Not that many people use email much anymore, but as you often need an email address to sign up for other shit… anyway, I need a better option than gmail, I’m sure you can appreciate why. Email is so old school at this point that most of the time I don’t even think about it anymore.
Anyway, I need some email options that aren’t gmail or otherwise attached to a billionaire. I’m not really interested in non-email methods of communication, I’m specifically asking about email.
Thanks in advance.
I use proton for a while now, its been great and well supported. The proton pass lets you use unique emails to register too. Its paid, for that anyway. I’ve been in love, I still don’t keep my passwords on it opposed to a USB drive, but some i’ve started to just out of simplicity and lack of need of serious security for those.
Tutanota or disroot.
While I’m using Proton rn, I’m planning to migrate to Posteo with Addy.io for aliases. However they all cost money. If you mean free email that’s not tie to a billionaire, I can’t think one off my head. You can achieve “free” by hosting your own email server as it sounds you’re intended for receiving only, but the electricity still cost some, plus you are doning free labor to make sure it is happy.
While we’re at it, anyone got a good site for temporary addresses that are basically used exactly once? And ideally don’t immediately get flagged as spam addresses.
https://www.byom.de/trashmails/
Decent functionality, and it didn’t get flagged most of the time I used it.
To DIY you can buy your own domain and attach it to any paid email provider, then you get an infinite amount of temporary addresses. e.g. if you own @ rumschlumpel.blahblahblah.org then you can create abc@ , xyz@ , abc123@ , etc. as much as you like.
Just about all the email provider suggestions in this thread have a paid tier that you can configure your own domain with.
To add to this, Bitwarden integrates with a few of them so you can automatically generate a unique email on the fly when creating an entry for a site. (docs link)
I use Fastmail and use my own domain for about 90% of stuff. Sites I don’t even want to have my domain get a [email protected] email autogenerated from the BW extension. It’s pretty convenient once all setup.
For literal one-time use, I’ve generally had good luck with 10minutemail. I’m not sure how much it gets flagged as spam right away these days, but the nice thing about it being free is you can always try and find out for a particular site.
TIL about the Bitwarden integration! Thanks!
Mailbox.org already provides 3 different aliases even at the lowest tier, but I’ve already filled those with non-temporary aliases and I don’t really want to pay three times as much just for throwaway-aliases …
I’m currently moving (for the last year) from Gmail to mailbox.org.
They have a free level, but I wanted aliases, so I pay $30/year. Worth every penny.
Been with MailBox.org for ages and it’s been absolutely fantastic. Proton had very limited offerings at the time, but even now I haven’t felt the need to move.
I think the most basic email offering is €1/month.
Same here. Moved from Outlook to Mailbox a year ago and I’m happy with it, using mostly custom domains with catch all. I havo also recently enabled encryption which wasn’t hard to integrate into my mail clients at all. They dont have a free plan, but the cheapest plan is 1€/month (which doesn’t allow custom domains).
I’ve been there for several years as well. Works great, and I get pretty much no spam.
At one point they offered “envelope with money sent via postal service” as an anonymous payment option, IDK if they still do that.
I moved from proton to mailbox a few months ago and so far I’m really happy with it too
I use Tuta mail. It is entirely open source. There are both paid and free tiers. I started on a paid tier, then downgraded to free. I like the option of a usable free tier when money is tight. I use addy.io for aliases.
How do you use email aliases or what do you find them useful for? I’ve played around with generating unique aliases for different websites I use, but I’m not sure I did anything useful with that setup. Normally, if I get spam I usually just hit the unsubscribe link and that’s been sufficient. Currently, I just have 2 emails: one I use for businesses and such and one for random websites that I don’t care too much about. Is having more aliases better?
An alias can be used to see who is selling your address. If you give address B to only one organization and you get spam on B, then you know B sold your address.
Not exactly the most useful information, but it’s there.
Who’s not using email? I’m green with envy, but I think it’s a ludicrous premise to think not many people are using email.
i don’t use email much at all, only signups at a few places.
at work, communications with my coworker or clients is by phone or in person, not email or very rarely sms. email is mainly the required communications with the state (business registrations, taxes and shit) and invoices and receipts for things we use or buy online. plus lots of spam. lots and lots of spam. oh, and scams. lots of scammers and phishers too.
I also wondered what kind of rock OP lives under. I use email every day, multiple times per day. I probably send more emails than texts.
if you wanna forget privacy and subscribe to a proprietary startup instead, use hey mail because it just sorts well. otherwise just use proton like everyone else said
The ProtonMail CEO recently said that Trump “fights for the little guy”. I know that’s not a substantial critique of their privacy policy or encryption standards, but I wouldn’t trust a company that says something so baseless, divisive, and in support of a fascist oligarch.
