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Comment by yogthos | Hacker News Reader

Did the same thing a few weeks ago. The original reasons were that gmail was incredibly slow in FF, and I wasn't really comfortable with Google reading my mail.

People point out that the email is read by an automated system, but that doesn't change the fact that Google is building a profile of me and selling it to advertisers.

With Fastmail there's a business model I can understand. I pay them money and they provide me a service.

The really dark side of all this is that we're quickly moving towards a world where you only get privacy if you can afford it.

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> selling it to advertisers

If you’re in China or occupied Tibet it may be not only advertisers but also an oppressive and adversarial government. Maybe not today but next year.

And, if available in one place, eventually available elsewhere.

That applies even if you're in US given what we now know from Snowden.

>> I wasn't really comfortable with Google reading my mail.

Neither G Suite Gmail nor regular Gmail have been used and/or scanned for ads personalisation since back in 2017: https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in...

Even if they stopped using the data for ad personalisation, they're obviously still scanning it. The new auto reply suggestions feature relies on that. While they might not be using that data for anything nefarious at the moment, there's nothing stopping them from changing their mind in the future.

Personally, I just feel more comfortable paying 4 bucks a month to a company that isn't trying to monetize me.

correct me if i'm wrong, but doesn't every email service scan emails? be it for spam, security, viruses. they have to scan them. i thought this is standard industry practice.

Typically, that's based on the email metadata such as the sender address, or mime types of the attachments as opposed to the actual content of the email.

I think that's only correct as of like 1995.

Even simple tools like spam assassin read the body, and you can bet that almost any public provider is doing more than spam assassin.

But they do not sell it or analyze it for advertising...

Neither does Google.

So you think Google gives it for free? Thought it is common sense: If you are not paying for it, you are the product.

There are ads on Gmail. They just aren't based on emails.

Not to mention all kinds of actually free services. Think colab.

So they claim.

The other dark side is that half of the email you send from your fastmail account will still be going to Gmail and hence can still be used by Google to build a profile of you, if they so desire.

Some is better than all, and most people I interact with are technical who either already switched, or are considering switching.

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