Ask HN: Alternatives to Gmail that are new, cool, etc?

Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to Gmail that are new, cool, etc? by alansmitheebk on Saturday July 08, 2017 @04:33PM (#14727069)

I use protonmail (protonmail.com). It's encrypted email developed by the scientists at CERN. The data is hosted in Switzerland and therefore subject to Swiss privacy laws. There are app for iPhone and Android. They just came out with a VPN product, too.

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Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to Gmail that are new, cool, etc? by mtmail on Saturday July 08, 2017 @04:55PM (#14727159)

That means subject to Swiss surveillance laws as well. Not worse than other western countries but Switzerland isn't a safe haven for privacy.

"All Internet service providers must retain the following data for six months:

type of the connections [...] and if known login data, address information of the origin (MAC-address, telephone number), name, address and occupation of the user and duration of the connection from beginning to end

time of the transmission or reception of an email, header information according to the SMTP-protocol and the IP adresses of the sending and receiving email application"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_data_retent...

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Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to Gmail that are new, cool, etc? by Veratyr on Sunday July 09, 2017 @12:13AM (#14728329)

These laws don't apply to Protonmail: https://protonmail.com/blog/swiss-surveillance-law/

> As a participant in these discussions, we can confirm unequivocally that upon implementation, the provisions regarding data retention introduced by the BÜPF will exempt companies like ProtonMail and ProtonVPN which are not major telecommunications operators.

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Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to Gmail that are new, cool, etc? by Watabou on Saturday July 08, 2017 @05:16PM (#14727230)

Note that ProtonMail paid $6000 ransom to hackers: https://arstechnica.com/security/2015/11/crypto-e-mail-servi...

I applaud their privacy stance, but paying ranson money to hackers is a deal-breaker for me.

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Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to Gmail that are new, cool, etc? by marcopol on Saturday July 08, 2017 @07:13PM (#14727642)

They were hit by a DDoS that was so big it's suspected to be a nation state. Under those circumstances, their ISP and hosting provider didn't really give then a choice and basically forced them to pay the ransom, which you can read about here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/11/05/proto...

The magnitude of the attack would have killed most services, but ProtonMail managed to mitigate the attack and went as far as becoming their own ISP to prevent getting in this situation in the future.

My two cents on this making them a pretty rare company.

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Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to Gmail that are new, cool, etc? by raverbashing on Sunday July 09, 2017 @04:52AM (#14728920)

That's an interesting take, but why would a nation state settle for $6k?

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Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to Gmail that are new, cool, etc? by lyonlim on Saturday July 08, 2017 @04:48PM (#14727133)

I've been testing ProtonMail for a couple months now in search of a Gmail alternative. What's keeping me from fully switching is support for contacts and calendar syncing as well...

That's where I started looking at FastMail.

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Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to Gmail that are new, cool, etc? by idlewords on Saturday July 08, 2017 @07:27PM (#14727694)

The protonmail encryption is useless, since it's done in the browser. Don't use it (or any email service) for sensitive data.

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Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to Gmail that are new, cool, etc? by wheresvic1 on Saturday July 08, 2017 @04:45PM (#14727117)

The free plan is only limited to 500 Mb though.

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Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to Gmail that are new, cool, etc? by LeoPanthera on Saturday July 08, 2017 @05:04PM (#14727192)

Pay for your email or you are the product.

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Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to Gmail that are new, cool, etc? by ocdtrekkie on Saturday July 08, 2017 @07:14PM (#14727645)

Email is the most important thing you have online, why wouldn't you pay for it?

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Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to Gmail that are new, cool, etc? by wprapido on Saturday July 08, 2017 @04:52PM (#14727148)

ahappy protonmail user here, too

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Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to Gmail that are new, cool, etc? by reacharavindh on Saturday July 08, 2017 @05:02PM (#14727184)

Do they support inline images in Email now? Last time I was using it(long ago), neither the web UI, nor the email apps supported drag & drop of images into the compose window..

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Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to Gmail that are new, cool, etc? by wprapido on Wednesday July 19, 2017 @04:36PM (#14807678)

unfortunately, they don't. their UI/UX is rather basic

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