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Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

120 points by AmazingWill 15y ago

I'm currently attempting to move away from Gmail to a email provider that respects my privacy. Can anyone on HN suggest a online service that protects my privacy, has IMAP support and is preferably free? In addition is it possible to delete most of the data Google currently ties to my profile?

gtklocker 15y ago
As long as data is concerned, http://google.com/dashboard http://google.com/dashboard will tell you about everything tied with you account. I'm currently trying to do this as well and the only viable solution sounds self-hosted email. I tried a bit with hushmail and Tor (also look at hushmail's Diceware for password encryption) but it has a tight limit of 25MB for free accounts. Good luck.
zyfo 15y ago
The reason Gmail is free is because they have ads. I wouldn't expect to find a free and good email service. Here's one that costs some money: http://fastmail.fm/ http://fastmail.fm/
- sls 15y ago
  I second the motion. I've used fastmail for years. It's been utterly dependable, worth every penny. I moved to them after deciding that running my own imap server was just too much hassle.
- gyaresu 15y ago
  I third the motion regarding Fastmail. They have recently been acquired by Opera.com but that's not a negative IMO. Google apps was easier when it came along for setting up domain email but I've had excellent history with Fastmail. Yearly plans give you the extras you'd want and are around $35/yr
- raphman 15y ago
  Discussion about fastmail.fm/OperaMail on Hacker News: http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=2427102 http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=2427102
- bearwithclaws 15y ago
  Marco Arment blogged about his switch here: http://www.marco.org/2011/04/05/let-us-pay-for-this-service-so-it-wont-go-down http://www.marco.org/2011/04/05/let-us-pay-for-this-service-...
- 54mf 15y ago
  Cmd-F "fastmail" I've been using them for a few months now, definitely worth the price. Really quick and easy to add new virtual domains, and the spam filter is decent enough for my inbox. Highly recommended.
- bgruber 15y ago
  i, too, used fastmail for years. these days i do everything through gmail, which i switched to because i needed the larger quota it provided and had no money at the time to pay fastmail for it. Fastmail offers a free 'guest' account, which is what I had, and should totally suffice to give you an idea of the service, which I would definitely recommend.
- masnick 15y ago
  The new beta web interface for fastmail.fm looks pretty good: https://beta.fastmail.fm https://beta.fastmail.fm
  - aDemoUzer 15y ago
    It that a joke? Cause clicking on sign up took me to: https://beta.fastmail.fm/%3C?%20Signup%20?%3E https://beta.fastmail.fm/%3C?%20Signup%20?%3E
- hedgehog 15y ago
  If it's important it might be worth paying for. Fastmail is $40/year for the full fledged personal plan w/ your own domain etc etc. The filtering support is better than Gmail and if you want to write your own Sieve rules you can get very specific about it. Happy customer of about seven years.
- nthdeui 15y ago
  I've used Fastmail for a couple of years, after I decided to leave gmail. Very happy with it - it's the only web service I pay for.
mapleoin 15y ago
Lavabit is pretty good. I've been with them (Personal Account plan) for about 4 years now. No downtime, IMAP and a stated goal in caring about their users privacy. The webmail interface is pretty modest, but they do provide a way to set pretty advanced regex server-side filters. You have to upgrade to a paid plan if you want decent SPAM filtering though. They're also planning a surprise upgrade soon. http://lavabit.com/ http://lavabit.com/ Zohomail is an interesting alternative. They say that they do not sell ads because they are a profitable subscription-based service. Email is free for personal use, has good IMAP support and a decent webmail interface. You can also use your own domain for free. The only problem I've found with them is that the email filtering is limited to a few common fields (e.g. no specific headers). http://www.zoho.com/mail/ http://www.zoho.com/mail/
- tluyben2 15y ago
  Sorry, but for real work the ZOHO web interface is unusable. I'm not the only one who thinks that :) Especially if you are used to Gmail, ZOHO works like it has been written by drunk people. Lavabit seems quite interesting. Anyone going to write a Gmail clone for installation on your own servers finally? I would pay quite a bit for that.
  - Arelius 15y ago
    Isn't Lavabit just using a skinned squirrelmail instance?
    - tluyben2 15y ago
      I never heard about Lavabit before, I'm going to try it out. But I have no clue what web interface they have, maybe the parent can tell?
      - Kenan 15y ago
        Overall gist: http://i.eho.st/pp22pqgf.png http://i.eho.st/pp22pqgf.png When you view an email, only text is shown. You can "View as HTML", but images are blocked. http://i.eho.st/pp2fukzy.png http://i.eho.st/pp2fukzy.png Personally, this renders the web interface useless to me, so I view my email through Outlook.
asifjamil 15y ago
Just out of curiosity, which aspect of Google's privacy policy seems fishy to you? I think any way you look at it, there is a basic compromise you make with Gmail: either Google holding all of your info, or someone being able to hack into your account due to security vulnerabilities. Also, not to mention the tools and email filters Google provides.
hasantayyar 15y ago
Maybe you can use another mail client (web or desktop) but your mail hosting service can be still gmail (with pop3 and smtp services).
- AmazingWill 15y ago
  Still serves targeted ads and my data is linked to my Google profile. One of the things I want to escape from.
wicknicks 15y ago
I'm just curious -- what specific privacy intrusions are you worried about? Google lists its privacy policy here[1]. Also, web based email services can always look at your personal content, if not today, tomorrow. If you really need absolute privacy, I'd recommend setting up your server. You can retain your Gmail address, by just setting up the right forwarding options. [1]: http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/ http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/
- fauigerzigerk 15y ago
  In their new privacy policy they say this: "We use the information we collect from all of our services to provide, maintain, protect and improve them, to develop new ones, and to protect Google and our users". Develop new services sounds pretty open ended to me.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- bmichel 15y ago
  Maybe it's just me, but I'm scared by this sentence from the Google ToS: "When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content." -- http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/ http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/
  - zalew 15y ago
    Last time people spread panic about this exact same phrasing was when Dropbox updated it's terms, it's needed to provide their services.
pors 15y ago
What is exactly the privacy concern that makes you move away from gmail?
- AmazingWill 15y ago
  When I consider targeted advertising and the sheer amount of data that I've pumped into Google services over the years it's scary to see how accurate of a picture advertisers and co have of me.
  - jenhsun 15y ago
    I suggest you can opt out Google's ads first. Hope these work. Save your opt-out preference permanently http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/html/intl/en/plugin/ http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/html/intl/en/plugin/ Ads Preferences Manager http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/?hl=en http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/?hl=en Google Advertising and Privacy http://www.google.com/privacy/ads/ http://www.google.com/privacy/ads/
  - celebration 15y ago
    Why does this scare you though? I am curious as to why people are so afraid of advertisers seeing their interests. Personally, I don't care if I get served targeted ads, is that really going to harm me?
  - toonse 15y ago
    I use google extensively, gmail for years, google docs, etc. I must have clicked the right things in the privacy checkboxes since when I go to that "what does google think of you" page, it just says it "does not have enough data".
Sander_Marechal 15y ago
Why not host your own? It's not that hard. I run my own using exim4 + dovecot. It's pretty easy to set up. Plus, as a bonus I set up mutt on my server as well so when I am somewhere else I can just ssh into my box and read my mail.
- AmazingWill 15y ago
  I've been considering this, my main problem is that my cash flow is fairly spotty at times for a dedicated server and I would prefer not to have to worry about the security of my box, uptime and the like. However if I must, I will.
  - techsupporter 15y ago
    A guide I mentioned earlier (http://flurdy.com/docs/postfix/index.html http://flurdy.com/docs/postfix/index.html) shows how to set this up on Amazon EC2. If you haven't partaken, Amazon is still giving away a free-for-a-year tier of EC2.
- scraplab 15y ago
  This is much more of a pain that it seems. To ensure deliverability you need to ensure that you manage SPF/Domainkeys records, that you're not running an open relay, and configure your own spam filtering. It's all quite easy to mess up, so I'd only recommend it if you know what you're doing. Your time is probably worth more than the few currency units/month for someone like fastmail.fm to do it properly.
  - warp 15y ago
    I used to run a setup like this for a while. Spam filtering is the most annoying part of it, so I soon outsourced that (first to google postini, then to spamhero.com). But then I realized that my e-mail is now flowing through these services anyway, in fact, e-mail is unencrypted and flows through many ISPs which all can read it if they want to be evil -- so I might as well outsource all of it. So I switched e-mail for all my domains to tuffmail.com a few months ago, and am very happy with them so far.
