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Comment by dragochat | Hacker News Reader

how about the OPPOSITE problem: _anyone knows of any non-EU AND non-US email providers_? with email accounts as the roots of trust for many things, i'd really wanna know how can I get a trustworthy one not-attached to eithern an unstable system (US), or a very overregulating one like the EU juristictions...

and ofc, non-CN too

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So where do you want to host your email?

Name a country and it probably has its own problems: some combination of instability, corruption, authoritarian governments, collaboration with the US and EU governments that you want to escape…

ProtonMail is in Switzerland, so it’s perhaps the best mainstream bet. But the Swiss are absolutely not immune to US and EU pressure.

Isn't Proton planning to move to .de?

Runbox are a good option - company and servers in Norway: https://runbox.com/

Been around since 2000. They're also working on JMAP support and are the top financial contributor to the Stalwart mail server (https://opencollective.com/stalwart) so I think they'll have a more compelling offering soon.

Also worth keeping an eye on Thunderbird pro which will also use Stalwart: https://www.tb.pro/en-US/

Can recommend Runbox for a lot of reasons, but one gotcha that bothered me in day-to-day use was that emails are delayed by a minimum of 30 seconds, with no real upper bound, just a probability curve with, say, the 90th percentile around 5 minutes. On rare occasions, that means OTPs or login links valid for 5 minutes have expired when you get them. Yes this was really on Runbox' side, yes I talked to support, yes they cared, yes they subsequently ghosted me when delivering the requested headers of emails delayed for more than 5 minutes which they considered a normal delay "because email wasn't supposed to be real-time" (be that as it may, that doesn't take away that you sit there 30 seconds... 60 seconds... 90 seconds, wondering if you should go do something else while you wait for the confirmation link and get back to your current task later)

Seriously though, nothing but recommended in every other regard. Alias management, anonymous domains you can use, configuring the sender in Thunderbird no problem, everything else was great. My colleagues didn't seem to mind this delay so much as me so it's something to be aware of but might work fine for you

Edit: I realised this is already like four years ago now, it could have gotten fixed in the meantime. It was an issue for several years before we switched away for some reason related to calendars (don't remember the details, I wasn't my choice)

I agree, as a happy Runbox customer of several years. But probably the parent post meant non-EEA too, as Norway is effectively subject to any and all EU regulations.

Recently Runbox had a couple significant outages which made me rethink hosting my email with them. I and my family have used them for many years and I liked what they offered (didn't like bad web UI) but will probably be migrating to Fastmail or other when my current subscription expires.

I was disappointed more by their lack of communication than by the outages. And one outage wasn't even reported on their status page although they confirmed it via support. That's a very bad communication.

I'm using Zoho (Indian company, hosted in Europe). Maybe not perfect from a geopolitical pov, but it will do for now.

Singapore, Japan have reliable ISPs.

If the goal is to stay away from US or European influence then the Russians would be a better bet.

Yes but that has the same downsides as China.

And that's pretty much the thread. You're either subject to a large power's jurisdiction or subject to a jurisdiction whose sovereignty is at the pleasure of large powers... Pick a threat model, plan appropriately, and keep things in perspective.

Proton is in Switzerland, which is not part of EU

Not any longer. They started to leave last year because of surveillance legislation and moved to .de https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/is-proton...

For email and calendaring, Fastmail, although Her Majesty’s Australian government has strong overreach instincts.

Fastmail's servers are in the US: https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000280221-Ho...

> For email and calendaring, Fastmail, although Her Majesty’s Australian government has strong overreach instincts.

The Queen died of 8th September 2022.

...would those "overreach instinct" expand to "handing over access an overreaching and likely corrupt EU or US prosecutor"? (I don't care about 5eyes etc, spyies will spy me, I just don't want stuff to be easily and unexpectedly draggable in a court case, or am email used as bolt-key to access other things to get blocked by a prosecutor's regulation...)

If your threat model includes the USA government then you can only go with obscurity, honestly - preferably self hosted with a completely locked down system that cannot initiate any network communication besides on the relevant mail protocol ports, completely immutable filesystem beyond the mail data with encryption at rest

And with all of that they'll still be able to pwn you through network equipment which relays your mail, eg some router or switch which they backdoored and mirrors all traffic to their datacenter.

>If your threat model includes the USA government then you can only go with obscurity, honestly

Or move to Russia. Not recommending, just saying

> how about the OPPOSITE problem: _anyone knows of any non-EU AND non-US email providers_?

Yes, your own server at home. All countries have fundamentally the same problems, so you will have everywhere the same tradeoffs as a customer. So it really depends on what your specific circumstances and requirements are. If laws are your problem, then stay away from countries where you break them; otherwise, just don't go where they will sell your data for any random penny.

> or a very overregulating one like the EU juristictions...

WTF is this kind of demand? Those regulations do not concern you as a user, but can be very beneficial for you, don't you understand this?

Fastmail is australian

But their servers are in the US.

lol, you want trustworthy stability without “too many” regulations. Good luck with that.

I’m not sure you know what instability means if you think the US is unstable. If anything, the fact that the dumbest person on the planet is in charge of the United States and the country still functions as well as it does proves a lot about the stability of the USA. The country runs on geopolitical easy mode.

Maybe there’s a libertarian fantasy novel where you can host your services.

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