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Proton Mail says Outlook for Windows is Microsoft's new data collection service
- dredmorbius 3y agoDiscussed at the time (2024-1-11): <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38953618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38953618> See also (2024-4-5): <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39939037 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39939037> (Schneier)
- avery17 3y agoDoes anyone have a good desktop email client they recommend for windows or linux or even self hosted? All the ones ive tried are pretty awful... The problem is outlook was actually good in the past.
- grepfru_it 3y agoThe only other decent mail client is thunderbird. There exists no mail client that is as full featured as outlook. Horde/imp maybe maybe is the closest thing you get in web form. But every mail client has a limitation that outlook does not have
- laborat 3y agoUnfortunately, I dislike thunderbird with a passion. In my anecdotal experience, its search is terrible - not to mention that there are two of it: a search option in the top panel that misses about 50% of relevant messages, and a very featureful search option buried within the menu bar that misses about 20% of relevant messages. Out of necessity, I've trained myself to just reboot to Windows any time I really need to find a particular email that I know I have somewhere. I also don't particularly like Thunderbird's UI, but that is something I'm able to compromise on. Not meant to be a rant, but rather: please, someone, is this really the best we have?
- jasonjayr 3y agoYea :( Most everyone has moved to webmail implementations, since it's good enough. I think even folks with the tech know-how to self-host a webmail client have done so. Personally, I use RoundCube.
- andersa 3y agoWait, what? I found thunderbird search to be a super power, so much more reliable (and fast) than outlook.
- elaus 3y agoI'm in the same boat. I've even installed Thunderbird and synced a mail account just to be able to find a specific mail that neither webmail nor the Android app were able to find.
- CJefferson 3y ago12 years ago I reported you can’t search for the word wedding, as it find any email that was sent on a Wednesday: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=752844 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=752844 Did it ever get fixed? Wasn’t fixed when I tried about 2 years ago.
- andersa 3y agoInteresting... you're right, this is giving me lots of wednesdays.
- a0123 3y agoSearch is still as bad as it ever was, unfortunately it remains the most feature complete alternative (and free). And of course, Microsoft makes it impossible to use their services with it. Or so difficult you just give up after it breaks for the 5th time in a month.
- collsni 3y ago2nd for Thunderbird, I like it alot
- the__alchemist 3y agoI have really tried to like Thunderbird. I can't. Its search is broken, it's very slow, it inserts awkward formatting in emails (Ie space below and above each line), the reply functionality is awk etc. I know it's time to go when I have to switch back to fastmail's web client to do anything "serious". I still have it installed because I want to like it, but.. No. This post has inspired me to delete it.
- zelphirkalt 3y agoHave you maybe configured it to search online or something? I have used TB for years and still use it daily, daily getting some 30+ emails, that I tag and sort into folders and all that. My TB profile is several GB in size. Search is instant for me, on all my hardware, including older laptops and even an old X200, with some upgraded parts. I am not sure how it could be slow, so I am guessing something like your search needs to look for things online maybe, instead of in small inboxes and local folders.
- grepfru_it 3y ago>several GB I have all of my mail going back to 2001..
- rstuart4133 3y agoI have all my email going back to then too. Many GB. I always download all of it locally. The global search bar (which searches all of it) appears instantaneous. It must be well under under 200ms. Every time I've verified the result with grep the results are accurate. I have no idea how they get it so fast. Searching within a folder is different. It does a linear scan. If you don't search the body it's fast enough - a few seconds I guess on a big folder. If you search the body of the email in a big file, then yes it can take a while.
- saratogacx 3y agoThe Spacing isn't that weird. It just wraps paragraphs inside of paragraph tags. If you use Shift-enter you get a new line w/out a paragraph. The only real change I've had to do there is just hit enter once, where I used to hit twice.
- rapnie 3y ago> There exists no mail client that is as full featured as outlook Possibly. It may also be the most feature-bloated unintuitive UI. Using Linux myself, but always astounded when helping my non-technical mother with the latest murky weirdness thrown at her by Outlook. Some people just need simple mail facilities, not a Rube Goldberg 'ribbonware' cube. And on Windows maybe most people want easy & simple.
- trelane 3y ago> Some people just need simple mail facilities, not a Rube Goldberg 'ribbonware' cube. Fortunately for those people, mutt still exists.
- BirAdam 3y agoEvolution.
- zelphirkalt 3y agoI would add though, that TB has features, that Outlook does not have, so it is not like TB only implements a subset of functionality that Outlook offers, but rather it implements different features and, at least for me, it is way better than Outlook ever was.
- exitzer0 3y agoEvolution seems to work fine for me.