conradfr 15y ago
GMail for Business ?
- rms 15y ago
  That should work.
  - gtklocker 15y ago
    Shit rms says.
dotmanish 15y ago
I use RackSpace e-mail hosting for own domain and also for business mail hosting. Haven't had any issues with them yet (after around 2 years). Edit: It has IMAP, but isn't free.
dhruvbird 15y ago
An email is exchanged between >=2 people. One of them securing their account has little (if any) effect on privacy.
- dasil003 15y ago
  Let me reply with equal banality: for two people to secure their email, one must.
pewfly 15y ago
I have a question regarding these so-called highly secure email providers which respect privacy. Is the data on the servers of these services encrypted? I mean, isn't it too resource consuming to do something like that? And if it is encrypted, do they do it like LastPass, with a client side JavaScript decryption module?
corkill 15y ago
You can use https://www.google.com/takeout/ https://www.google.com/takeout/ to see and download a lot of the data you have in Googles services. In the dashboard all the options are down the bottom to delete all your info etc.
- sbarre 15y ago
  Darn I was hoping Gmail was in that list. Purely out of curiosity I'd love to download the 20,000 messages I have in there to do some analysis..
  - buster 15y ago
    Nothing easier then to fetch all mails over imap
  - mseebach 15y ago
    You don't need it to be in the list. Just use IMAP to download your messages.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - dnlk 15y ago
    Gmail is not in that list, because they have IMAP access (http://www.dataliberation.org/google/gmail http://www.dataliberation.org/google/gmail). You can just setup your account in for example OSX Mail, after synchronizing your messages will be in ~/Library/Mail (albeit not in a really nice folder structure like pure mbox or maildir, but you should be able to convert them without much hassle). Or you could use offlineimap (http://www.offlineimap.org http://www.offlineimap.org), which gives you an IMAP dump/backup of your messages (in maildir format if I'm not mistaken). That said, the possibilities of getting your mail from IMAP are almost endless, just choose whatever suits you. Btw, keeping 20000 mails just about anywhere might be convenient, but I really wonder what for (to clarify, I have maybe 300 mails right now on my own server and I regularly dump old stuff, while dumping for example registration mails right away due to security reasons)?
corkill 15y ago
You can use https://www.google.com/takeout/ https://www.google.com/takeout/ to see and download a lot of the data you have in Googles services. In the dashboard all the options are down the bottom to delete all your info etc.
nuttendorfer 15y ago
And while we are at it maybe a good alternative to Google Calendar? I've been wanting to switch away from these two for some time now.
- pedrolll 15y ago
  Yes, this is definitely relevant to my interests as well. So far I haven't found anything as good as GC and even that is not as good as I would like it to be.
  - a_a_r_o_n 15y ago
    Besides gmail's superior spam filtering, this is the one thing I miss from google. I look around once in awhile, and I never do find a good solution. My current solution is Thunderbird's Lightning extension, and I cringe every time Thunderbird updates, which is often now that Mozilla has the constant update fetish. I would love to find a reasonably priced calendar solution with a company that I believe will be around for at least five years. I really wish fastmail did calendars. Are you listening FM?
PRL 15y ago
As most here, I'd advise to go for a commercial service. Selfhosting is fun but can cause unnecessary headaches. Fastmail seems to have an impeccable reputation. I have been using sherweb for several years now. Works very well. It's a bit more expensive but you also get a lot more, too. Think calendar, contacts. Plus, most smartphones work wonderfully with the Exchange mailbox. They are located in Canada. Last but not least, the webmail interface finally works well in other browsers than IE. http://www.sherweb.com/hosted-exchange/hosted-exchange-features?rl=true http://www.sherweb.com/hosted-exchange/hosted-exchange-featu... They also support IMAP. Are there any good hosters based on Zimbra out there?
- peacetara 15y ago
  For zimbra, I've used http://www.simplymailsolutions.com/ http://www.simplymailsolutions.com/ They are based in the UK, so you have to convert their pricing, but Their service has been fabulous. It's Zimbra. I eventually ended up moving to iCloud, with my new phone, I ended up losing some income streams, and wanted to cut down costs, but otherwise I'd still be with them. There is also 01.com, I used them some too, they are fine, if you need a US based provider.
- spqr 15y ago
  Why wouldn't you just use Microsoft if you want hosted Exchange? http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/en-us/pricing-exchange-online-email.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/en-us/pricing-exchange-onl...
mbateman 15y ago
Is Gmail for Business any different privacy-wise than free Gmail? (The free part is less important to me.)
- shampoo 15y ago
  My understanding is it is different: https://commons.lbl.gov/display/google/Google+Apps+-+Privacy+and+Security+Overview https://commons.lbl.gov/display/google/Google+Apps+-+Privacy...
Maro 15y ago
Microsoft's Office 365 online office suite has an Outlook webmail client which was flawless well when I gave it a shot using Firefox. I think it costs $6/mo, no ads, no spying, because you pay for it. I don't know how well the search and spam filters work. http://www.office365.com http://www.office365.com Here's a demo video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOpCmUXLmTA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOpCmUXLmTA Note: This is _not_ the same thing as Hotmail.
- sarnowski 15y ago
  Just because you are paying for the service does not mean that they respect your privacy. You can also pay for Google Apps, but what you get is not worth the money. Depends more on the company than on the pricing model. (This is just a general hint - not against Microsoft. I don't know how they do their job.)
  - Maro 15y ago
    Microsoft advertises Office 365 / Outlook by saying that unlike Gmail, they don't "peek" at your email for ads. The "Gmail man" ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXqrTfOWx60 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXqrTfOWx60
    - ortatherox 15y ago
      That was an internal video to try raise morale in Microsoft and get some people switch, it's pretty safe to assume gmail reads your emails as much as their spam filters does. But as well as doing the spam filtering on the results it does ads.
      - Estragon 15y ago
        Yeah, just looking at mail to model spam is one thing. Looking at it to model the user's life and interests is quite another.
    - jonknee 15y ago
      Ads can be disabled for Google Apps accounts, but as should be obvious any provider that provides spam filtering will already be "peeking" at your email. Perhaps in part to their ad relevancy system, Google's spam detection is best of breed. http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=60758 http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6...
mseebach 15y ago
TANSTAAFL. Google doesn't not respect your privacy, but there is a risk that could change. Personally, my money is on that Google's ad revenue is best protected by them respecting their users privacy. Any mail host carries the risk of a privacy breach, either accidental, such as a hacker attack, less so, such as selling the service to someone who cares less or completely on purpose - simply turning around and selling your data. All of these scenarios are vastly less likely to happen for Google in my risk analysis.
- stroboskop 15y ago
  Could you tell us more about your analysis? I would especially like to know if you consider the extent of Google's collection of users' private data.
  - mseebach 15y ago
    First, do note that I also talk about a bet ("my money is on.."). The core of the analysis is that Google with Adsense has a revenue system that makes their interest showing me the most relevant ad. The more they know, the better the ad, the more revenue. The "bet" part is that this revenue is worth more than shady marketers would be able to extract from the data. The best way for Google to know a lot about me is for them to not give me any good reason not to let them track me, scan my email etc. Any meaningful breach of privacy will erode that faith. Regular ads don't have that faith (an adblocker is invariably the plugin I install), Facebook don't have it (Facebook disconnect is the second one). Google can very easily be added to that list. Also, Google is large enough and public enough that any significant erosion of privacy will trigger public intervention. A kind of "too big to fail".
    - fauigerzigerk 15y ago
      Letting someone read my mail and track me across the internet is a loss of privacy. There is no need for a breach or erosion of privacy, because by using gmail I'm giving up my privacy in exchange for a free email service. That's simply the deal. The question is, does this undeniable loss of privacy matter and can we know how great that loss will eventually be? I think it does matter, partly because we cannot know or control the extent of the loss and we cannot easily take it back (if at all). There's also a great security risk if so much sensitive information is stored in one place. Google is certainly more competent than I am in securing their database. But the incentive for someone to steal it from them is orders of magnitude greater as well.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
porkbird 15y ago
Apple's iCloud. It's free (up to 5GBs), no ads, and Apple is not in the ads business, hence, they have no use of your personal data (as opposed to Google). I have no idea how good are they in actually protecting your personal data, but I don't recall significant breaches of mobile.me/icloud in the past year.
- executive 15y ago
