This, 100%. I think Protonmail gives people a false sense of security. I want to protect myself from companies that collect my data to profile me and sell that profile to people with money who want to manipulate me (aka advertisers). All of the parties I communicate with via email use more insecure providers, so even if Protonmail was perfectly secure, my emails are vulnerable anyway. I think it's important to keep in mind that the providers you're sending email to also have the ability to scan those emails and profile you based on them. As an additional layer of protection from this profiling, it's helpful to use a wildcard alias both when sending and recieving mail to make it harder (but not impossible) for third parties to build a single profile of you.

Personally, I've switched from Protonmail to Fastmail. Yes, Fastmail is in Australia which has draconian state surviellance laws and will comply with state requests for your data and share it with other countries. But you can't assume that any other email provider won't, as evidenced by what Protonmail just did. And Fastmail has better features for protecting you from being profiled, such as unlimited wildcard aliases, and the ability to create filters and deactivate aliases directly from incoming messages, in addition to a far better overall email experience.

Well, it only gives a false sense of security to people who are not paying attention. It literally says that it will give information to governments with a valid search warrant. They never have hidden that, ever. While, yes, it is true that if you send an email to a gmail, yahoo mail, hotmail, etc, those companies don't have access to all of your emails. That's the best one can hope for. They can't read my payments to the company that I lease my office from, my payments to my VOIP provider, etc. I agree with using multiple emails - I must have 8 or 10 of them. And not for nothing. One I use for only personal friends and acquaintance, so I don't get junk emails, one for only personal business accounts, one for my business accounts, some for general information, one I use as junk email when I have to fill in an email and don't know if I want to use that service, etc. And most of them are email names like [email protected].

You are right about Protonmail and Fastmail giving up info to legit governmental agency subpoenas. It's just obvious. Any company will do this, no matter what.

I chose tutanota after an extensive search, because I don't want aliases, I want completely separate email accounts, because if you have aliases, they all still come to the same exact account and I would still have to wade through all the emails. The filters really don't do it for me personally.

And tutanota was the least expensive option that I found. Emails are only $1 per month - $12 per year, while Protonmail is $5 per month after the first email address, at least that is what I remembered at the time. So that is 500% more in cost. So if I have Protonmail, it would cost me $240 per year (if paid annually, otherwise more if paid monthly) for 5 extra email accounts, while tutanota is $60 per year.

Double FYI, the USPS does sell personal data when you do a change-of-address:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamtanner/2013/07/08/how-the-p...

Right. But I'm talking about opening your letters, scanning them into a computer, and selling that information.

I personally don't fill out the change of address forms.

Yeah, the USPS cannot open your mail without a warrant, which is a pretty nice assurance to have. That would be pretty bad if it was how you described- all the more reason for us to make sure the USPS stays around :)

Edit: Note, this is a "nice assurance to have" because private shipping companies generally reserve the right to open anything that they are shipping.

Right. And that would be my point. That why do people use gmail and yahoomail, etc, when they have permanent records of every single word you write, but people would be outraged if the USPS scanned every piece of mail contents and sold it to advertisers.

And again, with private shipping companies, it's not like they are going to open 100% of everything. But the large email companies can, and have it forever. Can look at it 10 years from now, if they choose.

FYI:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_Isolation_Control_and_T...

Does not negate what I said. I said that the USPS does not open your mail, scan it, and sell it to the highest bidder. And, actually, the article you linked to only gives that information to government entities, which, in my post, I said that you should not worry about the government, because they have infinite resources compared to the average person.

So not too sure on your point that you're trying to make. Yeah, if there's a subpoena, I'm sure the government could open and read every single piece of mail you send or receive, but that's what I said.

But, Google or Yahoo or Facebook is not going to have access to this information. But they will if you use their email system. Why do you think they offer it for free? Through the generosity of Sergey Brinn and Larry Page's black, black hearts?

> to stop the Googles and Yahoos and hotmails from scanning all of my emails, using them to advertise to me, selling the information to advertisers.

They don't sell your information to advertisers. So your threat model here is factually false.

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From the article:

"And companies like Google shouldn’t be able to monetize data they collect without consent even if they aren’t technically “selling” it. Data collection, use, and sharing should be minimized by default."

If you meant "selling the information" more broadly as EFF used it here (which I think is not an unreasonable way ultimately, just not what most people would commonly understand the phrase as), then please next time clarify. As EFF had to clarify in their article, that's not what most people understand those phrase as. If you want to avoid confusion, it would be more clear if you say "you don't want your data monetized".

OK, fine, maybe I was being a touch hyperbolic. But really, the thing is - they keep your information for forever. It's on their hard drives. There's no guarantee that what they say today, won't change tomorrow, or in 2 years, or 5 years. That's the real creepy part for me.