7 ms·

he mentioned also Quad9 - Cloudflare DNS replacement. I didn't know about and will probably switch to it. My other picks: SEARCH: qwant (france) LLM: mistral

• hampus 2y ago
  Fastmail is based in Australia [1], not Germany. [1]: https://www.fastmail.com/company/about/ https://www.fastmail.com/company/about/
  • hnbad 2y ago
    Fastmail's servers are apparently located in the United States[1] - and the Netherlands, but there doesn't seem to be a way to know in which country your specific mailboxes are stored. > Our colocation providers could be compelled to give physical access to our servers. Network capturing devices could be installed. And in the worst case an attacker could simply force their way into the datacentre and physically remove our servers. So as far as warrantless surveillance is concerned, Fastmail is no better than if it were a US company or subsidiary thereof. They may themselves not be in a position where they would have to comply with US requests that would be illegal in Australia but whoever is operating their US-based DC absolutely is and they admit as much, even if they handwave this scenario as being no different from an ordinary hacking attempt[2]. [1]: https://www.fastmail.com/blog/fastmails-servers-are-in-the-us-what-this-means-for-you/ https://www.fastmail.com/blog/fastmails-servers-are-in-the-u... [2]: Of course the flaw in this comparison is that an ordinary hacker can't make on-site staff comply with their demands and prohibit them from disclosing the hack. To do so without the authority of the law, you'd need a Hollywood action movie level of criminal enterprise that would usually involve taking a retired police officer's granddaughter hostage for some reason.
    • andrewinardeer 2y ago
      Fastmail can't be trusted. Australia has some fairly draconian digital laws that authorities can issue notices requiring developers to assist with an investigation. This can include technical assistance which could require companies to build capability for law enforcement to break the encryption used in their services. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/nov/05/session-encrypted-messaging-app-developer-moves-out-of-australia-police-visit-switzerland https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/nov/05/sessi... https://www.404media.co/encrypted-chat-app-session-leaves-australia-after-visit-from-police-2/ https://www.404media.co/encrypted-chat-app-session-leaves-au...
      • bad_user 2y ago
        Fastmail can be trusted because it's operated by trustworthy individuals, with a company from a country that's still an ally. If you don't want surveillance, you'd better not use email.
        • andrewinardeer 2y ago
          It can't be trusted because it is incorporated in Australia which has draconian digital survellience laws. Operated by trustworthy individuals is a moot point when they are compelled by law to build in a backdoor if asked. Even a warrant canary is forbidden.
          • bad_user 2y ago
            You're repeating the same information as in the comment I'm replying to. The surveillance laws, no matter how often you repeat the word "draconian", are irrelevant because… Email isn't safe, and most of your email probably ends up on Google's or Microsoft's servers anyway, in which case US companies can be coerced by the US government to give them everything they have, while not being able to tell the public about it. And they do just that, a fact that came to light with Snowden's revelations. Australia cannot be worse than the US. For emails, the government surveillance is irrelevant, as it happens anyway. And solutions like Proton Email are just privacy theatre that also happen to interact poorly with established standards (e.g., SMTP, IMAP). I also fear Australia much less than I fear the US these days. I have always feared the US, especially due to their massive security apparatus, but at least I considered them valuable allies. These days we'll just add some extra fear points due to the techno-fascists in charge, voted-in by the people with a popular vote. Whenever I see such comments on popular forums, such as HN, I lose faith in humanity a little, either because people don't think about the threat model (this being vibes-based) or the consequences of boycotting the underdogs, or because they are disingenuous about it. Fastmail is a fine service, built and operated by trustworthy people, which also contribute to standards (e.g. JMAP) and to open source. A service that's also not monetized by ad-tech, unlike what the Big Tech email services are doing.
• Foobar8568 2y ago
  Yes, but nobody competes with AWS, Azure or GCP, everything else is easy. And most likely, most of the services/saas you mentionned relies on "US" cloud infrastructure.
  • mhitza 2y ago
    > Yes, but nobody competes with AWS, Azure or GCP Scaleway is positioned in the same space.
    • cpach 2y ago
      STACKIT too.
  • bamboozled 2y ago
    How do you think all these massive companies will successfully continue to operate in a country where the rule of law is no longer respected? Like I understand how that might sound like hyperbole, but everything I'm reading seems to indicate the USA is on an express train to hackville.
    • pjc50 2y ago
      Bribery. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-tech-ceos-meta-amazon-donate-millions-inauguration/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-tech-ceos-meta-amazon-don... (the risk is of course that the administration is not stable enough to stay bribed, or intra-oligarch fighting breaks out between Musk and one of the others)
      • cutemonster 2y ago
        Yes, plus for example helping out with surveillance, finding and stopping dissidents. Fascism tends to be (I read/learned recently) friendly to big corporations, as long as they are loyal to the regime.