  > Apple is not in the ads business Really? http://advertising.apple.com/ http://advertising.apple.com/
  - porkbird 15y ago
    Yes, sorry, they are. They are not serving web ads though, nor we have a reliable account that they collect information from user's iCloud emails to enhance the relevancy of iAd ads.
- huggyface 15y ago
  and Apple is not in the ads business, hence, they have no use of your personal data (as opposed to Google). Aside from the fact that Apple is in the ad business (to limited success and motive thus far, though if the hardware sales profit train slowed down you can guarantee they would grow more interest), even if they weren't they still are incredibly interested in data about their customers. All businesses are interested in slicing and dicing and categorizing and maximizing sell through, etc.
  - porkbird 15y ago
    Sorry, I was inaccurate, they do serve ads, but not web ads, and so far I don't have any reliable information stating that Apple scarps the contents of user's personal data to deliver more relevant ads in a way google does.
- ravisarma 15y ago
  I was about to suggest iCloud, but it does not support some features that may be of interest to HN type users: in particular, "email personalities" - the ability to send outgoing email through the iCloud SMTP server using any of your various non-me.com email addresses.
dwyer 15y ago
Depends on what you consider respect of privacy. If you mean any provider that doesn't use software to scan your email for keywords, then that rules out any that incorporate a spam filter, and I can't think of any that don't. I personally don't see how targeted advertising is any more intrusive than spam filtering. Sophisticated spam filters scan for keywords and classify words based which emails you read and reply to, emails from contacts whose emails you read and reply to, etc. It's all automated in either case. Nobody at Google is reading your mail.
- goodside 15y ago
  Why do you think nobody is reading his mail? In September of 2010 an employee was dismissed for spying on the mail and Google Voice calls of four underage teenagers he had been meeting in real life. There have to be people at Google who have authority to read read the mail of users for less scandalous reasons for this to even be possible.
  - jonknee 15y ago
    This will be the case for any mail provider. If you host yourself you still count on the fact that traffic to your server isn't being snooped on and always have the possibility of the authorities going in and snatching your box if they need to see your email (that won't happen with Google, but Google will comply with any requests and turn over your mail). Encrypt your email if you want privacy. For even better privacy, don't use email at all (encrypted or not the headers need to be in the clear).
    - icebraining 15y ago
      always have the possibility of the authorities going in and snatching your box if they need to see your email Encrypting your incoming email[1] fixes that particular problem. It's still not as good as getting others to use PGP, but on the other hand, it doesn't require getting others to use PGP ;) [1]: https://grepular.com/Automatically_Encrypting_all_Incoming_Email https://grepular.com/Automatically_Encrypting_all_Incoming_E...
darklajid 15y ago
I try to get myself to start blogging for a couple days now and wanted to start with my journey away from the big G. For me the solution is my own vps, self-hosting. I'm 90% there, having set up the new system, backed up my GMail contents, added a webmail solution and now I'm looking at the last (but so damn important) 10%: Choosing a backup solution (and I won't fully migrate until I have a backup in place that I successfully restored once). I understand that this isn't for everyone, but for me this proved little work so far and it's really flexible (I'm authenticating via yubikey now, for example).
replax 15y ago
If you are lucky (fast) to get one of the first raspberry PIs, you could host your own mail server on one of those. Put SpamAssasin on there, get ssh running and the other mail programms you need (plenty of guides on the web for that), set up a rsync script for backup and then it's pretty much set & forget. Then when the SD card dies on you, you stick a new one in and resync, ta-da!
- geeknam 15y ago
  Or you could get a SheevaPlug (I've got a TonidoPlug). The most economical personal home server :)
shareme 15y ago
A question, what is the difference between Google reading your email and using data and the ISP eMail service you have chosen. Seems to me that Google has a better track record than y other IPS email provider you could chose at this time.
- Estragon 15y ago
  Scale and business model. My ISP is not trying to help people sell me stuff by modeling my life and interests.
andrewcooke 15y ago
runbox - http://runbox.com/ http://runbox.com/ - seemed best when i looked for a replacement. they're based in norway, but not free. however, i eventually decided to run my own (on linux, using mutt terminal reader and mairix search (nice and fast); mail delivery by forwarding through my isp).
ciudilo 15y ago
During last few month Google has shown its true face and it is not pretty. It is very clear now that they are under the impression that there are no viable alternatives to their services. My main reason for moving off Gmail is a need for clear relationship with my provider. I want to pay for the services I receive in order to be able to complain when something goes wrong or when there is something I don't like. I don't want 'but it is free...' argument showed in my face when new design is forces upon me, email is down for a whole day or there are drastic changes to privacy policy. If you are looking for Gmail replacement definitely try out fastmail.fm
ansy 15y ago
I recently attempted such a move, but Google docs held me back. I realize any true paranoia agent would never use Google Docs, but if you ever collaborate on documents it is irreplaceable. Not to mention other people are creating shared documents on Google Docs that I need to use. True, I could move just migrate the email, contact list, and calendar somewhere else. But then I would have two contact lists that need to be synchronized between my new provider and Google Docs and forward any notifications from Gmail. Then I realized just how much I rely on Google's email search. Finding an email within tens of thousands is instant on Gmail. It is nearly impossible with anyone else. In the end, I abandoned trying to move away from Gmail / Google Apps. After all, there is nothing stopping the admin of any email system from casually reading inboxes or being forced to turn over data to a government authority. And Google does have some history of fighting back for information requests, where I can see much smaller providers folding under pressure more quickly due to limited resources. And the argument against self hosting has been repeated here already, but the risk of loss of service is far, far the worst thing to happen for email. If you don't care if your email becomes undeliverable for hours or days at a time, you really don't need to be paranoid about email.
JoshTriplett 15y ago
Privacy and free don't work well together; a free provider has to support itself somehow, and most of the ways it could do so inherently reduce your privacy. Personally, I'd suggest going to gandi.net and getting a domain name from them for $15/year, which comes with email: 5 real accounts, umpteen forwarding accounts, IMAP, SMTP, and a decent webmail client (roundcube). Plus, you get an email address at your own domain, not tied to any one email provider, making it easy to switch later if you want.
16s 15y ago
I highly recommend Tuffmail. They are awesome. I am a longtime customer: http://www.tuffmail.com/ http://www.tuffmail.com/ Edit: It's not free. It costs like 2 dollars a month for the smallest account.
- poutine 15y ago
  Another suggestion for tuffmail. Used them for years. Stable and does what you need.
- grosskur 15y ago
  +1 for Tuffmail. Also a long time customer. My favorite feature is the admin interface that lets you manage an unlimited number of aliases and route them to specific folders, e.g., foo@domain1.com => INBOX/foo/, bar@domain2.com => INBOX/bar/. Compare this to Google Apps and Fastmail, which both seem to limit the number of aliases you can create.
fileptr 15y ago
Recently, the company i work for decided to move out of G apps(paid). The top mgmt got some doubts abt google employees reading our emails. We were trying to close some deal with Google. I think they did it after some credible suspicion.
mutant 15y ago
I've moved my family's email to Rackspace's hosted email (not exchange). I have an SLA, and I own data. So far the loss of spam filtering and webmail are my biggest aches, soon achieve searching will be added to that list. I sometimes wonder if Google didn't have the same role as anti-virus companies did. Secretly promote viruses to over value their software... Google's spam filtering is amazing now that I have to contend with RS's lackluster spam services, so it's another case of "you need us, because it's a scary world out there." Whatever the case, I'm happy to be off gmail.
voidr 15y ago
It's not Google who you should be afraid of it's your government, if your government cares about data protection, than Google will not risk it, it's not worth it, even if they are evil, But if your government forces Google to make a wiretap interface for them, they have no choice. Either way they are in the hands of the government.
digamber_kamat 15y ago
People should anwer the question asked and not go tangential to the question.
yabai 15y ago
I have successfully left Google and Gmail. I began to worry about the amount of information Google had of mine (about 8gb worth of email). I now pay for email. I have thought about setting up a mail server - perhaps that will come in the future. I have also installed tiny tiny rss (because I used Google Reader) on a server. I also installed Coppermine to host photos. So far, I am very pleased with my shift away from Google. I also try to use duckduckgo and scroogle as much as possible. I will say that I believe Google does have the best search engine. Google search has been the hardest habit to break. Perhaps there is another search engine that respects its users privacy? I worry about OAuth. I think we should battle to end OAuth - forcing users to be part of a social network/service to use their service is a horrible practice.
