Secure and Private Email Services

Comments

1. Lia

   June 15, 2021

   I have tried several email services and experience delivery problems, even when I’m not on any spam list. For example, Barracuda Central won’t accept privacy emails which strip the ip address and replace with the email service ip address range. To register for removal, you can’t use the form because it won’t accept a range of ip addresses. The form also asks for your name, phone, and email address. I don’t think Barracuda Central is the only company doing this, but there needs to be more pressure on these companies to stop.

   Reply

   • Mike

     June 19, 2021

     Hi Lia! Sorry to hear about all of this. Have you tried Protonmail or Tutanota? Did you experience the same problems? How is Barracuda Central vital to your using them? From what I gather, Barracuda Central is a way look up reputation block lists. Please elaborate or explain. Thank you!

     Reply

2. Barath

   May 20, 2021

   Hi Sven,

   Have you looked into the service PreVeil? Its an interesting twist on using the big name email providers but sending encrypted email within the service. There is a plugin that is installed into chrome or mobile OS that performs the Encrypt / Decrypt function transparently to the user. I’ve done some looking into it, but wondered if you have uncovered any interesting tidbits with your research.

   Cheers…
   Barath

   Reply

   • Sven Taylor

     May 21, 2021

     Hi Barath, no I have not looked into this.

     Reply

     • devi

       May 26, 2021

       Thanks for the article.
       For someone who is not tech savvy, is a US citizen, wants a secure personal email because doesn’t trust gov or tech censorship, doesn’t use the cloud for any storage, can pay for a private service, what is your recommendation? I want to be able to transfer my old emails to the new service.

       I would be grateful for any help.

       Reply

       • Sven Taylor

         May 26, 2021

         I think Mailfence may be worth a try in your case because it is easy to import existing mail, can be used with third-party apps, is very user-friendly, and you can try it out for free (up to 500 MB).

3. JorgKACKFRESSER

   May 9, 2021

   C-Templar, Vivaldi and Protonmail are the ones who worked the best for me it term of ‘technicality’, relative anonymity (if you want to be really anonymous don’t use internet), and privacy.

   I would love to have other choices but they are either for pay or not reliable like tutanota….

   Having a decentralized web, email servers is the solution. It is even more pressing now with the global take over and the unseen global censorship over almsot everything by ‘big tech’ (and their accomplices in governments)…

   If a completely decentralized internet doesn’t happen soon, we will have no freedom of speech, no privacy, no liberty anymore.

   I remind you that totalitarian governments (not talking about Turkmenistan or Mynamar here, but the USA and all of Europe) are now using taxpayer fuded intelligence agencies to silence people who have opinions they don’t like (guess what is the subject and authors they target these days… Vaccines…).

   The truth will disapear for good as it did on TV already if we don’t succeed to build a fully decentralized (and possibly alternative) internet.

   The world economic foroum with their usual partners in crime are preparing an ‘event 201’ (the infamous traning practice for the covid ‘pandemic’ that took place in october 2019 before launching the global psy-op) for ‘cyber security’. They will have hackers attack the financial system and other critical systems to destroy it, so they can push for their ‘great reset’ agenda further with replacement of cash by digital money only and other niceties of permanent surveillance and further destruction of our rights.

   The time for building alternAtives is now…

   Reply

   • XX

     June 15, 2021

     Vivaldi headquarters are in Oslo, Norway a 9 Eyes country https://vivaldi.com/company/#locations

     Reply

4. Daniel

   May 8, 2021

   My experience with CyberFear.com: I paid $18 for one year of premium service. After taking a few seconds to load, I found the service to run fast and smooth on Firefox. I also was pleased with the plain, three-column design.

   To test, I sent my Gmail account a link to an encrypted PDF attachment. When I clicked the link, the messaged showed, but the page would not scroll to the attachment. When I toggled the Plain/HTML button, the attachment showed, but it only gave an error message when attempting to download. I contacted customer service about both the scroll issue and the download failure. They quickly fixed the download error. But after three weeks, the scroll error has not been fixed.

   I also sent a non-encrypted email with a PDF attachment to my Gmail. When attempting to download the PDF, Gmail recognized it as a DMS file instead. I contacted customer service, and they said there is no converter on their end.

   Soon after I created the account, I decided that I wanted to use a safer user name. Customer service told me that I should create a new free account, and then they would cancel my first account and upgrade the new account. I did as they said, but three weeks later they have not made the change.

