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Comment by rjzzleep | Hacker News Reader

oh web.de easily the most dangerous free mail sites there is.

it belongs to 1&1[1] one of the bigger internet companies in germany.

it's really odd that no one ever shot them down. they are famous for tricking users into shady 2 year contracts, if they wanted to upgrade their 12 mb mailbox.

they also upgraded the freemail to 500mb if and only if you would install their browser toolbar, which would change the mail server etc. now it's 1gb with toolbar i think.

they tried to force my mum into a contract, because she clicked on a banner while logging(for free xxx mb click here style banners). then promptly closed the account should she not pay.

the result was her saying fuck it i'll use gmail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%261_Internet

http://www.teltarif.de/web-de-freemail-speichererweiterung/n...

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Confirmed. I use web.de since 1998 as a spam-box, to keep my real account clean. During the last years they indeed try all tricks (we have a present for you, 3 weeks of free membership blah, blah..). If you leave this page now, the present will expire. There is a way to simply ignore this sh..t. All of it.

But I agree that it takes discipline (germans are good at that :o). Gmail, on the other hand, cannot be trusted either. While web.de is evil, google is evil too, but google is bigger and google is not an european company. All of the data is used abroad thus circumventing civilized laws.

The real problem is this: these companies offer a service and everybody expects free services online. Of course the companies have to make money. Ask yourself: would you pay for an email account (I do)? If not, you have to accept ads. Or googles snooping in your data and selling your profile to everyone who pays. There is no free beer online. At least web.de shows us how ugly it gets, if things have to look like they were free.

This is not intended to excuse the primitive tricks we.de uses. But if you have a solution, post it here and I'll get rich.

Or googles snooping in your data and selling your profile to everyone who pays.

You should really read Google's privacy policy:

http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/

So, no, they don't sell your profile.

I do agree with your point: if you don't want advertisements. Pay for the service. E.g. Google Apps for domains allows you to disable adds in Google apps. And since you can bring your own domain, you can move to some other service if you are not happy with them.

An non-binding policy, how quaint!

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/contractsprof_blog/2010/08/...

Even if you trusted such things, google will still do targeted ads. If DEA want to find drug users, all they have to do is ask google and they will use users emails to locate them.

Yes, Google will comply with law enforcement.

Uh... what would you prefer they do instead?

There is a big difference between:

1. Here is a lawful search warrant signed affidavit and approved by a judge _or_

2. Here you go, the data on kefka. Thanks for asking.

> 2. Here you go, the data on kefka. Thanks for asking.

is this really happening? can you give some evidence that google is willy nilly giving private data away like that?

Actually, the Snowden files show that is happening for non-US Citizens/US-persons.

The NSA only has the legal obligation to obtain warrents for US Citizens not for anyone else. The NSA is unlikely to get involved in civil legal disputes but yes, it can go in and ask for Kafka's data from Google if he is living in, say, Germany.

Even for that there is a due process requirement, contained in E.O. 12333. Obviously the requirements are far lower but even there a random NSA analyst can't simply ask for the data, they'd have to get a supervisor within NSA to approve sending that request outside the agency.

But on the other hand I've not seen evidence that Google simply sells information on specific individuals or otherwise gives it away without that legal mandate.

No, he's saying that Google is doing the first point, not this one.

Actually, I was referencing the AT&T "go ahead, it's AT&T's data and we can do whatever we want with it". That was so bad that Congress passed an ex post facto law relieving them of any criminal or civil wrongdoing.

The problem here is that Google's data on us belongs to Google. They can do anything they want to that data: take a crap on it, process it for better ad targeting, analyze social media trends and figure out who we associate with, and/or give it to people like the FBI/CIA/NSA.

Or, Google was hacked. That's also well within the realm of possibility as well. But I think governmental "persuasion techniques" like http://xkcd.com/538/ work much better.

Just look at the stories of Qwest former CEO. He said no.

Complying with lawful search warrants is one thing, doing targeting ads based on users behavior for money is something else.

Targeted ads can be anything from a DEA honeypot that advertise cheap drugs, to quick guide for easy tax evasion made by the IRS. It might be ads targeted at people with specific sexual preferences. Any search-able trait imaginable that Google can target is exploitable, and the policy document is an official intent to do so.

Avoid collecting such information in the first place, which of course would require a different business model, which brings us back to the initial point.

Well, except that many users want full indexing of e-mails, including attachments, such that they can use an AJAX web interface to quickly search them.

So, storing all e-mails encrypted is not really feasible if you want to have such features as well [1]. It's a trade-off - convenience or security (I am sure someone will site Benjamin Franklin now ;)).

[1] Yes, I know that there is work on indexing encrypted data.

There is still a difference between storing the emails unencrypted and using them to profile users for ad targeting.

But anyway, what you are talking about could still be optional: if you wanted to search and be somewhat private you'd have to download the emails with a local client via IMAP - and if you really need search via web interface, you would toggle the option to store the emails unencrypted for that purpose.

There is still a difference between storing the emails unencrypted and using them to profile users for ad targeting.

You can disable interest-based ads:

https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads

Also, if you have a paid Google Apps account, you can disable ads in Google apps.