- readme 15y ago
  I run my own mailserver on a linode VPS. For my own personal use, it's extremely stable and hasn't been down once for the 4 months I've been using it. I've got fail2ban, logwatch, and logcheck set up to monitor security. The distro is ubuntu server. They have a great guide for setting up postfix and dovecot. Remember, if you aren't paying, you're not a customer, you're the product.
  - yabai 15y ago
    Thanks for the encouragement! Many are just coming to the realization that they are the product. Hopefully people will care and the established model will implode.
  - icebraining 15y ago
    Remember, if you aren't paying, you're not a customer, you're the product. I use Hacker News without (as far as I know) being their product. I pay for Cable TV and yet I'm still their product. It's not as clean-cut as that; you need to read the small letters and always use caution, paid service or not.
    - davyjones 15y ago
      > I use Hacker News without (as far as I know) being their product. Your HN usernames are required on the YCombinator app forms. There is a good chance that they will go through your comment history to get a feel of your personality. I would think that this figures in their "buying" process (they are buying a part of your company after all). If you look at it like that, you are the product.
MtotheThird 15y ago
Disclaimer: I work for Google, this is my personal opinion, yadda yadda yadda. I've used (and continue to use) Fastmail for many years behind a personal domain. To call Fastmail reliable is a bit of a laugh. They've had at least three severe outages in my time there (we're talking 24+ hours without mail access). To their credit, nothing was lost in the end, however I was fuming by the end of the last one and determined to switch to Gmail. However inertia has kept me from doing so -- last time I checked it was tricky in Gmail to import a complicated set of folders like I have and retain the structure, so it's always been something I plan to get around to once I have time. Yeah right. FWIW, I don't think there's been a significant outage since the Opera purchase. And I'm quite pleased with what I've seen of FM's beta interface.
- zatara 15y ago
  " it was tricky in Gmail to import a complicated set of folders like I have and retain the structure" I did it through a client (mail.app), synching with IMAP. It worked flawlessly.
- antoncohen 15y ago
  I've done a few migrations to Gmail/Google Apps, I'm actually in the middle of one right now. It's pretty easy to retain your folder structure, especially if you have IMAP and are going to Google Apps. Nested Labels has been moved from Labs to a standard feature. I think there is a still a 40 char folder path limit, so make sure your folder names are short enough before migration, e.g., rename "Mailing Lists" to "Lists". Google has the Migration for Microsoft Exchange tool, which does IMAP sync with any normal IMAP server. The tool is Windows-only, they used to have a web-based version but they discontinued it (WTF Google?!). It requires 2-legged OAuth, which requires Google Apps for Business. But Google Apps for Business has a free trial with no billing info required. So what I do is sign up for Google Apps Free, upgrade to Business, do the migration, and downgrade to Free. If your mail in stored in a mail client (POP3-style), you can add Google Apps IMAP to your mail client, and drag and drop your folders/mail from the old account to Google IMAP. Be sure to hold down the Ctrl key (or whatever) to copy not move. This method also works if you are going to normal Gmail. There is also imapsync, a Perl command line tool, and a few other tools that do things like Maildir to IMAP sync.
dangrossman 15y ago
I've used Rackspace E-mail for years (formerly called MailTrust) with my own domains. It's $2 per mailbox per month, minimum of $10 per month. POP, IMAP (with push notifications) and a decent webmail client I don't use. You get an actual SLA and 24x7x365 support by phone/web/email.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
sridharvembu 15y ago
(Disclosure: I am the CEO of Zoho) We would invite people to try Zoho Mail. We have come a long way in the past few years, and we are investing in a ton of R&D to ensure we are world-class. We offer our consumer edition free-of-cost and ad-free and we intend to continue this indefinitely, and we charge only business customers. This is the same policy we follow with our Office suite as well - whatever we offer free, we offer it ad-free.
- icebraining 15y ago
  Needing an email address to sign up for your email hosting is slightly ironic ;)
- porker 15y ago
  How do you respect privacy any more than GMail does? Your email isn't hosted in the EU, what extra protection is in place?
  - Andrenid 15y ago
    This is the clincher for me. Anyone trying to compete with Google needs to be up front and detailed about how they handle your privacy, and what they'll do to protect you.
  - mseebach 15y ago
    And more relevant - how do you ensure that you will keep this respect? While I'm very sympathetic to your business model, it's still a loss-leader for your business offering. Can you guarantee that you will never attempt to monetize this (probably) huge and growing dataset? Tomorrow, next year, and (especially) after a private equity manager starts waving cheques with many zeros on them in under your nose?
huhtenberg 15y ago
Tangentially related - I would pay for an email service with an off-site delivery for Gmail recipients. Basically, it should hold any email that is to be sent to GMail servers and instead send a note saying "You've got mail, pick it up here https://<url> https://<url>. Anything like this out there?
- hollerith 15y ago
  That's hardcore!
a_a_r_o_n 15y ago
fastmail.fm has a free account, but it's nowhere near the space that gmail provides. But it's good enough. I originally used fastmail's free account just to have a backup smtp server for when gmail or whoever I was with at the time went down. gmail does go down, happened more than once to me. fastmail has a $5/year account, which is probably where you want to start if you're concerned about "free." I think their next level up is about $20/year.
a_a_r_o_n 15y ago
pair.com has cheap shared hosting which includes email. In some ways they're more flexible than solutions like fastmail. It's a middle ground between total outsourcing and running your own server: you get a shell account, yet you don't have to keep the server up. I used pair.com for this and other purposes for many years, happily, and I'm thinking of going back. I'm on fastmail at the moment. One surprising development: pair.com used to be freebsd-only, and now they offer ubuntu as an alternative.
spqr 15y ago
Microsoft will host Exchange accounts for you with 25 GB mailboxes for $5 per month per user. It's an unbelievably good deal. See more at http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/en-us/pricing-exchange-online-email.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/en-us/pricing-exchange-onl... Of course, this is brought to you courtesy of competition from Google but this blows the doors off Google Apps. Don't need a separate synchronizing application to keep Outlook synched. Everything works just as if you had local Exchange except you don't need a local Exchange server or anti-spam or anti-virus solution. Surprisingly, Microsoft has become very competitive in hosted email.
cyber 15y ago
Ah, my fellow geeks. Excellent discussions on replacements for the backend infrastructure and handling. :) Now, does anyone have a replacement for the UI/client? Something good and multiplatform that a) deals well with multi media (images, attachments, etc) and b) still retains MH semantics? The use of MH style semantics is what attracted me to the whole thing back in 2004.
greyman 15y ago
AmazingWill, in my opinion, if you want to ensure privacy, online service with IMAP is not the solution, because: 1) You don't know who has (or will get) access to the emails stored at the servers. 2) You don't know if your account will not be hacked. In my opinion, you either need to: a) host your own email server, or b) periodically download your emails through pop3s to your own encrypted drive, not leaving them on the server
antoncohen 15y ago
What privacy concerns do you have? Real people reading your email? Computer programs scanning your email? Is it about ads and not privacy? It's my understanding that virtually no one at Google has the access privileges required to read your email. That won't be the case at most smaller mail hosts. If the host supports IMAP, they can read your email, there is no way around that. I trust Google's security way more than most companies. If it's about programs scanning your email, well, spam/virus filtering has to do that. And I personally don't care what some computer bot knows about me, as long as a real person doesn't snoop around. In my opinion ads are not an invasion of privacy, and if you want free you will get ads. Google Apps for Business can have ads disabled, only $50/year.
copenhagencoder 15y ago
http://www.gandi.net/ http://www.gandi.net/ offers free IMAP/POP with their domains. Hosted in Europe (as far as I know).
weezuh 15y ago
If one is worried about privacy, he/she shouldn't send their email in plaintext, readable by not just Google, but the rest of the world. If one cares about privacy, look to encryption.
ksec 15y ago
Late to the Discussions, but i am surprise no one has mentioned atmail -www.atmail.com They have a cloud solution too. Personally i think this is the best email services.
abhishekdesai 15y ago
Try using Zimbra community edition. You will need a server and some technical knowledge to set it up but it is good. My company's official emails are hosted on Zimbra since long now.