   I found no issues with sending a PDF attachment from Gmail to Cyberfear.

   Thank you for the great information at restoreprivacy.com!

   Reply

5. Holly

   April 25, 2021

   Lets not forget this about StartMail:

   “Recently there has been lots of talk about Startpage being acquired (or at least partially acquired) by a US company called Privacy One Group, which is a division of System1, a “data science” company that specializes in targeted advertising.”
   Read More…
   https://restoreprivacy.com/startpage-system1-privacy-one-group/

   Reply

   • Sven Taylor

     April 26, 2021

     Hi Holly, last I checked, StartMail remains fully independent and NOT under the System1 umbrella.

     Reply

6. passer-by

   April 15, 2021

   This is a very useful and informative summary. Well done! But a table with details about each consideration would be more helpful. wiki page would be nice because people can edit and sources are recorded. I do see discrepancies about some facts above. For example, the article said “Belgium, which is a good privacy jurisdiction with strict data protection laws.” without explanation; while one comment said “In Europe, it’s only two or three countries that does not require IP-logging: Sweden (verified for 2021) Iceland (verified 2021)
   -Germany (however I have not verified this for 2021).” It’s too much work to make this table by a person. Let the people do it. Does a wiki page already exist or is there a plan to do so? Just a thought.

   Reply

7. James

   April 7, 2021

   Big warning about Tutanota!

   First it’s hosted in 14 eyes country Germany
   2/ Germany is not a democracy, its run as a dictatorship by ‘chancellor for lfe merkel’. Think about it; merkel has been in power longer than Hitler. She’s been spied on by the NSA (Ed Snowden), yet, she did nothing against it.

   3/ Tutanota does read your emails. I have used the service for years before realizing that, depending on the subject, some emails were sent others weren’t. Try sending an email from Tutanota with ‘covid scam’ and see what happens.

   4/ Tutanota does read your emails. Emails with ‘sensitive’ subjects (anything censored by the global fascist technocrats who think they can tell us what to think) are suddenly blocked. I have tested with friends, again depending on email subjects, some emails are ‘refused by server’ while reception from other providers is just fine.

   5/ Tutanota has many technical flaws, bugs and issues. sometimes you can’t connect, sometimes it disconnects on its own, sometimes you can’t send emails (again, often depending on email subject).

   Ps: i do not do spam or illegal activities but if you are a free minded perosn, an activist, a dissident, a journalist who want to keep under the radar, don’t use Tutanota. My guess is Tutanota is probably under control or heavily surveilled by some intel agency in germany + the admin are already censoring and blocking emails (alghoritms maybe like google does for web search).

   Gmail is safer, more privacy respectful and anonymous than Tutanota…!

   Reply

8. J.M.

   April 4, 2021

   @Mike,

   I have to respond here,

   As far as your comment, no worries. I didn’t take anything negative away from our conversation.

   I enjoy our discussions and other interactions as well.

   I appreciate what you put down. Thanks.

   Reply

9. J.M.

   April 4, 2021

   Just a quick note:

   To all who keep saying ProtonMail is controlled by outside services, or are concerned by this here is a very new update:

   https://protonmail.com/blog/crv-investment-other-news/

   So the Venture capitalist are out now.

   I am impressed and encouraged by what I am reading here.

   Reply

10. MD

    April 2, 2021

    Hi;
    This site has been very helpful, thanks. I’ve forwarded to a few friends as well.

    I am looking to move my email hosting for my private.com domain. Current host has me set up an admin account, I manage/add/reset/etc. from that admin account. No host-provided email address needed. (Like in, say, Proton. Not picking on them, just as example.)

    Problem there is that all email addresses/accounts that you set up for your domain with user@private.com addresses will push all the email to the master provider account. account@protonmail.com staying with this example. Obviously no privacy there if all your users’ email goes to the admin. Each account/email address expects some level of privacy, not automatic dumping of email to the master user. Each address just is then an alias

    With some of these I know you can add ‘users’ and thus get privacy, but the requirement of adding a paid user for every discrete email address on my domain is pricey.

    Is there an email hosting service that is secure like Proton/etc, but allows you to set up an admin account for oversight and allows users email privacy from the admin?

    Thanks!!

