I’ve been looking to switch from gmail to a different email provider that’s more private. I’ve been hearing about Tuta, are there any drawbacks to it? Are there better options?
For a while I was planning on making the switch to protonmail but that’s off the table now due to the recent events surrounding them.
It’s not Tuta but I adore Fastmail.
No BS. No gimmicks. Just privacy aware, protocol conformant E-mail at a reasonable price.
Yes.
I’ve tried tuta before. It seems pretty okay, but it doesn’t support IMAP meaning you have to use their app, and (at least for me) it was SLOW.
I personally use disroot, but there’s loads of other options, like mailfence seems like a decent alternative. Just pick one that supports IMAP
I’m using Tuta and their app for a few years now. The app was slow indeed but it’s good now, no problems so far. Lack of IMAP support is justified with security, they say. I personaly don’t need IMAP as I’m completely satisfied with the app, which is available officially in f-droid btw.
No single organization should be trusted. “Emails paint an intimate narrative of ourselves — the people we talk to, the books we read, the politics we practice. This information is powerful. When we lose control over it, it can do great harm to ourselves and our loved ones.” https://ideas.ted.com/why-we-should-all-care-about-encryption-really/
What’s the practical takeaway here? Just don’t have an email basically
What’s the practical takeaway here? Just don’t have an email basically
@[email protected] The takeaway here is not “don’t use email at all.” You can employ OpenPGP, and encrypt your emails. Also, host your own keys. Perhaps don’t allow a single corporation to have your private key and access to your encrypted messages simultaneously.
I recommend mailbox.org instead.
I started using fastmail, best thing I decided to do in awhile
Tuta’s product is snake oil.
If you don’t care about their (nonstandard, incompatible, and snake oil) end-to-end encryption feature and just want a free email provider which protects your privacy in other ways, the fact that their flagship feature is snake oil should still be a red flag.
Is there anything about Startmail (company that does Startpage.com) that is worth avoiding? I’ve never paid for mail but if it’s solid and avoids Google I might.
StartPage/StartMail is owned by an adtech company who’s website boasts that they “develop & grow our suite of privacy-focused products, and deliver high-intent customers to our advertising partners” 🤔
They have a whitepaper which actually does a good job explaining how end-to-end encryption in a web browser (as Tuta, Protonmail, and others do) can be circumvented by a malicious server:
The malleability of the JavaScript runtime environment means that auditing the future security of a piece of JavaScript code is impossible: The server providing the JavaScript could easily place a backdoor in the code, or the code could be modified at runtime through another script. This requires users to place the same measure of trust in the server providing the JavaScript as they would need to do with server-side handling of cryptography.
However (i am not making this up!) they hilariously use this analysis to justify having implemented server-side OpenPGP instead 🤡
Wow, that is very disappointing. I had started using startpage as a Google alternative. While it still may be preferable to Google specifically, their mail product is definitely out.
I have the feeling people actually need to have the urge from panic to have to migrate all their data.
No PGP support kinda kills it imho
I’ve had a bug with the android app where sometimes notifications for emails just don’t happen. I’ve received a new email notification, opened the app, and found that the notification was for an email received 5 hours ago, and I didn’t get any notification for the email 3 days ago or the email 1 hour ago.
Despite this issue and several other minor issues, I still recommend Tuta. Mostly because I can’t find anything better.
If you’re on Android, by any chance, have you gone through all the battery optimization, background process killing, and startup settings? Some OEM’s versions of Android are real bad in that way. Giving the app the right settings and permissions may decrease the number of delayed notifications like that.
I am using Android until I can find an alternative. I’ve turned off all optimisations I can find. I haven’t had the issue in a few weeks, but it did happen once since changing settings. I’m hoping that something random I did (like a phone restart) somehow fixed everything.
I’ve used Tuta for more than 4 years. It’s a solid choice if you accept a couple few things:
-
they’re a small company, doing their best to survive.
-
you have to use their client apps. They take security very seriously and assume all of their users do as well.
-
prices might go up every few years but I am still paying my original rate, for my original features.
-
the search function does work but is very slow.
But otherwise, I’m very happy and expect to stay with them for the forseeable. Good luck in your search.