120 points by AmazingWill 15y ago

gtklocker 15y ago

As long as data is concerned, http://google.com/dashboard http://google.com/dashboard will tell you about everything tied with you account. I'm currently trying to do this as well and the only viable solution sounds self-hosted email. I tried a bit with hushmail and Tor (also look at hushmail's Diceware for password encryption) but it has a tight limit of 25MB for free accounts. Good luck.

zyfo 15y ago

The reason Gmail is free is because they have ads. I wouldn't expect to find a free and good email service. Here's one that costs some money: http://fastmail.fm/ http://fastmail.fm/

sls 15y ago
I second the motion. I've used fastmail for years. It's been utterly dependable, worth every penny. I moved to them after deciding that running my own imap server was just too much hassle.
gyaresu 15y ago
I third the motion regarding Fastmail. They have recently been acquired by Opera.com but that's not a negative IMO. Google apps was easier when it came along for setting up domain email but I've had excellent history with Fastmail. Yearly plans give you the extras you'd want and are around $35/yr
raphman 15y ago
Discussion about fastmail.fm/OperaMail on Hacker News: http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=2427102 http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=2427102
bearwithclaws 15y ago
Marco Arment blogged about his switch here: http://www.marco.org/2011/04/05/let-us-pay-for-this-service-so-it-wont-go-down http://www.marco.org/2011/04/05/let-us-pay-for-this-service-...
54mf 15y ago
Cmd-F "fastmail" I've been using them for a few months now, definitely worth the price. Really quick and easy to add new virtual domains, and the spam filter is decent enough for my inbox. Highly recommended.
bgruber 15y ago
i, too, used fastmail for years. these days i do everything through gmail, which i switched to because i needed the larger quota it provided and had no money at the time to pay fastmail for it. Fastmail offers a free 'guest' account, which is what I had, and should totally suffice to give you an idea of the service, which I would definitely recommend.
masnick 15y ago
The new beta web interface for fastmail.fm looks pretty good: https://beta.fastmail.fm https://beta.fastmail.fm
- aDemoUzer 15y ago
  It that a joke? Cause clicking on sign up took me to: https://beta.fastmail.fm/%3C?%20Signup%20?%3E https://beta.fastmail.fm/%3C?%20Signup%20?%3E
hedgehog 15y ago
If it's important it might be worth paying for. Fastmail is $40/year for the full fledged personal plan w/ your own domain etc etc. The filtering support is better than Gmail and if you want to write your own Sieve rules you can get very specific about it. Happy customer of about seven years.
nthdeui 15y ago
I've used Fastmail for a couple of years, after I decided to leave gmail. Very happy with it - it's the only web service I pay for.

mapleoin 15y ago

Lavabit is pretty good. I've been with them (Personal Account plan) for about 4 years now. No downtime, IMAP and a stated goal in caring about their users privacy. The webmail interface is pretty modest, but they do provide a way to set pretty advanced regex server-side filters. You have to upgrade to a paid plan if you want decent SPAM filtering though. They're also planning a surprise upgrade soon. http://lavabit.com/ http://lavabit.com/ Zohomail is an interesting alternative. They say that they do not sell ads because they are a profitable subscription-based service. Email is free for personal use, has good IMAP support and a decent webmail interface. You can also use your own domain for free. The only problem I've found with them is that the email filtering is limited to a few common fields (e.g. no specific headers). http://www.zoho.com/mail/ http://www.zoho.com/mail/

tluyben2 15y ago
Sorry, but for real work the ZOHO web interface is unusable. I'm not the only one who thinks that :) Especially if you are used to Gmail, ZOHO works like it has been written by drunk people. Lavabit seems quite interesting. Anyone going to write a Gmail clone for installation on your own servers finally? I would pay quite a bit for that.
- Arelius 15y ago
  Isn't Lavabit just using a skinned squirrelmail instance?
  - tluyben2 15y ago
    I never heard about Lavabit before, I'm going to try it out. But I have no clue what web interface they have, maybe the parent can tell?
    - Kenan 15y ago
      Overall gist: http://i.eho.st/pp22pqgf.png http://i.eho.st/pp22pqgf.png When you view an email, only text is shown. You can "View as HTML", but images are blocked. http://i.eho.st/pp2fukzy.png http://i.eho.st/pp2fukzy.png Personally, this renders the web interface useless to me, so I view my email through Outlook.

asifjamil 15y ago

Just out of curiosity, which aspect of Google's privacy policy seems fishy to you? I think any way you look at it, there is a basic compromise you make with Gmail: either Google holding all of your info, or someone being able to hack into your account due to security vulnerabilities. Also, not to mention the tools and email filters Google provides.

hasantayyar 15y ago

Maybe you can use another mail client (web or desktop) but your mail hosting service can be still gmail (with pop3 and smtp services).

AmazingWill 15y ago
Still serves targeted ads and my data is linked to my Google profile. One of the things I want to escape from.

wicknicks 15y ago

I'm just curious -- what specific privacy intrusions are you worried about? Google lists its privacy policy here[1]. Also, web based email services can always look at your personal content, if not today, tomorrow. If you really need absolute privacy, I'd recommend setting up your server. You can retain your Gmail address, by just setting up the right forwarding options. [1]: http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/ http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/

fauigerzigerk 15y ago
In their new privacy policy they say this: "We use the information we collect from all of our services to provide, maintain, protect and improve them, to develop new ones, and to protect Google and our users". Develop new services sounds pretty open ended to me.
deleted 15y ago
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- deleted 15y ago
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bmichel 15y ago
Maybe it's just me, but I'm scared by this sentence from the Google ToS: "When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content." -- http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/ http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/
- zalew 15y ago
  Last time people spread panic about this exact same phrasing was when Dropbox updated it's terms, it's needed to provide their services.

pors 15y ago

What is exactly the privacy concern that makes you move away from gmail?

AmazingWill 15y ago
When I consider targeted advertising and the sheer amount of data that I've pumped into Google services over the years it's scary to see how accurate of a picture advertisers and co have of me.
- jenhsun 15y ago
  I suggest you can opt out Google's ads first. Hope these work. Save your opt-out preference permanently http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/html/intl/en/plugin/ http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/html/intl/en/plugin/ Ads Preferences Manager http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/?hl=en http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/?hl=en Google Advertising and Privacy http://www.google.com/privacy/ads/ http://www.google.com/privacy/ads/
- celebration 15y ago
  Why does this scare you though? I am curious as to why people are so afraid of advertisers seeing their interests. Personally, I don't care if I get served targeted ads, is that really going to harm me?
- toonse 15y ago
  I use google extensively, gmail for years, google docs, etc. I must have clicked the right things in the privacy checkboxes since when I go to that "what does google think of you" page, it just says it "does not have enough data".

Sander_Marechal 15y ago

Why not host your own? It's not that hard. I run my own using exim4 + dovecot. It's pretty easy to set up. Plus, as a bonus I set up mutt on my server as well so when I am somewhere else I can just ssh into my box and read my mail.