        • bamboozled 2y ago
• mhitza 2y ago
  For dns there is also dns0.eu, which I've been using without issues for a year (or more, since it popped up in the HN feed).
  • semi-extrinsic 2y ago
    For DNS, Gandi is also French?
    • SSLy 2y ago
      different kind of DNS service.
• reacharavindh 2y ago
  I thought fastmail was Australian..
  • teamonkey 2y ago
    Australia is in Eurovision so it counts
    • jb1991 2y ago
      So is Israel, but a lot of people moved away from a popular VPN provider once it was purchased by an Israeli company.
      • RobMurray 2y ago
        Thanks for the info, I am a Private Internet Access customer and didn't realise til now. I now feel disgusted and will definitely be switching to another provider when my subscription ends. Luckily I only use it for Linux ISOs and changing region for streaming services so not much to spy on.
• Heliosmaster 2y ago
  nextdns seems to be a US company, by French founders https://help.nextdns.io/t/y4hmv0n/who-is-behind-nextdns https://help.nextdns.io/t/y4hmv0n/who-is-behind-nextdns
• McDyver 2y ago
  For encrypted mail, there is also tuta.com (previously Tutanota), Germany based
  • jb1991 2y ago
    Do you know anything about another popular German mail provider, mailbox.org?
    • attendant3446 2y ago
      mailbox.org were good, but they decided to become more than just a mail provider and forced users into other, more expensive plans, adding office and cloud storage. There is also posteo.de. It doesn't support custom domains, but I use it in combination with simplelogin.io (I think French, but now owned by Proton).
      • crossroadsguy 2y ago
        Yeah, I appreciate posteo's stance but when I tried using my domain via forwarding service it was a pain. SimpleLogin, by the way, is now owned by Proton which is run by a founder (CEO?) who is a vocal Trump supporter. Nothing wrong with that of course, just saying.
    • crossroadsguy 2y ago
      I have commented just above it. tl;dr - I'd avoid it like plague at this point.
  • crossroadsguy 2y ago
    Tuta comes with a caveat - you cannot use it in any other mail client (I think there are similar limitations with Proton as well). Anyone looking for alternatives - stay away from mailboxo.org. It's a pathetic service. Stuck in past (they have a suite that makes you kick a table leg), very disgustingly bad customer service (it's almost non existent), and yeah they use 2FA inside the password. Tuta is many times better if you can live with not being able to use another client. (They have pretty decent apps on all platforms though)
• bamboozled 2y ago
  This is a great list, thanks. Slowly going to be following suit.
• Kelteseth 2y ago
  Add Netcup for great and cheap hosting from Germany. I've been a customer for years.
  • kiney 2y ago
    can confirm. Great for small and cheaps VPSes
• jb1991 2y ago
  I’m curious about mailbox.org, which markets themselves as “privacy made in Germany“
  • margorczynski 2y ago
    I think German law makes that impossible - basically you need to assume the government can access your data at any time.
    • jb1991 2y ago
      I thought EU privacy laws were better than US laws.
      • mafuy 2y ago
        The difference is that in the US, it will sweep it up anyway, and in the EU, it can access it only with a court order.
  • schroeding 2y ago
    Can only recommend them - not too expensive, you can also use your own domains and they support at-rest auto encryption of all incoming mail with a PGP public key you give them (which of course does not prevent them from saving incoming mail as clear text somewhere else, but prevents others from reading all existing mail should they get access to your mailbox later)
  • eliaskg 2y ago
    Discovered them recently. Price looks absolutely fair for what you get. It offers up to ten external addresses for sending and has a web interface so it looks like a solid Gmail alternative.
  • attendant3446 2y ago
    I used mailbox.org for several years until they forced everyone into more expensive plans by adding irrelevant features like office and cloud storage. This kind of behaviour from them was disappointing.
• eliaskg 2y ago
  ENAIL: Mailbox.org (germany)
• speckx 2y ago
  Also see https://european-alternatives.eu/alternatives-to https://european-alternatives.eu/alternatives-to
• crossroadsguy 2y ago
  More for email from EU: there is runbox (Norway; I have used it, really good except that their new suite has been in beta for over a century), mailo.com (france; on new pages I had to explicitly set translation from top right corner), inbox.eu (Latvia; haven't tried it). There are more: soverin, infomaniak has mail service, sartmail (used it; was costly for my personal usage iirc), and migadu (kinda well known), mailfence (liked it) etc. Of course there is - Tuta (no imap/pop3 client support) and Posteo (no custom domain) - which are both excellent if you can live with these limitations. The ones I would not consider (personally): mailbox (germany; but they are really. bad now - I have commented below about it), proton (I'd avoid it; reason was on hn recently).