But yeah, Australia is not... Optimal, privacy wise. Poor data laws and member of the Five Eyes network will probably force me, finally, to switch to a new service (probably Proton mail) at the end of the next yearly renewal :(
Edit: just remembered there's been a couple of incidents with poor security practices, in the past, with fastmail (easy to google) that doesn't look flattering.
And I think (?) there's been some issues with spoofed email going around/originated within fastmail's internal network:
"Fastmail domains have a DMARC policy of none, which means recipient mail servers should report whether the message passes or not, but not change deliverability. This allows users to send mail using our domains from anywhere, for legacy reasons."
From the final section on https://www.fastmail.com/help/technical/senderauthentication.... I think this was abused?
If you really need to talk to someone over email securely, PGP over email is the way to go.
I've never had the need to protect my mail (using PGP for example) as I don't send mails that's sensitive enough for it or are forced to message with tech illiterate people (sorry) that can't use it.
I just want a privacy friendly service that won't give up my data to uninvolved 3rd parties :(
A lot of it comes down to reading over a company's privacy policy (if you can't understand it / its really long, that's a red flag), where they are located, and -- important -- if its free or paid.
Here's the write-up that convinced me to switch: https://drewdevault.com/2020/06/19/Mail-service-provider-rec...
Protonmail is mentioned in the footnotes.
Others recommended fastmail which I also like. Some people have concerns with it because it is based in Australia, which a couple years ago passed some pretty far-reaching data subpoena laws, but they don't seem too concerned about it: https://fastmail.blog/privacy-security/advocating-for-privac...