And frankly, even if he’s not a facist himself, the CEO saying something that fucking stupid makes me think that you shouldn’t trust him to run the slurpee machine at a 7-11, let alone something sensitive like your email.
Honestly, I know this is entirely subjective, but I never liked the vibes from proton especially in the last year. I’m going to use my animal instincts and just avoid them.
That said, I really need new email service so looking at options
Agree. They’ve been very persistent to sell their paid plans, e.g. the first thing I see after logging in to Proton Mail is their pop-up ads.
Most if not all non-paid options will have privacy concerns similar to gmail, so you’ll have to pay. I pay for Proton, and though I’m not thrilled about some of the political bullshit their CEO has been up to recently, I think I’ll stay with them for now since they’re still good for privacy, and their other services are solid. They’re also very upfront about what they charge and why, and I think they still plan to transition to a non-profit.
I don’t think leaving Proton due to their CEO approving Trump is that reasonable
There’s also Tuta if you’re looking for an alternative.
It’s not just the pro-trump stuff though, there’s also the case of being very pro-cop in that they helped get info about a french activist against their will or settings, we believe.
That definitely sounds concerning, do you have a link or anything? Any company would have to comply with a legal court order regardless of their preference or ideology, so how they comply comes down to the amount of information they store and for how long. Just saying, the fact that they helped the cops (as much as I hate the cops in general) doesn’t necessarily mean they handed everything over or volunteered anything they weren’t legally obligated to provide. But I don’t know the specifics of the case you mentioned.
Several links, here:
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58476983
https://www.wired.com/story/protonmail-amends-policy-after-giving-up-activists-data/
Hope this helps!
Thank you!
Sure, happy to help! 🙂
For everyone who doesn’t want to read the links: important to note is that had the french activist accessed his protonmail account using any vpn (including proton) or the protonmail .onion site, they would have had nothing useful to report. also, it looks like they only logged the IP after being ordered to monitor access to the mailbox.
It also seems that they were quite frustrated that they couldn’t resist in this case, mentioning the inappropate usage of anti-terror laws against what in reality were squatters (which in turn compelled the swiss judges to grant the monitoring).
Yes, about this case of I remember well they provided the IP address of the activists.
Any email provider has to follow the law and will have to provide the information they have. The only diffidence of that in the case of proton the information they have is the IP address you used to connect to their service. For another provider the information might be all the content of your email.
The imprompted praise to Trump from proton CEO on the other hand is more concerning.
sure, they must have shut down all services instead, that would have been the real solution!!
Unironically this.
Oh, shut up already with that misinformation bullshit. Don’t even for a moment pretend if your government showed up with a warrant for information that you would be some fucking noble idiot and refuse to comply. And if you even dare pretend otherwise, you’re a fucking liar.
They gave the Swiss his IP and nothing else, and loudly complained about having to do so and how it was government overreach. Even if they had chosen to immediately shut down, they still would have had their servers seized and been given no choice to comply.
I’m an anarchist. I would, I don’t comply with cops.
Yeah, ok, sure bud. You’re a fucking liar.
God, I can’t believe people are still spreading this nonsense. Proton complied with a legal warrant. Name another company on the planet that will receive a legal warrant and refuses to comply. I’ll wait.
k.
And the fact that their internal information even can reveal any information indicates a lack of true privacy. Here is an example of setting up a system so you cannot comply.
how the fuck do you run an email provider without storing anything on disk, first of all?
next point is mullvad is ready to close shop if that’s what they need to do after a raid. but of you’re storing people’s data for their request basically, like Proton, you can’t just do that because everyone will be mad for losing their data and access to the email service.
finally, Proton does provide a way to use their services in secret, as they run their onion site. login over Tor, done. but probably also create the account over Tor, and never log in through clearnet with that account
I was answering
Name another company on the planet that will receive a legal warrant and refuses to comply. I’ll wait.
No you weren’t. Not having the information is not the same thing as refusing to comply.
Preemptive prevention of access is a form of noncompliance
Mullvad doesn’t host email. The warrant pertained to emails, not a VPN.
Not having logs helps a ton with anonymity, and your question didn’t have that requirement.
Because it didn’t need it. Email cannot function with the same level of logging as a VPN. My question was about refusal to comply, which Mullvad did not do.
I use proton and for registering on different sites I usually use addy.io. Also, I recently found a new mail service that looks nice and might give it a try soon, disroot.org
ProtonPass will also generate aliases and forward the mail to your email account. But, as someone else mentioned, the CEO’s politics seem sus.
I use Fastmail with my own domain. Not free, but worth it given how much I rely on my email/calendar. There’s a 30-day free trial before committing though, so you can kick the tires before deciding.
I second this. Fastmail has been a joy to use. Since the users are paying, the company has (less) incentives to enshittify. JMAP? Count me in!
PurelyMail is a great indie mail service. I love them.