    Reply

    • nextlinemail

      April 5, 2021

      Hi MD,

      I’m the operator of nextlinemail. Our infrastructure supports what you’re asking about (subusers of an account with unique email addresses, but master account has no access to the subusers mailboxes). However, we do not currently expose a UI for this.

      I’d be interested in having a discussion with you about what sort of functionality you’d need in a UI to make this most useful to you. Feel free to reach out to me via contact@nextlinemail.com.

      Reply

11. Rich

    March 15, 2021

    Tutanota is NOTa safe or reliable alternative. It’s alos technically flawed. Any ‘safe’ email providers residing in Germany is not really safe: Germany is one of the worst dictatorship on earth since chancellor for life merkel transformed the country into the DDR number 2.0.

    Tutanota records logs, blocks emails (did it to me everytime I wnated to send ‘sensitive’ emails0 and most likely sensitive information is intercepted. Avoid them.

    C-templar looked good on paper. They pretend to defend privacy and anonymity… This isn’t true:

    1/ as soon as you pay for a service, you’re not anonymous, unless you would send cash in an enveloppe and use a fake name!

    2/ their so-called ‘free’ version is not working because, you need to receive an invitation from an existing member or send them an email to get this invitation: MEANING YOU ARE NOT ANONYMOUS ANYMORE!

    3/ protonmail doesn’t only receive fundings from US dubious corporations, they are also linked with some israeli ones. Besides, I know shareholders of the company and they are corrupt and not the kind of fighting for human rights, privacy and anonymity.

    Do you know Vivaldi? An icelandic email provider, that comes closer to all criteria for privacy, safety and anonymity. Quite good and free.

    Reply

    • J.M.

      March 19, 2021

      You mean the same Vivaldi that we are warned against?

      https://restoreprivacy.com/browser/secure/

      I know Germany is 14 eyes and Tutanota is not a service I would use (tried them before and ran away quickly).

      But your other two? I am lost as to why.

      Reply

      • James

        April 7, 2021

        I don’t see the warning about Vivaldi. But if you mean Vivaldi browser, this is something else. I am talking about their email service.

        I never used their browser and don’t need to. However, their email service which was basic few years ago is now rivalling with the biggest ones.

        And I have had no issues with it, or privacy/anonymity issues. Encryption works fine.

        Much much better than tutanota…

        I’d say Vivaldi and Protonmail are on par now (if you consider free services of course, nothing can replace paid ones and a VPN, but not everybody can afford that).

        Reply

    • Mike

      March 26, 2021

      In terms of Germany, the country has decent data and online privacy laws. I have used Tutanota but it was a while ago. Like the saying goes: “If you don’t pay for the service, you’re the product.” Instead of using the free options, pay for the product. Tutanota’s is good and they have good privacy protection, though I think ProtonMail is the best.

      I would like to see evidence to support your allegations about Tutanota and ProtonMail because I think you are misrepresenting or twisting facts or events. As to Vivaldi, in fact, it is one I give an honorable mention and is decent in terms of protecting user privacy, despite not being fully open source (please see review below). Best of all, it is pretty customizable and, unlike Opera, Vivaldi isn’t owned by a Chinese company.

      https://www.cloudwards.net/vivaldi-review/

      Reply

      • James

        April 7, 2021

        I don’t know what you mean by ‘decent’ privacy laws. In Germany, the police (like the Stasi and gestapo) used to ‘pay visits’ to citizens who posted about protests on their facebook pages to menace them if they continued.

        Something that has become very comonn since one year in other places like Australia for example.

        What kind of privacy is that? because there are the written ‘laws’ and the reality.

        Merkel has changed Germany into a dictatorship, I know the country, I have lived there and I know many german people who fled to escape what has become exactly the same as the former DDR.

        I can confirm the problems with tutanota, I have had the same. besides their constant technical issues (logging, disconnecting all the times, emails not sent, emails not received), they obviously block emails with subjects they seem not to like.

        My guess is that they use algorithms to block particualr subjects like google does with its search engine and/or the people wroking there are yet again little dictators who think the can read, intercept and censor your emails.

        Tutanota is neither safe nor technically reliable.

        Reply

      • MorlySpyke

        April 25, 2021

        Tutanota – was easily beaten by a Russian schoolboy from a young class
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2xqd-zURxc

        Reply

    • Mike

      March 26, 2021

      This website gives an general overview of the privacy laws of some countries, among them are Germany and Iceland. As you can see, Germany’s and Iceland’s are quite good. Even Sweden was the first country in Europe to enact a privacy statute during the early 1970’s.

