y ago
    > ProtonMail is known for completely arbitrarily closing user accounts with 0 recourse Never had an issue with them personally.
sofixa 4y ago
> Google, in my humble opinion, is the single biggest evil in the digital world today. Palantir? Facebook? Google abuse user data for profit, but at least: a) their goal is only money b) they don't leak that data left and right, and don't leave themselves way too easy to be used for inciting genocides Facebook is by far worse.

kube-system 4y ago

It’s not a contest, but there are plenty of companies that are more evil. Besides companies that are straight up criminal, my vote would go to traditional data brokers. Google might abuse their wealth of data, but at least they won’t happily sell it on the street corner.

sgjohnson 4y ago
> but at least they won’t happily sell it on the street corner. what do you imagine targetted advertising is? they will sell everything they know about you to basically anyone willing to pay in the form of "I'd like to target these particular audiences in my ad campaign", and then when you get conversions from that particular campaign, it's not exactly rocket science to dereference the click to a particular individual, provided that there's a conversion. and if you're a bit more nefarious than that, you don't even need a conversion.
- kube-system 4y ago
  Yeah, I understand the privacy concerns with targeted advertising, and agree that it is a concern, but it’s once-removed from the type of data you can get from a dedicated data broker. At a data broker you can simply ask for the data you want and they’ll directly provide it. If Google is a chartered fishing expedition, a data broker is a fish market.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  > it's not exactly rocket science to dereference the click to a particular individual How?

jacooper 4y ago

Email; ProtonMail, Tutanota

sgjohnson 4y ago
ProtonMail is known for completely arbitrarily closing user accounts with 0 recourse. > Tutanota Never heard of them.
- shakna 4y ago
  Tutanota have been around for a bit over a decade. They close unused free accounts after six months inactivity. Their main focus is end-to-end encrypted email. When sending encrypted emails outside of their ecosystem, they used to send a link to a temporary account, so as to reduce the chance of a leak. They've never been hugely popular, but their name pops up a fair bit in circles where legality of things might be a bit gray. Like countries where certain human rights are suppressed, or where Tor is needed to workaround only getting government approved sites, etc.
- jacooper 4y ago
  > ProtonMail is known for completely arbitrarily closing user accounts with 0 recourse Never had an issue with them personally.

sofixa 4y ago

> Google, in my humble opinion, is the single biggest evil in the digital world today. Palantir? Facebook? Google abuse user data for profit, but at least: a) their goal is only money b) they don't leak that data left and right, and don't leave themselves way too easy to be used for inciting genocides Facebook is by far worse.