-
In comparison to Gmail? Yes, but that’s a very low bar to clear. You need to be aware that Tuta are currently enshittifying. The product is getting worse and the price increases. It’s slow, but it’s happening. I switched to disroot.org after 2 years of Tuta because I got fed up with it.
It is in my Scrolls of Grudge, and I quote:
Ads in web UI for paying user.
Made it hard to cancel payment.
Newsletter is just upselling.
Can’t unsub from newsletter.I am a paid user of Tuta and I have never seen any ads. Where did you see them and what kind of ads?
_drkt provided no proof of Tuta’s enshittification. There are no paid ads for third party products in any Tuta UI. Don’t panic yet. Read all the comments here, maybe.
no paid ads for third party products
Haha you almost fucking got me, I actually wrote a whole thing about how those are ads but then I read your comment again and noticed that clever little write-off. Ads for their own products are still ads and I don’t want to fucking see it. Get that shit off my eyeballs, I paid for this product.
The newsletter is an ad, it’s not news. They’re just advertising their products to you and you can’t unsubscribe and you can’t ignore it because they very deliberately have a special styling for the newsletters that makes it stand out from normal emails.
I don’t know why you want to defend this company. I’m glad you’re okay with the level of shitty behavior they engage in; it’s definitely less than most email providers do- I’m just letting people know that Tuta aren’t angels. They’re a company, and they used to be better. Proton was exactly the same. It was a good service and then it became shitty.
I would love to log back in and show you the 3 separate buttons on my UI that did nothing except link to a “Please pay us for this feature” page because I was a legacy premium user because I didn’t want all those new bullshit they made. I stress that it’s not a case of them implementing a button in the UI for all users and because I’m a legacy user I get it too even if I can’t use it- the buttons had special CSS to make them stand out. They were ads. Why couldn’t Tuta just leave me alone? I could still be paying them to this day if they had just not gone down that path. I just want an email that is an email and nothing more and doesn’t get in my way. Tuta had that, and then they took it away and asked for more money to put it back.
I think the misunderstanding here is that I was a legacy premium user. I was paying less to get only the email+calendar because that’s what I signed up for, originally. When people sign up today, that’s not an option. People who are new to Tuta (relatively) haven’t seen this change happen and haven’t witnessed how obviously desperate Tuta was to get people off the legacy premium plan.
Also my name is drkt_ but I’m sure you tried your best.
Get that shit off my eyeballs, I paid for this product.
You should try Proton, then /s
Proton constantly tries to push you to upgrade to the next plaid plan too. So much so that that couplet with still zero fucking support for Proton Drive under Linux are the two reasons I have cancelled my paid Proton plan… and I had been paying for years.
Yeah, I know! Don’t say that too loud, though. Proton and Tuta are the precious baby boys who can do no wrong in most “privacy” communities.
NOOOOOOO! Shit! Ah, for the love of cthulu … damnit!
Sigh … this just bummed me out. Thanks for the info.
I don’t know if tuta and posteo have some special privacy features, but if you’re just looking for a non-gmail provider I’ve been very happy with fastmail. It’s an Australian provider with a good track record afaik.
Would also highly recommend getting your own domain if you can, so your address doesn’t belong to whichever provider you choose.
I’m in the US. I wonder if there’s any drawback to using an Australian provider. Like, will it get flagged or something?
If it’s Australian, don’t expect strong privacy. But then again, I wouldn’t expect that from a US based email provider either.
Source: am Australian.
I don’t think so. I’m in Sweden myself.
I’ve used Tuta for years, paid account with multiple custom domains.
I prefer them for their principles, but their clients are extremely frustrating. Emails load very slowly and their email search is basically unusable.
I’ve resorted to downloading old emails and using other clients to import and search through them. I really wish they would improve their email search.
yep, the app is SLOW
Thunderbird/Betterbird?
I should re-iterate I download the emails to use in an offline client. Their service doesn’t support third party clients to receive and send email.
When I do taxes, I need to search thousands of emails for receipts and the tuta apps make this impossible. This is my workaround.
Tuta does not allow you to use third party email clients like Thunderbird.
Appreciate the honest insight. Thanks for sharing. :)
Yes, I use it and generally like it. Their app is a little buggy, but they have email support and accept bug reports on GitHub. This is helpful for finding out what other users are seeing. It’s a small dev team with frequent releases
Do you know if there’s a difference in the frequency of releases of the f-droid version and the play store version?
