Ask HN: Getting Off GMail | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Getting Off GMail

Re: Google Using AI To Meddle In 2020 Election

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-24/google-using-ai-meddle-2020-election-prevent-next-trump-situation-veritas

How is office 365? Any choice Microsoft dirt to steer clear of? Any experience with ethical alternatives that are robust and worth a damn?

PS) Primaily focused on email features--speed, delivery, searchability, backupability, etc...

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Fastmail is based in Australia so not an option.

Try the filters at https://thatoneprivacysite.net/email-comparison/#detailed-em...

Don't need to use your own domain? https://posteo.de/en

Want to use your own domain? https://runbox.com https://www.neomailbox.com/ https://kolabnow.com/ https://mailfence.com/ and https://mailbox.org/en/

What's wrong with it being based in Australia?

I'd like to know the answer to that too. Have used Fastmail for many years now and definitely recommend them. BTW I'm based in Oz, have no association with them and never had ANY problems. AFAIK they provide free limited accounts but for a few bucks per year you get extra features.

Our government recently passed an insane piece of surveillance legislation.

Source: https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2019/05/australias-new-encryption...

Its fine to use Fastmail, many people have been making this incorrect and unfair assessment of the company. If anything the company is clear on how it’s standing up for user rights.

From Fastmail: “As we have stated in the past, Fastmail’s business is not directly affected by this legislation and we won’t be making changes to our technology or policies in response to this act.

While we had a small number of customers tell us they were discontinuing service due to this legislation, as well as a handful of potential customers tell us it was impacting their evaluation of our services, the AABill did not have a material impact on our business. However, we shared these developments in our submission to Parliament as an example of the AABill’s potentially chilling effect on Australian businesses. Parliament deserves to know how the marketplace views their decisions.”

Ref: https://fastmail.blog/2019/02/28/aabill-and-fastmail/

Whether or not I agree, but two years ago you said "their censorship seems more self-interested than public-minded, Eric Schmidt is a Dr. Evil wannabe" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15776603) so I wonder why you kept using gmail?

I use and recommend https://runbox.com/

Edit: related "Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?" with 500+ comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18054574

Business account, so not something where I can just leap without looking.

Also very busy, so this task has been stuck mid-list for a while now..

I would say one of these providers:

* https://www.privacytools.io/providers/email/

* https://web.archive.org/web/20190619003906/https://www.priva...

Ultimately free without encouragement to pay is not good as it will involve the platform monetizing by selling your data in some way.

Should also note at the moment, not all providers are equal, for example posteo.de doesn't allow you to use your own domain whereas some of the others do. Protonmail doesn't currently have calendars although that's coming soon https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/wiki/dev-status Tutanota does not allow for IMAP/SMTP (you must use a browser or their client).

There's also this issue where privacytools.io plan to expand the information about each provider. https://github.com/privacytoolsIO/privacytools.io/issues/603...

If the political alignment of your email provider matters to you: https://www.reagan.com/

You're better off ignoring dopey noise coming from outlets like Zerohedge or Veritas.

Protonmail is really good for email. Proton also had other services like protonvpn.

Really love it too, using it for around a year. Switzerland based, has strong protection. But still looking into / for alternatives, because - their 5/10 ⭐ apps and lack of possible automation in the inbox..

Tried this and ended up back at Gmail in 6 months. Proton's billing system was painful.

Fastmail is an excellent alternative for email, calendar, and contacts.

Zoom is an excellent alternative to Google Hangouts.

Resilio Sync is an excellent alternative to Google Drive.

Replacing Google Docs, Sheets, Slides is harder.

How is the search for fastmail? Does it sync contacts/appts with android/ios?

Strange seeing all these new mail threads. I just responded elsewhere but if you are open to self-hosting, you can try Cloudron on your own server (I recommend Digital Ocean). For 5 bucks, you can run an email server with unlimited mailboxes.

I been using protonmail for years.

https://protonmail.com/

I never see iCloud mentioned in these conversations, but I find it works quite well.

Can they host mail on your own domain? If so, that is a good suggestion. A lot of services only do POP/IMAP/webmail, which kind of sucks.

You can not host your own mail... at this time, at least. Good call out on that.

https://medium.com/@gennai.jen/this-is-not-how-i-expected-mo...

I don't buy it.

The PV video of Gennai had an obvious bias, but her quote looked 100% genuine, and the powers that be are pulling it as fast as they can.

This wouldn't be the first story of SV putting its finger on the scale.

I'd imagine that with Google's legal resources, the unedited footage will eventually see the light of day, and then we will know if this was fraudulently slick editing, or another case of megacorporations run amok.

EVERY time I'm aware of in the past that there were claims that O'Keefe and Veritas had swayed the story by editing, the unedited video has proven to be exactly what they claimed. I'm convinced they now do this two-stage release (hard-hitting excerpts, then full, unedited video) as much to protect themselves against this very predictable charge as for any other reason...

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