      In terms of the United States, the lack of formal privacy laws can work in people’s favor. For example, VPN’s or cloud services located here are not required to retain the logs of people using their services. Therefore if a U.S. VPN or cloud company gets a warrant for a criminal investigation, they would not have the information the police need since they’re not requited to keep records.

      [https://gobestvpn.com/guide/countries-with-strictest-data-privacy-laws/amp/]

      Reply

      • J.M.

        March 29, 2021

        Mike,

        I am not arguing per-se. However, I am going to be honest about my biases and Tutanota, for me, failed in a over the top glorious way. At least they didn’t do it subtly.

        Now, they are changing the agreements made on paying customers by removing a service that was expected (all recorded under the Tutanota review) and this is a basic tool: Calendar invite.

        Couple that with their inability to keep their servers up and running for more than two minutes ( slight sarcasm) and their inability to actually understand NPO documents, as well as their sub-par customer service, even if they were in a solid country like Switzerland, Iceland, or the BVI’s, I would still not use them. Then, they shut down their offices, go on marches and protests, and all the while customers are trying to access their email!

        I ran and ran fast.

        I do agree with you though. ProtonMail is a better service. Again, I am biased and perhaps jaded but from my experience, Tutanota is not safe, not worth the hassle. They should shut their doors until they can revamp themselves and get ahead of the issues plaguing them.

        Instead I see them more like a truck stuck in the mud. The more they spin their wheels with new features, they deeper they sink behind the competition.

        Mike, I am not angry or arguing. Just sharing.

        Reply

        • Mike

          March 31, 2021

          I understand, J.M., and no argument intended on my part. I was ultimately seeking clarification on what you were saying. Thanks!

    • James

      April 7, 2021

      C-Templar works well, you need to be patient and fill some kind of ‘invitation form’ to get a code to be able to complete registration.

      It’s a bit complicated and could put off people, but once you’ve got it it works really fine.

      Emails are ancrypted by default, interface is good, logs are deleted or not logged, a bit slow sometimes maybe because of the encryption system.

      No need of phone number or Id verification… Real freedom.

      Much better than all the others so far.

      Reply

    • XX

      June 15, 2021

      Vivaldi headquarters are in Oslo, Norway a 9 Eyes country https://vivaldi.com/company/#locations

      Reply

      • Mike

        June 19, 2021

        This is concerning and thank you for raising this. However, are you aware Norway has strong privacy protections like other countries such as Sweden, Switzerland, and Iceland? Norway has an independent agency called Data Protection Authority that is set up to protect individual privacy and supports many laws (like the Data Protection Act) and regulations geared for data protection, including to ensure organizations and others comply.

        https://www.datatilsynet.no/en/

        https://iclg.com/practice-areas/data-protection-laws-and-regulations/norway

        This on top of their passing or ratifying the GDPR strengthens Norway’s privacy policies and makes the country a good place in terms of protecting privacy, in my view. In terms of the 9 eyes, if they want to spy on you they’re going to. But I see no reason why someone should forgo using a product made in a country when the good surely outweighs the bad in terms of privacy protection.

        Reply

12. nextlinemail

    March 12, 2021

    —–BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE—–
    Hash: SHA256

    Hello,

    I’ve started a new anon email service, nextlinemail.

    Clearnet site is here: https://nextlinemail.com

    Onion site is here: hxkhr3ppyob6wabodrsodyxq2pa72yjdnw3x5nlgka5pmqw6ct63orid.onion

    We are following the OMG spec defined by dark.fail (https://dark.fail/spec/omg.txt). Keys, mirrors, canary, and related pages are all up.

    I would like it very much if you could include Nextlinemail in any future posts detailing anon email providers.

    Thank you
    —–BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE—–

    iQJOBAEBCAA4FiEEmIdHRKprB+FIXv3c3oJjvrBNgOAFAmBLwIAaHG9wZXJhdG9y
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    =CXIh
    —–END PGP SIGNATURE—–

    Reply

    • captain hirsohima

      March 15, 2021

      Hi, I tried your new anon email service, nextlinemail. It looked good until i tried to send an email…

      Doesn’t work

      Reply

      • nextlinemail

        March 22, 2021

        Sorry for your inconvience. Feel free to try again. We have had several hundred signups over the last few weeks and have seen great deliveribility rates.