- 3np 3y agoI tried most of them. It's a little bit different but Astroid is great and my favorite GUI desktop client right now. Lightweight, flexible and renders html all right. It uses notmuch, which takes a little bit of setup but in return you get really good search which I never felt a need to tune. You should also try out if either thunderbird, evolution or kmail does it for you. If you're up for terminal, aerc (optionally supports notmuch). roundcube for self-hosted webmail. cypht could also be worth checking out. maybe later on mailpile when/if they get their 2.0 out.
- jpeeler 3y agoDoes Astroid feel done? Because the last commit was 7 months ago.
- 3np 3y agoI wouldn't be that absolute about it, but nothing comes to mind as missing or broken from the top of my head so far. That being said, it does look like it would benefit from some more support: https://github.com/astroidmail/astroid/issues/669 https://github.com/astroidmail/astroid/issues/669 https://github.com/astroidmail/astroid/issues/744 https://github.com/astroidmail/astroid/issues/744 ...How's your C++? (;
- gtech1 3y agoI fully ditched Outlook because of this crap. Been using eM Client (emclient.com) for a few months now and love it.
- garyclarke27 3y agoOn Mac You can still use the old Outlook. You have to switch back everytime there is an update but it's very easy. The new one is awful because it does not have tabular list view, with sortable columns such as: datetime, from, to, cc, etc which are critical for me.
- BirAdam 3y agoI really like Mutt. Vivaldi’s mail client isn’t bad. I think Evolution is okay.
- cynicalsecurity 3y agoThunderbird.
- l_nk 3y agoI use emClient. Its paid, but its a one time fee and the client works very well event with calendar integration (gmail and outlook).
- globular-toast 3y ago> The problem is outlook was actually good in the past. That's not a problem, it's just a (dubious) statement. The problem is to find a mail client that is good now. Thunderbird is the best.
- npteljes 3y agoI have tried several, and liked none of them. I'm currently on Geary, but it's lacking in functionality, and it has things like search results being a bit different upon each of my searches. Starred messages cannot be shown on top. Eyeroll. I think Evolution and Thunderbird are the top contenders, and of the self-hosted ones, Roundcube. https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Geary https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Geary https://roundcube.net/ https://roundcube.net/
- squarefoot 3y agoClaws Mail. https://www.claws-mail.org/index.php https://www.claws-mail.org/index.php It's lightning fast, to the point I can keep all my emails online (>70000 posts), all accounts, all mail lists, everything, since day one about 30 years ago, and search through them at any moment. Runs pretty much everywhere, including ARM, also there are tools to import mail and contacts from Outlook.
- noirscape 3y agoThunderbird for desktop. If you're selfhosting your mail, the best webmail client is Roundcube. Sure it ain't pretty, but it's robust as hell. For android, use K-9 Mail (it's on F-Droid).
- NoGravitas 3y agoRainloop is an okay, simpler webmail client. It is lacking in a lot of features that Roundcube has, but sometimes you just want easy access to your email when you're away from your full-featured desktop client. K-9 is good; it's going to be rebranded as Thunderbird for Android soon. FairEmail is also good. It has a different set of trade-offs from K-9, so better for some people, worse for others.
- Paianni 3y agonPOPuk?
- markx2 3y ago772 partners? Until wordpress.com removed the number of their partners they were sharing data with they had about that number, including one company that has a Data Retention period of 4320 days - that's almost 12 years. Edit: looks like the number is 851
- swader999 3y agoMicrosoft is basically adware across the board now. I won't even run it in a vm these days.
- BirAdam 3y agoThey must have been jealous of Alphabet’s profits. Honestly, they need to change or they’ll lose the market. Apple has grown quickly, and Linux is actually seeing decent growth thanks to SteamDeck. There’s also been Chromebooks, but I don’t know how common those really are.
- xyst 3y agoWhat product isn’t filled with adware or telemetry now?
- trelane 3y ago> What product isn’t filled with adware or telemetry now? Linux and BSD come readily to mind.
- alex_lav 3y agoLinux isn't a product. I would also assert this question would've been better asked scoped to non-OSS type products. You don't place ads or dragnet telemetry if you also don't care about whether people use your product or not.
- xtiansimon 3y agoThis has to be for free email, yes? What about [paid] small business use of Microsoft 365?
- gtech1 3y agoIf you configure any IMAP account in Outlook, it will store your password and cache mail data in Azure.
- happymellon 3y agoOh, I thought this was "new Outlook" that replaced Mail and not O365 Outlook. The same way we had multiple Skype's and they were dramatically different. Is this not the case anymore? Is "new Outlook" the replacement for all Mail/Outlooks?