AmazingWill 15y ago
I've been considering this, my main problem is that my cash flow is fairly spotty at times for a dedicated server and I would prefer not to have to worry about the security of my box, uptime and the like. However if I must, I will.
- techsupporter 15y ago
  A guide I mentioned earlier (http://flurdy.com/docs/postfix/index.html http://flurdy.com/docs/postfix/index.html) shows how to set this up on Amazon EC2. If you haven't partaken, Amazon is still giving away a free-for-a-year tier of EC2.
scraplab 15y ago
This is much more of a pain that it seems. To ensure deliverability you need to ensure that you manage SPF/Domainkeys records, that you're not running an open relay, and configure your own spam filtering. It's all quite easy to mess up, so I'd only recommend it if you know what you're doing. Your time is probably worth more than the few currency units/month for someone like fastmail.fm to do it properly.
- warp 15y ago
  I used to run a setup like this for a while. Spam filtering is the most annoying part of it, so I soon outsourced that (first to google postini, then to spamhero.com). But then I realized that my e-mail is now flowing through these services anyway, in fact, e-mail is unencrypted and flows through many ISPs which all can read it if they want to be evil -- so I might as well outsource all of it. So I switched e-mail for all my domains to tuffmail.com a few months ago, and am very happy with them so far.

conradfr 15y ago

GMail for Business ?

rms 15y ago
That should work.
- gtklocker 15y ago
  Shit rms says.

dotmanish 15y ago

I use RackSpace e-mail hosting for own domain and also for business mail hosting. Haven't had any issues with them yet (after around 2 years). Edit: It has IMAP, but isn't free.

dhruvbird 15y ago

An email is exchanged between >=2 people. One of them securing their account has little (if any) effect on privacy.

dasil003 15y ago
Let me reply with equal banality: for two people to secure their email, one must.

pewfly 15y ago

I have a question regarding these so-called highly secure email providers which respect privacy. Is the data on the servers of these services encrypted? I mean, isn't it too resource consuming to do something like that? And if it is encrypted, do they do it like LastPass, with a client side JavaScript decryption module?

corkill 15y ago

You can use https://www.google.com/takeout/ https://www.google.com/takeout/ to see and download a lot of the data you have in Googles services. In the dashboard all the options are down the bottom to delete all your info etc.

sbarre 15y ago
Darn I was hoping Gmail was in that list. Purely out of curiosity I'd love to download the 20,000 messages I have in there to do some analysis..
- buster 15y ago
  Nothing easier then to fetch all mails over imap
- mseebach 15y ago
  You don't need it to be in the list. Just use IMAP to download your messages.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- dnlk 15y ago
  Gmail is not in that list, because they have IMAP access (http://www.dataliberation.org/google/gmail http://www.dataliberation.org/google/gmail). You can just setup your account in for example OSX Mail, after synchronizing your messages will be in ~/Library/Mail (albeit not in a really nice folder structure like pure mbox or maildir, but you should be able to convert them without much hassle). Or you could use offlineimap (http://www.offlineimap.org http://www.offlineimap.org), which gives you an IMAP dump/backup of your messages (in maildir format if I'm not mistaken). That said, the possibilities of getting your mail from IMAP are almost endless, just choose whatever suits you. Btw, keeping 20000 mails just about anywhere might be convenient, but I really wonder what for (to clarify, I have maybe 300 mails right now on my own server and I regularly dump old stuff, while dumping for example registration mails right away due to security reasons)?

corkill 15y ago

nuttendorfer 15y ago

And while we are at it maybe a good alternative to Google Calendar? I've been wanting to switch away from these two for some time now.

pedrolll 15y ago
Yes, this is definitely relevant to my interests as well. So far I haven't found anything as good as GC and even that is not as good as I would like it to be.
- a_a_r_o_n 15y ago
  Besides gmail's superior spam filtering, this is the one thing I miss from google. I look around once in awhile, and I never do find a good solution. My current solution is Thunderbird's Lightning extension, and I cringe every time Thunderbird updates, which is often now that Mozilla has the constant update fetish. I would love to find a reasonably priced calendar solution with a company that I believe will be around for at least five years. I really wish fastmail did calendars. Are you listening FM?

PRL 15y ago

As most here, I'd advise to go for a commercial service. Selfhosting is fun but can cause unnecessary headaches. Fastmail seems to have an impeccable reputation. I have been using sherweb for several years now. Works very well. It's a bit more expensive but you also get a lot more, too. Think calendar, contacts. Plus, most smartphones work wonderfully with the Exchange mailbox. They are located in Canada. Last but not least, the webmail interface finally works well in other browsers than IE. http://www.sherweb.com/hosted-exchange/hosted-exchange-features?rl=true http://www.sherweb.com/hosted-exchange/hosted-exchange-featu... They also support IMAP. Are there any good hosters based on Zimbra out there?

peacetara 15y ago
For zimbra, I've used http://www.simplymailsolutions.com/ http://www.simplymailsolutions.com/ They are based in the UK, so you have to convert their pricing, but Their service has been fabulous. It's Zimbra. I eventually ended up moving to iCloud, with my new phone, I ended up losing some income streams, and wanted to cut down costs, but otherwise I'd still be with them. There is also 01.com, I used them some too, they are fine, if you need a US based provider.
spqr 15y ago
Why wouldn't you just use Microsoft if you want hosted Exchange? http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/en-us/pricing-exchange-online-email.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/en-us/pricing-exchange-onl...

mbateman 15y ago

Is Gmail for Business any different privacy-wise than free Gmail? (The free part is less important to me.)

shampoo 15y ago
My understanding is it is different: https://commons.lbl.gov/display/google/Google+Apps+-+Privacy+and+Security+Overview https://commons.lbl.gov/display/google/Google+Apps+-+Privacy...

Maro 15y ago

Microsoft's Office 365 online office suite has an Outlook webmail client which was flawless well when I gave it a shot using Firefox. I think it costs $6/mo, no ads, no spying, because you pay for it. I don't know how well the search and spam filters work. http://www.office365.com http://www.office365.com Here's a demo video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOpCmUXLmTA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOpCmUXLmTA Note: This is _not_ the same thing as Hotmail.

sarnowski 15y ago
Just because you are paying for the service does not mean that they respect your privacy. You can also pay for Google Apps, but what you get is not worth the money. Depends more on the company than on the pricing model. (This is just a general hint - not against Microsoft. I don't know how they do their job.)
- Maro 15y ago
  Microsoft advertises Office 365 / Outlook by saying that unlike Gmail, they don't "peek" at your email for ads. The "Gmail man" ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXqrTfOWx60 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXqrTfOWx60
  - ortatherox 15y ago
    That was an internal video to try raise morale in Microsoft and get some people switch, it's pretty safe to assume gmail reads your emails as much as their spam filters does. But as well as doing the spam filtering on the results it does ads.
    - Estragon 15y ago
      Yeah, just looking at mail to model spam is one thing. Looking at it to model the user's life and interests is quite another.
  - jonknee 15y ago
    Ads can be disabled for Google Apps accounts, but as should be obvious any provider that provides spam filtering will already be "peeking" at your email. Perhaps in part to their ad relevancy system, Google's spam detection is best of breed. http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=60758 http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6...

mseebach 15y ago

TANSTAAFL. Google doesn't not respect your privacy, but there is a risk that could change. Personally, my money is on that Google's ad revenue is best protected by them respecting their users privacy. Any mail host carries the risk of a privacy breach, either accidental, such as a hacker attack, less so, such as selling the service to someone who cares less or completely on purpose - simply turning around and selling your data. All of these scenarios are vastly less likely to happen for Google in my risk analysis.

stroboskop 15y ago
Could you tell us more about your analysis? I would especially like to know if you consider the extent of Google's collection of users' private data.
- mseebach 15y ago
  First, do note that I also talk about a bet ("my money is on.."). The core of the analysis is that Google with Adsense has a revenue system that makes their interest showing me the most relevant ad. The more they know, the better the ad, the more revenue. The "bet" part is that this revenue is worth more than shady marketers would be able to extract from the data. The best way for Google to know a lot about me is for them to not give me any good reason not to let them track me, scan my email etc. Any meaningful breach of privacy will erode that faith. Regular ads don't have that faith (an adblocker is invariably the plugin I install), Facebook don't have it (Facebook disconnect is the second one). Google can very easily be added to that list. Also, Google is large enough and public enough that any significant erosion of privacy will trigger public intervention. A kind of "too big to fail".
  - fauigerzigerk 15y ago
    Letting someone read my mail and track me across the internet is a loss of privacy. There is no need for a breach or erosion of privacy, because by using gmail I'm giving up my privacy in exchange for a free email service. That's simply the deal. The question is, does this undeniable loss of privacy matter and can we know how great that loss will eventually be? I think it does matter, partly because we cannot know or control the extent of the loss and we cannot easily take it back (if at all). There's also a great security risk if so much sensitive information is stored in one place. Google is certainly more competent than I am in securing their database. But the incentive for someone to steal it from them is orders of magnitude greater as well.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

porkbird 15y ago

Apple's iCloud. It's free (up to 5GBs), no ads, and Apple is not in the ads business, hence, they have no use of your personal data (as opposed to Google). I have no idea how good are they in actually protecting your personal data, but I don't recall significant breaches of mobile.me/icloud in the past year.

