It’s me again with another question for recommendation 🙈 This time I am searching for a new Email-Provider:
Currently I am using mailbox.org (privacy-friendly provider based in Germany). Since my subscription is comming to an end there, I tought about switching to proton mail-plus. What I like about them is, that they have an easy way of creating alias-emails and also support the option to use your own domain.
But maybe you gals and guys have another great provider which offers good features for a good price.
Also: I dont need Cloud-Storage or anything like that, so just mail is fine.
Thx in regards :)
Hey, I outlined some tools in my list here! TL;DR is Proton Mail + addy.io is as good as it gets, with Tuta and SimpleLogin as close contenders. Good luck!
Fair warning though, using a service like addy.io with randomly generated emails can go bad if they ever shutdown, you’ll be left with tons of accounts on email addresses that no longer exist.
It’s better than using the same email for everything, which still runs the same risk. I try to minimize the services I use that require an email for this very reason. I will note, self hosting + addy.io provides much more control with the same benefits and drawbacks.
Proton purchased SimpleLogin in 2022 and the creator/dev has been working there ever since. Also, you can easily create random email aliases in Vaultwarden/Bitwarden via the SimpleLogin API.
Proton purchased SimpleLogin in 2022 and the creator/dev has been working there ever since.
I knew this, I’m trying not to keep my eggs in one basket.
Also, you can easily create random email aliases in Vaultwarden/Bitwarden via the SimpleLogin API.
This still requires a SimpleLogin/Proton account, so there’s no added benefit. Plus, this is true for Addy as well.
i already bookmarked the list, great work btw. I will look into the options you wrote.
I quite like Fastmail. It’s a bit expensive but the service is very reliable and they have a well established reputation. You can create masked emails using their domain or your own from the web interface.
Just a reminder: with Proton you can’t use IMAP for your email client, you either need their mail client (mobile) or bridge app (desktop).
While technically true, bridge is ultimately an IMAP server you run yourself … and they do have good reasons for this design.
do you know theit reason?
Imap and end to end encryption are not possible at the same time.
Bridge exposes an IMAP interface but encrypts everything as Proton would, had you used the web client.
It solves a technical limitation.
oh so only when using their client I have the e2ee for the emails on their server? kind of makes sence but def. a point to take into consideration.
No, I think you are misunderstanding my poor explanation.
Your emails are encrypted at rest on their server regardless if you use the web client or IMAP through the bridge.
The thing is that the encryption layer must happen at some point in time when you communicate with their API:s. In the web client this encryption is built-in. IMAP on the other hand does not support this type of end to end encryption, so the bridge adds this layer for you.
So you communicate unencrypted locally between your email client (Thunderbird for example) and the Protonmail bridge that you have installed locally on your computer. Then Protonmail bridge encrypts and decrypts all emails for you. So to your email client, it seems like a normal email server, but in reality everything is encrypted.
(Standard “encrypted email” disclaimer: Your emails are not encrypted in transit unless both parties, sending and receiving, are set up for encryption. Email is otherwise not end to end encrypted in transit)
I use posteo.de which costs 1€/month. It is simple, but works fine.
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Another thumbs up for tuta.
I only know 2 good providers: Proton and Tuta.
do they allow you to create anonymous accounts by paying with monero? And connected via TOR browser?
I think tuta does
Personally i use proton with my own domain
same here. Proton with own domain!
I use Proton and really like it, but I don’t know how to go about using my own domain (though I am interested in it). How difficult is it for someone without webdev and self hosting experience to get set up?
You can start here: https://proton.me/support/custom-domain
Step 1. Get your own domain. I bought from porkbun. This was a difficult choice for me, having heard /read cases of domain hijacking by unethical domain sellers. Porkbun had decent reviews. Step2. Follow instructions on protonmail custom domains. Wait for all the greyed out tags to turn green. I was impatient and my domain was marked as spam by Spamhaus. Had to open ticket with them to get off their list step3: enjoy!
additional steps. I moved my dns provider to cloudflare if you wish to go that route.
