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Ask Slashdot: Advice For a Yahoo Mail Refugee
New submitter ma1wrbu5tr writes: Very shortly after the announcement of Verizon's acquisition of Yahoo, two things happened that caught my attention. First, I was sent an email that basically said "these are our new Terms of Service and if you don't agree to them, you have until June 8th to close your account". Subsequently, I noticed that when working in my mailbox via the browser, I kept seeing messages in the status bar saying "uploading..." and "upload complete". I understand that Y! has started advertising heavily in the webmail app but I find these "uploads" disturbing. I've since broken out a pop client and have downloaded 15 years worth of mail and am going through to ensure there are no other online accounts tied to that address. My question to slashdotters is this: "What paid or free secure email service do you recommend as a replacement and why?" I'm on the hunt for an email service that supports encryption, has a good Privacy Policy, and doesn't have a history of breaches or allowing snooping.
Use gmail.
Run your own mail server, that's the only way you can be reasonably sure that you have control over your mail.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
People are REALLY going to hate this, but there is no 100% secure network service. Computer networks were designed for sharing information between nodes. The idea of keeping others out of that sharing was added on later. On a large interconnected network like the Internet it is impossible to do 100%. I can feel the nerd rage boiling here and the claims that "you don't know what you are talking about!". But save it. Reality tells us otherwise. If it is on a network, it isn't secure.
has a good Privacy Policy and free
Don't match in my experience.
If you want privacy, isn't email the wrong tool? Isn't email like a post card that anyone can read in transit?
If you want private communications, look for a different way, a private way, to communicate.
If you want convenient email for casual use, try GMail. For example, Google will find things in your email, like confirmation emails of your upcoming flights, and then Google will be sure to remind you on your smart phone. But I don't treat communication with my airline the same as I might treat communication with other parties.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Not free, but it works well. Note: Servers are in NY.
I use Apple for personal email. I have had a mac.com email address since Apple came out with it. Their current server name is "me.com" and Apple does not advertise in this service, as it is a paid-for service. It allows pop3 as well as IMAP.
For professional email, I use gmail. Google does a great job of excising spam. It is advertiser-supported email, but I never use a web browser for my gmail account. Instead, I use the pop3 function. It propagates to my cell phone, my desktop and my tablet. When I delete something on my cell phone, it deletes on my tablet, but not on my desktop. For a free service, I do not think you can do any better than gmail.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
Fastmail for the win. Reasonably priced, don't think they are going anywhere and have been ultra-reliable. I've been with them about 15 years.
The main issue with e-mail is that it has two parties involved. If either of the parties is compromised in a communication, then it doesn't matter how secure the other party is. Due to the sheer volume of people using Gmail, it is likely they already have a copy of most of your mail anyway. By using Gmail just like so many other people, you at least only have one system potentially snooping on you. If you believe that you are more secure using other systems, you are likely wrong.
I've had the same question recently and the answer I got was Proton Mail, based in Switzerland. Fully encrypted end-to-end. I'm surprised someone else hasn't mentioned it by now.
Proton Mail is hosted in Switzerland has end to end encryption with Android and IOS app support and has withstood denial of service attacks from suspected state sponsored hacking.
Just the fact that a state actor tried to take them down is a reason to consider them.
You are already going through the pain of changing your address. Make sure you don't have to do it again some time in the future. Mail providers change policies or shut down, sometimes without warning.
Go ahead, and pick a mail provider that you like. But also go out and buy a personal domain. You'll probably be able to find one you like for $10 per year, and you can find DNS providers that will do mail re-direction for free. Have a wildcard redirect set to send any email sent to the domain forwarded to the new mail address. Don't like the way the provider is now doing things? Get a new provider and email address, and change the redirect.
I've been with Fastmail since it was in beta in 2001. The company ONLY does email and associated services. This means they are focused on making it work correctly and users having a good features. I would never consider moving.
B'cos years ago, Yahoo! was a pretty respectable company, and had loads of good stuff associated, like geocities and yahoo chat! If I recall right, it was even there ahead of Google, and were a pretty good bet when Netscape was floundering. My first webmail account was Netscape.net (under Netscape 4), then yahoo & hotmail.
Things changed, & went downhill once Google pioneered the concept of monetizing everything on the internet - be it email, web pages and so on. The biggest evidence of that is the way MICROSOFT has changed - from a pure software company (plus some hardware) to a Google wannabe.
Don't be obtuse.
Of course there's no perfect security. You know, if a burglar wants to get into you house badly enough, he'll get in. So why bother locking your door? In fact, just leave your front door open... Oh, change all of your PINs to 1234 and your passwords to "password" while you're at it. After all, if there's no perfect security, why have any security.
The point of TFS is finding a service that is as secure as reasonably possible, while still being useful.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
The Terms of Service are actually pretty strict, and Google has extremely good data center security hygiene. The ToS on gmail are much more lax, even though it's the same software.