- ProtonMail - FastMail - Mailbox*
Anyone uses or used to use Tutanota? That’s the only privacy-focused email provider I know of aside from ProtonMail.
And why is having a data center in Germany a selling point for some of these email providers?
The EU, and Germany especially, have strong privacy regulations and laws to protect their citizens. Having a datacenter in the EU does not mean that your data can't be accessed by authorities at all, but it's harder than in other countries. At least in Germany, a judge-signed request with a specific reason is needed to get data from any email provider. Mailbox even publishes a transparency report[1] with details about said requests: in 2021 they just received 65 requests, 15% were incorrect. 61 of those requests were just about the contact data of the account owner, not even emails or any other data stored.
This could quickly be changing with proposed mass-surveillance "Chat control" legislation which would force all providers to scan the contents of all messages, emails and other communications.
https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/messaging-and-chat-co...
I guess having data center inside EU could be a plus for EU citizens?