As a user of mailbox.org myself iam just asking: What dont you like about them?
i like to have temp-adresses but it is a little to annoying for me to extend them after 90 days 🙈 with proton this is easier since you dont need to remeber that and you can find this option pretty easy when in tge webbrowser of choice.
they have an easy way of creating alias-emails
With mailbox.org and other normal mail providers you should just be able to set a catch-all address, then you don’t have to create aliases at all, just type “[email protected]”
If an email provider charges you more to create ‘aliases’ run far away and pick something else.
I wouldn’t switch to Proton personally, they require that you use their own apps or use an IMAP bridge which doesn’t work on Android/iOS. Their ecosystem feels very restrictive.
I don’t see the point of an encrypted email provider like Proton, since 99% of the emails we all receive aren’t encrypted anyways, and sending encrypted emails only easily works to other proton mail users.
oh ok, I have not tried that yet. I have only set up one address which I use yo send and receive from.
about the encryption: I thought the point with e2ee encryption on proton is mainly, that the mails are stored encrypted one their servers so they can not read them or hand them out to anyone.
Basically all email is E2EE already since SSL/TLS is usually used for transport, even gmail and similar. But encrypted at rest in theory would help with stopping people from reading emails off the server.
You also have to trust that Proton truly doesn’t have your keys to decrypt, but I imagine they do since you just login with a username/password combo and that’s enough to decrypt the emails.
Although I don’t think it matters that much, my email is basically receiving notifications from services I use and occasional emails with a friend about planning a trip or something like that, nothing that particularly needs to be super private, just using a mail provider that isn’t actively scraping my data for ads (aka; gmail) is enough for me.
For private communications I would use something more suited to that, like any of the reasonable E2EE chat apps.
Was there any controversy with Proton email? I remember hearing everyone shitting on it ywars ago. Did they do something to piss everyone off, but later fixed it?
Hmm… how does one anonymously pay an internet service provider with cash? Mail it in an unmarked envelope, with just your account name? Roll up to the front door and hand it to the receptionist?
yes. mail
or crypto like monero
or prepaid credit cards
or voucher resellers, etc
I went through this journey looking for new providers recently after Proton started doing crypto shit. Tuta and Fastmail were the main recommendations, though the former has been accused of being a honeypot and the latter has really awful practices toward workers and unionisation.
I went with Migadu as a no-nonsense solution, and I’m over the moon with it.
As a big fan of decentralisation and federation, I was very tempted to try out Disroot, but I wasn’t ready to try it out with my main mailboxes. I’ll likely use it for any upcoming toy projects I embark on though.
I dont think it matters if an email service is a honeypot because if you want E2EE communication then use Signal, not email. And if you are sending emails to other email providers then there’s probably not E2EE and it’s unecessary to be a honeypot because the metadata can be collected anyway very easily. Almost all data passes through Google/Microsoft/Amazon/Cloudflare.
If you are talking about the news about Fastmail firing “union members” then it was a sensationalised headline. Fastmail basically fired all the devs etc working at their US offices as Fastmail is trying to have everybody at their Australian office, 6 of them happened to be union members. They got a good severance pay though.
Has any more evidence ever been produced to show Tuta is a honeypot? The guy who made the original claim is in jail for 14 years for passing on secrets while he was director of RCMP intelligence.
Thank you for introducing me to these, they look great.
Why did Proton adding a Bitcoin wallet cause you to look elsewhere? If it’s a product you’re not interested in, just don’t use it. Otherwise you’re stuck using providers that offer exactly what you want, no more and no less, which seems like such a narrow needle to thread, you’ll never find something or can’t stick with it for long.
+1 for Migadu
Proton, Tuta, Mailbox.org, Posteo
All are equal in terms of their overall quality of service, just different in what advantages they offer (except for Mailbox.org and Posteo. They’re just offering standards compliant email servers without any bullshit and let you roll your own encryption)
Email isn’t a private system