        Reply

13. Paula

    February 28, 2021

    Hi Sven – this article is the most helpful I have found, Thank-you.
    Which is the best ORDER of attacking these things:
    VPN
    Private email service
    Private search engine
    Domain Name Registration

    Reply

    • Sven Taylor

      February 28, 2021

      Not sure on the order, I guess whatever is most important to you first. For private domain name registration, check out OrangeWebsite in Iceland.

      Reply

14. Verdy

    February 28, 2021

    Unfortunately, Posteo supports search only within the current folder.
    Therefore if you have a lot of emails and lots of folders this turns into an issue.

    Reply

15. Mike

    February 20, 2021

    I have just found out that Protonmail has a cloud storage service in beta called Proton Drive. Proton Inc. gave a Black Friday deal last year giving customers early access to it of 5MB of free cloud storage in exchange for 2 year paid subscriptions to Protonmail and ProtonVPN and even the latter 2 services were further discounted.

    I am unable to determine if they are still offering access to it and ProtonVPN or Protonmail customers. This is a very interesting prospect since, as you know, Protonmail and ProtonVPN are both top notch.

    https://medium.com/internxt/alternative-to-protondrive-8b753d5cde5e

    Reply

    • J.M.

      March 7, 2021

      Mike,

      Just saw your comment.

      It is still in Beta and it is not as feature rich as others, right now, but they now have PDF preview, easy drop to upload, and encrypted sharing. I am completely happy with it.

      I would say to reach out to them, but if I am not mistaken, I believe that Visionary, at least, has access anyway but not sure what level you want to go with.

      It is worth it, to me.

      Reply

      • Mike

        March 10, 2021

        J.M.,

        Yes it certainly does look like it is worth it and the cloud storage space is 17 MB and not 5 as I had originally thought. As near as I can tell, Proton Tech is still offering their bundle but it looks like it is only available to ProtonMail customers. Therefore, signing up for a free ProtonMail account or paid subscription is probably the way to get the deal.

        Proton’s offer is discounted even more than if someone was just to buy their email and VPN bundle minus the cloud. I’ve been very satisfied with ProtonMail and may just splurge and grab this.

        Reply

        • J.M.

          March 11, 2021

          Mike,

          Agree.

          The size varies as I have 36 GB of storage for mail and cloud.

          I do know that they said for every year you are a customer, they give you an extra GB.

          I have been very happy with them as well.

          I think you will be pleased as well, as long as the limits are recognized.

          They are growing on features but it does take time.

16. Lara

    February 9, 2021

    Hi Sven,

    Thanks for your incredible review. I’m new to all of this and was hoping you could advise me on the following questions regarding encryption and IP address removal features:

    ENCRYPTION
    For Cyberfear Anonymous email, you wrote: “At rest, all of the following email elements are encrypted: email body, subject line, attachments, sender address, recipient address.”

    *Unless you specifically state that a company provides encryption for each specific email element (as you did for Cyberfear), is it correct to assume they do not provide encryption for that element?

    *For example, you wrote regarding Tutanota: “Messages (including Subject lines) Address Book, Inbox Rules and Filters, Search Index, encrypted at rest and stored on German servers.” Does that mean they do not encrypt sender/recipient address and attachments?

    *Is this also the case for Ctemplar that sender/recipient address and attachments are not encrypted?

    IP ADDRESS REMOVAL
    You wrote that Tutanota “Strips IP address from emails” and Mailfence “Removes IP addresses from mail headers.”

    *Are IP addresses associated with metadata in different parts of the email (ie mail header, body of email, attachments, etc)?

    *So for example — even though Mailfence removes the IP address from mail headers, is the IP address still linked to the body of the email and/or attachments?

    Thanks so much

    Reply

17. Ashira

    February 4, 2021

    Hi.
    Does anyone have counteremail. Want to join but need a referral code.
    Thanks.

    Reply

    • Mike

      March 26, 2021

      Sorry for the late reply. You need a referral code to join their service??? That doesn’t sound right. I suggest you contact them and ask them for help.

      https://countermail.com/?p=contact

      Reply

      • Brian Flanagan

        May 1, 2021

        Hi,

        I contacted Countermail also and an Invite code is required.

