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Comment by ocdtrekkie | Hacker News Reader

The hubbub about the article there is FUD, particularly when it comes to FastMail. Since FastMail isn't an end-to-end encrypted service (Gmail isn't either), laws about thwarting encryption are entirely irrelevant: Both must respond to a legal government order for your information. Google responds to many tens of thousands of these requests yearly: https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/overview?t=t...

If you are not Australian, the likelihood of getting your data subpoena'd from an Australian company is pretty low. If you're in the US, it's far more likely for your Gmail data to be successfully subpoena'd.

Unless you belong to a fairly narrow set of people, the risk of government access to your data is relatively low. Meanwhile, the threat of advertiser access to your data is high for everyone: Don't trust an ad company with your data, even if they currently say they won't use it for ads.

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I'm not trying to compare gmail and fastmail. I'm trying get off gmail, and that is the top priority. However, changing email providers is relatively disruptive and I'd prefer to choose one that can last me 5-10 years. Fastmail was that choice but uncertainty about Australian encryption laws throws a wrench into that equation.

My concern with encryption law is not necessarily that FastMail will respond to warrants (though total non-compliance in a non-5 eyes country would be ideal), its how frequently and do they need to otherwise compromise the security of the product in order to do so. FastMail seems to think that the new laws will impact them negatively.[0] FastMail's response to these claims has not been exactly confidence inspiring as the Australian government could compel the company to comply not just individual coders.[1]

The real question I'm asking is, is fastmail my only real alternative to gmail?

0: https://reclaimthenet.org/fastmail-australian-encryption-law... 1: https://fastmail.blog/2018/12/21/advocating-for-privacy-aabi...

FastMail certainly isn't the only alternative, but it's a really good one. I don't blame FastMail for criticizing the law, and it does impact them negatively: Despite not affecting their service at all from a technical standpoint, it is scaring people away from their service.

For the most part, any paid email service which has custom domain support and isn't owned by an adtech company should be, as far as privacy concerns go, likely pretty solid. You just tend to see FastMail brought up a lot because a lot of us have switched to it and are enthusiastic fans of it. ;)

There are several Ask HN posts about alternatives for Gmail. Apart from Fastmail, there are more privacy focused services. Some of them: posteo.de, runbox.com, mailbox.org and mailfence.com. These are a lot cheaper than Fastmail too, with full IMAP support. If you want a much cheaper service for many mailboxes, take a look at Migadu. For most people who need multiple mailboxes but don't send a lot of emails (but receive many), I'd find it hard to beat that pricing.

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