- gtech1 3y agoalso Outlook for mobile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Outlook_(mobile_app) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Outlook_(mobile_app) Security Outlook Mobile temporarily stores and indexes user data (including email, attachments, calendar information, and contacts), along with login credentials,[28] in a "secure" form on Microsoft Azure servers located in the United States.[29] On Exchange accounts, these servers identify as a single Exchange ActiveSync user in order to fetch e-mail. Additionally, the app does not support mobile device management, nor allows administrators to control how third-party cloud storage services are used with the app to interact with their users. Concerns surrounding these security issues have prompted some firms, including the European Parliament, to block the app on their Exchange servers.[30][31][32] Microsoft maintains a separate, pre-existing Outlook Web Access app for Android and iOS.[32]
- xtiansimon 3y agoI'm not following. Is there a TOS loophole around "cache mail data in Azure" that permits my paid account email data to be handled differently by Microsoft than, say, Chase bank handles my financial data stored somewhere in their cloud? And password? Are you claiming they have a pain text store of my password? The expectation is generally that your message data in a free account is subject to being used for some internal purpose. But we don't expect paid account message data to be used in any way. We pay for the service and the storage. Maybe my expectations, while possibly naive, are nevertheless baseline and subject to change from new information.
- andersa 3y agoThe "new" outlook is a disgrace. Using it to access a third party email provider results in Microsoft transferring your credentials to their server so the server can sync all your emails... for reasons, of course.
- MikusR 3y agoBecause the new outlook is literally the https://outlook.live.com/ https://outlook.live.com/ website.
- Algent 3y agoPretty amazing, they make you pay a very high monthly free to use office and now this is just going to be a web wrapper.
- hawk_ 3y agoYes this is truly annoying part of modern tech. They used to say if you don't pay for it, you are the product. Now even if you pay for it you are still the product because they can do whatever they want with your data anyway.
- zelphirkalt 3y agoIt happens, because financial figure optimizer role people see some potential that it could works and try to squeeze every last penny out of it, even celebrate themselves for it, and we, by and large, let them get away with it, instead of giving them the middle finger.
- MikusR 3y agoThe 10$ are for 1TB of OneDrive, Word and Excel are just free extras.
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago[dupe] More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38953618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38953618
- socar 3y agoonly "The Bat" !
- sunsetonsaturn 3y agoExcellent client, but Windows only.
- nonrandomstring 3y agoThe problem now is that they're all a it. "In only the last three days Google [0], Apple [1], and Microsoft [2] have each been the subject of dispiriting security news stories exposing their deceit and fundamental lack of trustworthiness." I wrote the above here [3] yesterday in the context of how we approach the problem of not just big-tech monopolies - among whom who we might theoretically decide who to trust more - but a coordinated data trading cartel made up of a network of treacherous entities and "partners". Staying on-topic, in the current context of email, with all of the big three providers now unashamedly looting though your private correspondence, either at their server or your endpoints, is email effectively dead for business? Using a more trustworthy provider like Proton or Tuta, or even running your own mail servers only kicks the can down the road, since any messages To: or Cc: recipients at defective providers is a leak. [0] https://time.com/6962521/google-incognito-lawsuit-data-settlement/ https://time.com/6962521/google-incognito-lawsuit-data-settl... [1] https://www.aalto.fi/en/news/keeping-your-data-from-apple-is-harder-than-expected https://www.aalto.fi/en/news/keeping-your-data-from-apple-is... [2] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/04/surveillance-by-the-new-microsoft-outlook-app.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/04/surveillance-... [3] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/principles https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/principles
- 7thaccount 3y agoI bought something on my phone recently and I'm guessing Gmail saw the email from the vendor or something and a few seconds later the Microsoft web browser on my work computer started advertising for precisely that item. I felt more than a little violated. People used to call you crazy for saying this was tracked and it's all normalized now. It's more than a little dystopian.
- withinboredom 3y agoI know a guy who worked on scanning SMS messages for keywords to do marketing with. They had some huge telecoms they worked with. This was also a long time ago. Terrifying stuff; who knows what they do these days.
- mindaslab 3y agoTrue. Please use ProtonMail paid version if you can.
- xyst 3y agoI like proton mail, but I would prefer to self host at this point. All of the products they have can be self hosted (mail, calendar, drive, vpn). Or have local device only equivalent with optional sync ability (pass). I’ll probably still toss them a few dollars tho because I realize most people won’t care this much about self hosting. Plus they seem like a good company overall. At least for now. Used to think Google was a good company.
- sylware 3y agoWho did think it was not the case????? Come on...
- devinprater 3y agoWell, luckily for me, the new Outlook is a crappy web app that replaced my perfectly good Windows Calendar, which is accessible with my screen reader and starts in an instant, with .. this web app junk that's worse than Discord and Slack and Element combined. So I don't use that.