        I’m very interested by registering with Countermail.
        Does anyone would be kind enough to share an Invite Code please ?

        Reply

        • Mike

          May 26, 2021

          Did you ask them how you get one? Does it involve a present user to invite you? I realize this response is late but did you get invited after all? If not, I would suggest you use Protonmail or Tutanota instead. At least you don’t need to be invited to use either of those email services.

18. ESG

    January 28, 2021

    I use riseup.net, and some friends use autistici.org for mail.
    Any review?
    Thenks.

    Reply

    • MIke

      May 26, 2021

      Apologies for the late reply. Unfortunately, RIseup’s email service was the subject of a federal investigation and they did not notify their users until a little over 3 months later (better keep checking their warrant canary).

      https://theintercept.com/2016/11/29/something-happened-to-activist-email-provider-riseup-but-it-hasnt-been-compromised/

      Reply

19. James Slayton

    January 28, 2021

    Arnon, please explain this to me. You posted a good comment on CTemplar here back in December, and suddenly they are horrible? What happened? Did their android app suddenly become buggy or did you just tolerate it for two months?

    Reply

    • Rich

      March 15, 2021

      c-templar, basically don’t do anonymity anymore since they demand you to receive an invitation in order to be able to sign up for their (free) email service…

      And, as they ask to receive an email for that, it is not anonymous.

      the alternative is a paid account, which is even less anonymous (unless you pay them cash by postal service or by hand)..

      The excuse they use is the same excuse the NSA/CIA and recently big pharma, the CDC, corrupt governments and all other criminals out there always use to violate our rights: “it’s for your safety”!

      Vivaldi
      https://login.vivaldi.net/ is not too bad (Iceland, a country outside of the EUSSR dictatorship, they jail banksters ten years ago and have better privacy laws).

      Protonmail is ok for day to day emails, not for sensitive material and activism though…. Switzerland is not that safe either in term of privacy.

      Tutanota is a total fake (and full of bugs), like most providers in merkel Stasi Germany.

      Reply

20. Raphael

    January 26, 2021

    Is mailbox.org the only secure email provider that supports CardDAV and CalDAV?

    Reply

    • Sven Taylor

      January 26, 2021

      Mailfence also does.

      Reply

21. Will

    January 25, 2021

    Sven, have you ever considered making a review on secure (if any) non-native email clients? Ej. Thunderbird, K-9 Mail, etc.
    I would love to read it.

    Reply

    • Sven Taylor

      January 25, 2021

      Hi Will, I like Thunderbird because it is open source and customizable, but I haven’t had time to look at other options.

      Reply

    • Jo.T

      May 13, 2021

      Yeah, I am also interested in Sven’s reviews on other secure email clients, MeSign: https://www.mesign.com/ and Canary Mail: https://canarymail.io/.

      Reply

22. Will

    January 25, 2021

    Is there any known bad record for Zoho?

    Reply

    • Mike

      May 26, 2021

      Sorry about the late reply. I am unaware of anything bad related to Zoho. All of the reviews of the email service are good. However, Zoho is not open source, therefore I would not recommend using it. with proprietary products it means the makers can change the terms with giving little notice and that and mean even things like scanning your emails or mining your personal information. I would suggest using Protonmail or Tutanota instead. Both of them are open source.

      Reply

23. Jonathan

    January 23, 2021

    There are some comments that are incorrect.
    For example about Protonmail, they can track their users IP-address, which they admit by themself:
    https://protonmail.com/blog/transparency-report/

    Some other facts and rumors about Protonmail (some ARE facts some are rumors):
    https://privacy-watchdog.io/protonmail-devs-do-not-use-protonmail/
    https://privacy-watchdog.io/protonmails-creation-with-cia-nsa/

    In Europe, it’s only two or three countries that does not require IP-logging:
    -Sweden (verified for 2021)
    -Iceland (verified 2021)
    -Germany (however I have not verified this for 2021)

    England, France and USA have horrible privacy laws, they can force the email provider to provide the decryption keys, otherwise the company can be shut down very fast.

    There are a

    I have been using different secure email providers for more than 10 years, and I had to change several times because of new laws that happens in many countries.