executive 15y ago
> Apple is not in the ads business Really? http://advertising.apple.com/ http://advertising.apple.com/
- porkbird 15y ago
  Yes, sorry, they are. They are not serving web ads though, nor we have a reliable account that they collect information from user's iCloud emails to enhance the relevancy of iAd ads.
huggyface 15y ago
and Apple is not in the ads business, hence, they have no use of your personal data (as opposed to Google). Aside from the fact that Apple is in the ad business (to limited success and motive thus far, though if the hardware sales profit train slowed down you can guarantee they would grow more interest), even if they weren't they still are incredibly interested in data about their customers. All businesses are interested in slicing and dicing and categorizing and maximizing sell through, etc.
- porkbird 15y ago
  Sorry, I was inaccurate, they do serve ads, but not web ads, and so far I don't have any reliable information stating that Apple scarps the contents of user's personal data to deliver more relevant ads in a way google does.
ravisarma 15y ago
I was about to suggest iCloud, but it does not support some features that may be of interest to HN type users: in particular, "email personalities" - the ability to send outgoing email through the iCloud SMTP server using any of your various non-me.com email addresses.

dwyer 15y ago

Depends on what you consider respect of privacy. If you mean any provider that doesn't use software to scan your email for keywords, then that rules out any that incorporate a spam filter, and I can't think of any that don't. I personally don't see how targeted advertising is any more intrusive than spam filtering. Sophisticated spam filters scan for keywords and classify words based which emails you read and reply to, emails from contacts whose emails you read and reply to, etc. It's all automated in either case. Nobody at Google is reading your mail.

goodside 15y ago
Why do you think nobody is reading his mail? In September of 2010 an employee was dismissed for spying on the mail and Google Voice calls of four underage teenagers he had been meeting in real life. There have to be people at Google who have authority to read read the mail of users for less scandalous reasons for this to even be possible.
- jonknee 15y ago
  This will be the case for any mail provider. If you host yourself you still count on the fact that traffic to your server isn't being snooped on and always have the possibility of the authorities going in and snatching your box if they need to see your email (that won't happen with Google, but Google will comply with any requests and turn over your mail). Encrypt your email if you want privacy. For even better privacy, don't use email at all (encrypted or not the headers need to be in the clear).
  - icebraining 15y ago
    always have the possibility of the authorities going in and snatching your box if they need to see your email Encrypting your incoming email[1] fixes that particular problem. It's still not as good as getting others to use PGP, but on the other hand, it doesn't require getting others to use PGP ;) [1]: https://grepular.com/Automatically_Encrypting_all_Incoming_Email https://grepular.com/Automatically_Encrypting_all_Incoming_E...

darklajid 15y ago

I try to get myself to start blogging for a couple days now and wanted to start with my journey away from the big G. For me the solution is my own vps, self-hosting. I'm 90% there, having set up the new system, backed up my GMail contents, added a webmail solution and now I'm looking at the last (but so damn important) 10%: Choosing a backup solution (and I won't fully migrate until I have a backup in place that I successfully restored once). I understand that this isn't for everyone, but for me this proved little work so far and it's really flexible (I'm authenticating via yubikey now, for example).

replax 15y ago

If you are lucky (fast) to get one of the first raspberry PIs, you could host your own mail server on one of those. Put SpamAssasin on there, get ssh running and the other mail programms you need (plenty of guides on the web for that), set up a rsync script for backup and then it's pretty much set & forget. Then when the SD card dies on you, you stick a new one in and resync, ta-da!

geeknam 15y ago
Or you could get a SheevaPlug (I've got a TonidoPlug). The most economical personal home server :)

shareme 15y ago

A question, what is the difference between Google reading your email and using data and the ISP eMail service you have chosen. Seems to me that Google has a better track record than y other IPS email provider you could chose at this time.

Estragon 15y ago
Scale and business model. My ISP is not trying to help people sell me stuff by modeling my life and interests.

andrewcooke 15y ago

runbox - http://runbox.com/ http://runbox.com/ - seemed best when i looked for a replacement. they're based in norway, but not free. however, i eventually decided to run my own (on linux, using mutt terminal reader and mairix search (nice and fast); mail delivery by forwarding through my isp).

ciudilo 15y ago

During last few month Google has shown its true face and it is not pretty. It is very clear now that they are under the impression that there are no viable alternatives to their services. My main reason for moving off Gmail is a need for clear relationship with my provider. I want to pay for the services I receive in order to be able to complain when something goes wrong or when there is something I don't like. I don't want 'but it is free...' argument showed in my face when new design is forces upon me, email is down for a whole day or there are drastic changes to privacy policy. If you are looking for Gmail replacement definitely try out fastmail.fm

ansy 15y ago

I recently attempted such a move, but Google docs held me back. I realize any true paranoia agent would never use Google Docs, but if you ever collaborate on documents it is irreplaceable. Not to mention other people are creating shared documents on Google Docs that I need to use. True, I could move just migrate the email, contact list, and calendar somewhere else. But then I would have two contact lists that need to be synchronized between my new provider and Google Docs and forward any notifications from Gmail. Then I realized just how much I rely on Google's email search. Finding an email within tens of thousands is instant on Gmail. It is nearly impossible with anyone else. In the end, I abandoned trying to move away from Gmail / Google Apps. After all, there is nothing stopping the admin of any email system from casually reading inboxes or being forced to turn over data to a government authority. And Google does have some history of fighting back for information requests, where I can see much smaller providers folding under pressure more quickly due to limited resources. And the argument against self hosting has been repeated here already, but the risk of loss of service is far, far the worst thing to happen for email. If you don't care if your email becomes undeliverable for hours or days at a time, you really don't need to be paranoid about email.

JoshTriplett 15y ago

Privacy and free don't work well together; a free provider has to support itself somehow, and most of the ways it could do so inherently reduce your privacy. Personally, I'd suggest going to gandi.net and getting a domain name from them for $15/year, which comes with email: 5 real accounts, umpteen forwarding accounts, IMAP, SMTP, and a decent webmail client (roundcube). Plus, you get an email address at your own domain, not tied to any one email provider, making it easy to switch later if you want.

16s 15y ago

I highly recommend Tuffmail. They are awesome. I am a longtime customer: http://www.tuffmail.com/ http://www.tuffmail.com/ Edit: It's not free. It costs like 2 dollars a month for the smallest account.

poutine 15y ago
Another suggestion for tuffmail. Used them for years. Stable and does what you need.
grosskur 15y ago
+1 for Tuffmail. Also a long time customer. My favorite feature is the admin interface that lets you manage an unlimited number of aliases and route them to specific folders, e.g., foo@domain1.com => INBOX/foo/, bar@domain2.com => INBOX/bar/. Compare this to Google Apps and Fastmail, which both seem to limit the number of aliases you can create.

fileptr 15y ago

Recently, the company i work for decided to move out of G apps(paid). The top mgmt got some doubts abt google employees reading our emails. We were trying to close some deal with Google. I think they did it after some credible suspicion.

mutant 15y ago

I've moved my family's email to Rackspace's hosted email (not exchange). I have an SLA, and I own data. So far the loss of spam filtering and webmail are my biggest aches, soon achieve searching will be added to that list. I sometimes wonder if Google didn't have the same role as anti-virus companies did. Secretly promote viruses to over value their software... Google's spam filtering is amazing now that I have to contend with RS's lackluster spam services, so it's another case of "you need us, because it's a scary world out there." Whatever the case, I'm happy to be off gmail.

voidr 15y ago

It's not Google who you should be afraid of it's your government, if your government cares about data protection, than Google will not risk it, it's not worth it, even if they are evil, But if your government forces Google to make a wiretap interface for them, they have no choice. Either way they are in the hands of the government.

digamber_kamat 15y ago

People should anwer the question asked and not go tangential to the question.

yabai 15y ago

I have successfully left Google and Gmail. I began to worry about the amount of information Google had of mine (about 8gb worth of email). I now pay for email. I have thought about setting up a mail server - perhaps that will come in the future. I have also installed tiny tiny rss (because I used Google Reader) on a server. I also installed Coppermine to host photos. So far, I am very pleased with my shift away from Google. I also try to use duckduckgo and scroogle as much as possible. I will say that I believe Google does have the best search engine. Google search has been the hardest habit to break. Perhaps there is another search engine that respects its users privacy? I worry about OAuth. I think we should battle to end OAuth - forcing users to be part of a social network/service to use their service is a horrible practice.

readme 15y ago
I run my own mailserver on a linode VPS. For my own personal use, it's extremely stable and hasn't been down once for the 4 months I've been using it. I've got fail2ban, logwatch, and logcheck set up to monitor security. The distro is ubuntu server. They have a great guide for setting up postfix and dovecot. Remember, if you aren't paying, you're not a customer, you're the product.
- yabai 15y ago
  Thanks for the encouragement! Many are just coming to the realization that they are the product. Hopefully people will care and the established model will implode.
- icebraining 15y ago
  Remember, if you aren't paying, you're not a customer, you're the product. I use Hacker News without (as far as I know) being their product. I pay for Cable TV and yet I'm still their product. It's not as clean-cut as that; you need to read the small letters and always use caution, paid service or not.
  - davyjones 15y ago
    > I use Hacker News without (as far as I know) being their product. Your HN usernames are required on the YCombinator app forms. There is a good chance that they will go through your comment history to get a feel of your personality. I would think that this figures in their "buying" process (they are buying a part of your company after all). If you look at it like that, you are the product.