Personally, I'd like to see targeted ads more than 'random' ads. Of course, I don't like to be profiled. So, I use Ghostery, an ad blocker, and paid e-mail.

"So, no, they don't sell your profile."

sorry, my mistake. They use it themselves (or let it slip accidentally to foreign secret services) :o).

Can you recommend a paid european mail service?

Uberspace is the best Option, you just need your own Domain.

Edit: I'll add an explanation. Uberspace ist a german hoster. It follows a pay what you want model (minimum: 1€) and practices data avoidance. For example, you can open an account and test it for a month, and then send money for that account to keep him, but you are never asked for your name.

I just use it for mails right now, but I could also host a webpage or something there. It's a full server.

The mailsystem has a nicely working roundcube-webinterface, one can of course also use IMAP. Without a custom domain the mailadress will look not very nice (but still work), but supporting a custom domain is very easy. It should ideally stay with a different domain registrar.

The whole administration interface is great - minimal on the webpage (though many things are possible to do there), and everything more complicated works via ssh.

I can second this.

you can host there, use ssh to do what ruby, node, python, php, perl, or what ever you wish, that does not need SU privileges, as it is a shared hosting model.

I am a customer for 24 month+ and am so unbelievable happy with these guys.

You have a question for their "support" at midnight (it is only these five guys and the do support themselves) and sometimes you get your answer at 2 o clock, because one of the guys was awake and just answered you.

These guys are nerds - and next to their business hosting wanted to build the perfect hosting for fellow nerds. Mission accomplished imho.

Oh, hi.

I'm also using uberspace, nice to see another uberspace-user here :)

Just buy a domain and a small hosting plan that includes mail. I am using that setup for close to 10 years now and it is fantastic. I use all-inkl (hit me for my affiliate link if you want to sign up so I become rich) which are a high quality yet very affordable german host.

all-inkl has huge incompetencies when it comes to mail. Their servers end up on spam lists every 1-3 weeks. Effect: Your customers do not receive any more emails from you.

In addition if you inbox becomes larger than a specific size (1 GB is think) they will autoarchive your whole inbox to a folder... not nice if you have smart mail mailboxes

I have never had either happen. I use a local mail client though and have it set to delete mails at their end after 14 days.

_quasimodo: this!

It's not in the EU (Switzerland), but https://mykolab.com/

Switzerland is in Europe. Are you confusing EU with Europe?

I've got confused by the definition of European over Wikipedia, "A citizen or attribute of or from the European Union[2]", but you're indeed right. I should know, as I live right under Switzerland :)

I've fixed my comment now.

As was already said, any webhosting package with email will do. Here is a selection of hosters in Germany that I find have a clean website an pricing structure and therefore feel less cheap and more trustworthy to me.

Hetzner: One of the bigger provider for hosting in Germany. They have their own datacenters in Bavaria. Manitu: Smaller, they also have their own datacenter. schokokeks.org: Small service run by a few techies. I'm sure there are a few of this type, I just happen to know somebody who is very happy with them.

Manitu is great, they're cheap and provide excellent support, for urgent stuff like dead disks even free in the night...

Speaking of small services run by a few techies: For what it's worth, I like bytecamp.net. I'm not affiliated with them, other than being a super happy customer for nearly 10 years :)

I think Hetzner has also some datacenters in Hamburg.

According to https://www.hetzner.de/hosting/unternehmen/rechenzentrum they only have data centers in Nuremberg (Bavaria) and Falkenstein (Saxony).

Posteo.de [1] is decent, but they don't allow you to use your own domain. The recently launched mailbox.org [2] seems to be alright as well.

[1] https://posteo.de

[2] https://mailbox.org

MyKolab. As secure as a hosted service can get, located in Switzerland.

I'm using EUMX.net with large mailboxes and no problems so far. They seem to be quite a small company although very helpful when responding to email which they do with 24 hours.

I live in Austria now and it is amazing the amount of people who use GMX.

I've been on a crusade to try to make people switch to, well, whatever but not that.

I think it was one of the first ones around here and people got used to it and the status quo, most don't even know or care about how bad they've got it.

True, GMX is popular in Austria. Especially the kids and youth now use GMX instead of GMail or Outlook.com. For some reasons they trust European companies. (privacy, dislike NSA spying, etc.)

Though, GMX has done some shady business over the years and their servers are in Germany. They would be better off with some other email provider...

True, GMX is popular in Austria. Especially the kids and youth now use GMX instead of GMail or Outlook.com. For some reasons they trust European companies.

Even many older people. When I was doing my PhD, many of my German colleagues were using GMX addresses privately.

Can confirm. GMX was the first email provider I used, since it was cool because it was not hotmail and still had a lot of names available. I still use my 3 letter gmx account as a spambox nowadays.

mail.com recently had their outbound servers listed on Spamhaus for the best part of a week.

I noticed as a mail.com user was trying to email me and the message was being rejected, saw the spamhaus listing in my logs. Asked the sender, and they said that their messages to gmail were going into spam too.

I emailed postmaster@, support@, sysadmin@ etc. to try and inform them, as well as trying two contact forms; never heard anything back and it took several more days for the listing to disappear.

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