    Reply

24. a guy

    January 20, 2021

    Best e-mail provider is clearly CRIPTEXT since

    – they immediately delete all (encrypted) e-mails after downloading – so nothing is stored online! Comparable with a POP3 e-mail client when you auto-delete on server after downloading
    – its completely free

    Another alternative is setting up your own e-mail server – its really not that difficult in Linux or Windows…

    Reply

25. Michael H

    January 19, 2021

    As I seek a gmail replacement, the two features I am routinely looking for are (1) conversation view / threaded view including outgoing messages and (2) search on message body text. Possibly your summary would be more helpful if it highlighted those features. Still, this page is a great resource; thank you for your work here.

    Reply

26. Bob

    January 17, 2021

    What are your opinions of Yandex email and Zoho email regarding security, features and usability?

    Reply

    • MorlySpyke

      April 25, 2021

      A party from abroad for 20 years makes an uninvited guest. Never, not even in any of these environments do you have a work with Russian ground services, Yandex, mail.ru and other social memory. With confidence I say that you can never get rid of your data from nowhere, even if it shows you that everything is ok, you will soon be able to read what has burned and resell advertising agencies. Russian companies are coming to Moscow, they are all coming under the influence of the idiot from the Kremlin, and those who can come from abroad, well done, young people.

      Reply

27. James Slayton

    January 16, 2021

    I just wanted to point out that ctemplar.com honors their refund policy. I upgraded, changed my mind, and got a prompt refund in less than 24 hours. Their service is great, but I had to stick with an email service I had already paid for.

    Reply

    • Arnon

      January 23, 2021

      CTEMPLAR ARE HORRIBLE, ignored all my requests to refund+ a lots of bugs on Adroid, a lot!

      Reply

28. a55

    January 15, 2021

    dear all at restoreprivacy; thank you for so many excellent guides!
    sorry if this has been answered elsewhere… If I am concerned about email privacy, what about hosting my own email server?
    as far as I understand, there are 2 options:
    (1) use a VPS , but then you have to trust the company running it with your emails, the advantage is that you should get a static IP, but even that might not guarantee email delivery; or
    (2) you run it from home, apparently you can even use a Raspberry Pi! but then you’re unlikely to have a static IP, you may need SMTP forwarding, esp if port 25 is blocked etc.
    there are a number ‘ready made’ programs such as iRedmail, Mailinabox, Mobodoa and Mailcow. I am not that technical; I found iRedmail fairly straightforward to install on a VPS; I couldn’t get Mobodoa or Mailinabox installed; haven’t tried Mailcow, which is supposed to be very good but I think requires Docker which I haven’t tried yet…
    My impression is that it’s not a problem receiving emails (haha) but sending emails as your IP may be on some spam list etc; the way round this could be setting up an SMTP relay (haven’t tried that one yet)
    sorry for going on.. basically the point is that it’s not that straightforward to set up your own email server… hence the question to Sven: is this worthwhile from a privacy and security point of view to set up your own mail server say at home? rather than use one of the recommended privacy oriented email services mentioned? or, unless you’re very technical… is it perhaps even more secure to use one of the above mentioned services rather than your own email server?

    Reply

    • Sven Taylor

      January 15, 2021

      Setting up your own mail server can be fine, but a lot can go wrong. So for most people, a secure mail service would probably be your best bet.

      Reply

29. george

    January 12, 2021

    gmail will block any encrypted document.
    But You can send secure documents with gmail.
    1.encrypt the document
    2.rename extension to .bmp or similar
    3.zip without password
    4.send the zip

    Reply

    • rich

      March 15, 2021

      gmail, the service from google gestapo, the fascist corp?

      It’s a joke right?

      You’re on the wrong page georgy porgy, this is an article about privacy, about providers respecting our rights, not about some nazis like google…

      Reply

30. Steve

    January 10, 2021

    Sven,

    Have you guys looked into the Helm Email Server? Its not end-to-end encrypted, but might be an interesting alternative for privacy that is hosted wherever you want.

    Reply

    • Sven Taylor

      January 11, 2021

      Thanks for the tip.

      Reply

      • dean holden

        April 8, 2021

        I want to get away from google. Yahoo locked me out of my account to force me to pay to retrieve access. I don’t trust any of these companies or my government. Trump was just a symptom. So who has a business suite that I can use without downloading countless applications which are inherently driven by user data theft.

        Reply

        • Sven Taylor

          April 8, 2021

          Hey Dean. Check out our Google alternatives guide, which has solutions for many products.