MtotheThird 15y ago

Disclaimer: I work for Google, this is my personal opinion, yadda yadda yadda. I've used (and continue to use) Fastmail for many years behind a personal domain. To call Fastmail reliable is a bit of a laugh. They've had at least three severe outages in my time there (we're talking 24+ hours without mail access). To their credit, nothing was lost in the end, however I was fuming by the end of the last one and determined to switch to Gmail. However inertia has kept me from doing so -- last time I checked it was tricky in Gmail to import a complicated set of folders like I have and retain the structure, so it's always been something I plan to get around to once I have time. Yeah right. FWIW, I don't think there's been a significant outage since the Opera purchase. And I'm quite pleased with what I've seen of FM's beta interface.

zatara 15y ago
" it was tricky in Gmail to import a complicated set of folders like I have and retain the structure" I did it through a client (mail.app), synching with IMAP. It worked flawlessly.
antoncohen 15y ago
I've done a few migrations to Gmail/Google Apps, I'm actually in the middle of one right now. It's pretty easy to retain your folder structure, especially if you have IMAP and are going to Google Apps. Nested Labels has been moved from Labs to a standard feature. I think there is a still a 40 char folder path limit, so make sure your folder names are short enough before migration, e.g., rename "Mailing Lists" to "Lists". Google has the Migration for Microsoft Exchange tool, which does IMAP sync with any normal IMAP server. The tool is Windows-only, they used to have a web-based version but they discontinued it (WTF Google?!). It requires 2-legged OAuth, which requires Google Apps for Business. But Google Apps for Business has a free trial with no billing info required. So what I do is sign up for Google Apps Free, upgrade to Business, do the migration, and downgrade to Free. If your mail in stored in a mail client (POP3-style), you can add Google Apps IMAP to your mail client, and drag and drop your folders/mail from the old account to Google IMAP. Be sure to hold down the Ctrl key (or whatever) to copy not move. This method also works if you are going to normal Gmail. There is also imapsync, a Perl command line tool, and a few other tools that do things like Maildir to IMAP sync.

dangrossman 15y ago

I've used Rackspace E-mail for years (formerly called MailTrust) with my own domains. It's $2 per mailbox per month, minimum of $10 per month. POP, IMAP (with push notifications) and a decent webmail client I don't use. You get an actual SLA and 24x7x365 support by phone/web/email.

deleted 15y ago

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sridharvembu 15y ago

(Disclosure: I am the CEO of Zoho) We would invite people to try Zoho Mail. We have come a long way in the past few years, and we are investing in a ton of R&D to ensure we are world-class. We offer our consumer edition free-of-cost and ad-free and we intend to continue this indefinitely, and we charge only business customers. This is the same policy we follow with our Office suite as well - whatever we offer free, we offer it ad-free.

icebraining 15y ago
Needing an email address to sign up for your email hosting is slightly ironic ;)
porker 15y ago
How do you respect privacy any more than GMail does? Your email isn't hosted in the EU, what extra protection is in place?
- Andrenid 15y ago
  This is the clincher for me. Anyone trying to compete with Google needs to be up front and detailed about how they handle your privacy, and what they'll do to protect you.
- mseebach 15y ago
  And more relevant - how do you ensure that you will keep this respect? While I'm very sympathetic to your business model, it's still a loss-leader for your business offering. Can you guarantee that you will never attempt to monetize this (probably) huge and growing dataset? Tomorrow, next year, and (especially) after a private equity manager starts waving cheques with many zeros on them in under your nose?

huhtenberg 15y ago

Tangentially related - I would pay for an email service with an off-site delivery for Gmail recipients. Basically, it should hold any email that is to be sent to GMail servers and instead send a note saying "You've got mail, pick it up here https://<url> https://<url>. Anything like this out there?

hollerith 15y ago
That's hardcore!

a_a_r_o_n 15y ago

fastmail.fm has a free account, but it's nowhere near the space that gmail provides. But it's good enough. I originally used fastmail's free account just to have a backup smtp server for when gmail or whoever I was with at the time went down. gmail does go down, happened more than once to me. fastmail has a $5/year account, which is probably where you want to start if you're concerned about "free." I think their next level up is about $20/year.

a_a_r_o_n 15y ago

pair.com has cheap shared hosting which includes email. In some ways they're more flexible than solutions like fastmail. It's a middle ground between total outsourcing and running your own server: you get a shell account, yet you don't have to keep the server up. I used pair.com for this and other purposes for many years, happily, and I'm thinking of going back. I'm on fastmail at the moment. One surprising development: pair.com used to be freebsd-only, and now they offer ubuntu as an alternative.

spqr 15y ago

Microsoft will host Exchange accounts for you with 25 GB mailboxes for $5 per month per user. It's an unbelievably good deal. See more at http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/en-us/pricing-exchange-online-email.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/en-us/pricing-exchange-onl... Of course, this is brought to you courtesy of competition from Google but this blows the doors off Google Apps. Don't need a separate synchronizing application to keep Outlook synched. Everything works just as if you had local Exchange except you don't need a local Exchange server or anti-spam or anti-virus solution. Surprisingly, Microsoft has become very competitive in hosted email.

cyber 15y ago

Ah, my fellow geeks. Excellent discussions on replacements for the backend infrastructure and handling. :) Now, does anyone have a replacement for the UI/client? Something good and multiplatform that a) deals well with multi media (images, attachments, etc) and b) still retains MH semantics? The use of MH style semantics is what attracted me to the whole thing back in 2004.

greyman 15y ago

AmazingWill, in my opinion, if you want to ensure privacy, online service with IMAP is not the solution, because: 1) You don't know who has (or will get) access to the emails stored at the servers. 2) You don't know if your account will not be hacked. In my opinion, you either need to: a) host your own email server, or b) periodically download your emails through pop3s to your own encrypted drive, not leaving them on the server

antoncohen 15y ago

What privacy concerns do you have? Real people reading your email? Computer programs scanning your email? Is it about ads and not privacy? It's my understanding that virtually no one at Google has the access privileges required to read your email. That won't be the case at most smaller mail hosts. If the host supports IMAP, they can read your email, there is no way around that. I trust Google's security way more than most companies. If it's about programs scanning your email, well, spam/virus filtering has to do that. And I personally don't care what some computer bot knows about me, as long as a real person doesn't snoop around. In my opinion ads are not an invasion of privacy, and if you want free you will get ads. Google Apps for Business can have ads disabled, only $50/year.

copenhagencoder 15y ago

http://www.gandi.net/ http://www.gandi.net/ offers free IMAP/POP with their domains. Hosted in Europe (as far as I know).

weezuh 15y ago

If one is worried about privacy, he/she shouldn't send their email in plaintext, readable by not just Google, but the rest of the world. If one cares about privacy, look to encryption.

ksec 15y ago

Late to the Discussions, but i am surprise no one has mentioned atmail -www.atmail.com They have a cloud solution too. Personally i think this is the best email services.

abhishekdesai 15y ago

Try using Zimbra community edition. You will need a server and some technical knowledge to set it up but it is good. My company's official emails are hosted on Zimbra since long now.