Pale Moon forum

In view of the upcoming UXP E-mail client, Google's enforcement of OAuth2 and flagging one the best Android clients as "spyware" (FairEmail - story worth a read), I've decided to replace Gmail accounts. It is tougher than it sounds.

Only heard about Protonmail and Tutanota. Haven't looked into them yet. Feel free to post suggestions, reviews and experiences from these and other providers. Free and paid. Ideally:

• Private, proven and reliable: no snooping a la Google, Yahoo etc.
• Ease to use: no advanced encryption configuration required from recipients
• IMAP, 3rd-party client support (desktop and mobile)
• Not US-based
• Adequate storage

(similar, old 2015 thread: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=9446)

I was looking into this last night. I think Posteo will do IMAP.

andyprough wrote: ↑

2022-05-20, 18:09

I was looking into this last night. I think Posteo will do IMAP.

Posteo supports it, their IMAP and STMP submission servers also support IPv6, but not their servers in their MX records.

Protonmail doesn't have an 'app', and one must be a paying customer for a mail client to have access to their mail servers. I don't use Tutanota. I use Fastmail, and to a lesser extent my ISP's and my webhost's email. Head over to one of the only other forums I visit - EmD for more email stuff.

The most reliable is to get your own domain name and a shared hosting account. That way it's fully under your control and you can change hosts if you ever need to, without changing your addresses. It's not for everyone, but fairly cheap, not very technical and avoids the advertising of freemail providers.

I think about hosting my own mail server in future to stop being annoyed by the mail providers.

I've had my own mail server/domain for decades now. It's saved me a ton of headaches and there are some very low threshold options these days to have your mail independently hosted on a VPS under your own domain. It's not for everyone as it does require you to learn a little bit about the way e-mail works on the server side.
If you do go this route though, I strongly suggest you also inform yourself of important anti-spam measures like SPF (beneficial for combatting spam both for you and for the rest of the world!) and using a DNSBL and/or spamassassin to keep inbound spam under control.

It doesn't have to cost much either. shared hosting companies offer domains with services for pennies that are perfect for personal use.

I use Posteo because I have neither knowledge, will nor resources to host my own domain. Like Tutanota, it is German. It costs a euro a month, but it works with IMAP and will not give my post to prying, Anglo-Saxon salesmen and spies.

Falna wrote: ↑

2022-05-20, 19:12

The most reliable is to get your own domain name and a shared hosting account.

I agree. I have both. Even just a domain name pointed at one's ISP email address, or even something as hideous as a gmail address is a cost effective and easy way to keep the same email address for 'forever'.

back2themoon wrote: ↑

2022-05-20, 17:58

..and flagging one the best Android clients as "spyware" (FairEmail - story worth a read),

EmailDiscussions.com - View Single Post - FairEmail Android Client

I've used Posteo for about 3 years
Totally reliable. 1 euro p.m
I know they do imap, but have never used it; I use pop

Desktop client is wholly reliable so long as it meets their security requirements. Dunno about mob

And they claim to be wholly anonymous - they specifically state that they have zero access to your acc, so cannot see your mails under any circs
And they state that your acc is anon and private - that they have, by design, locked themselves out of the payment chain so cannot possibly provide identifying info to anyone who asks for it

And for that you get a primary acc, and access to 2 aliases that feed into your primary acc
Not a ton of storage - but in 3 yrs I've not hit 5%. And if you are a storage freak, then big deal - you buy more, or store locally

And you have encryption options also - never investigated them - I tend to want those who read my mails to be able to read them without jumping through hoops

1 Euro p.m is way cheaper than google in my head

Disroot email. They have Nextcloud server, where you can upload files & make forms. They support CalDAV, CardDAV, and of course IMAP protocol. But, their end-to-end encryption is broken now.

You're going to have a bad time if you try to switch to any kind of self-hosted e-mail setup. Almost everyone I know who isn't using GMail, Outlook, Yahoo, or a similar large provider for e-mail tends to wind up in most people's spam folder (and they sometimes don't even make it there) unless explicitly whitelisted. This makes e-mail communication with them unreliable.

Essentially, if you want to send e-mail to people using a major e-mail provider when you are self-hosted or using someone relatively unknown, you run the risk of being aggressively spam filtered because they don't "trust" the domain your e-mail is coming from. So the first thing I would recommend doing after getting a new e-mail account is sending test e-mails to people with GMail or Outlook accounts who don't have you in their contacts, to see if you get spam filtered. This effectively tests whether your new e-mail provider has enough "trust" to not be treated as spam by major providers unless explicitly whitelisted by the recipient.

I just thought you should be forewarned about the perils of having a less well-known e-mail provider so that you don't have to deal with random communication problems and missed e-mails should you go that route.

Public unix access systems usually provide an email account. I have a shell account at tilde.team, and they provide POP3 and IMAP email.

athenian200 is right about the spam thing. I've sent emails to my gmail account using my tilde email and it went to the spam folder. So it's a good idea to keep a mainstream email account solely for sending emails, then auto-forward everything it receives to your main email that uses either POP3 or IMAP.

In addition to self-hosted emails, I also use mailbox.org. Very happy with it.

athenian200 wrote: ↑

2022-05-21, 05:12

Almost everyone I know who isn't using GMail, Outlook, Yahoo, or a similar large provider for e-mail tends to wind up in most people's spam folder (and they sometimes don't even make it there) unless explicitly whitelisted.

Fair warning there, and absolutely right.

Please note though that you can mitigate that behaviour by using SPF and especially DKIM which drastically lowers spam scores given to mails received from "unknown domains" (spammers generally don't have proper SPF or DKIM-signage). SPF is very easy to set up and indicate that your mail is legitimate and not spoofed by indicating which servers are allowed to send mail for your specific domain with a simple text field. I've had very little issue with mail being flagged as spam by recipients from my domains after I set that up. But of course that makes things more complex to set up (you'll need to have access to DNS records for your domain to make the appropriate entries, for one) although it's pretty much a set and forget thing and there are clear tutorials for it.

Pentium4User wrote: ↑

2022-05-20, 19:18

I think about hosting my own mail server in future to stop being annoyed by the mail providers.

I have been running my institute MX (and DNS) for ages (sendmail, SPF, spamassassin) until some 4 years ago until the entire institution moved to Gsuite. Now that I'm retired I'd like to self-host, but the prerequisite would be getting a permanent static IP (currently I'm on a CGNAT SIM in a Tplink router at home, and that is not always on), but it is unclear to me how to get that for a "private citizen" (not commercial nor academic).
I have a secondary address on a Civic Network which I keep at very low traffic (it is quite old and has POP only). A while ago I ran a search for local free providers and for a while I used email.it for tests (it has IMAP).

but it is unclear to me how to get that for a "private citizen" (not commercial nor academic).

At least in Germany are some providers that provide static IPv6 and IPv4 networks to their customers. You can also delegate the reverse DNS zone to whatever server you want.

Lucio Chiappetti wrote: ↑

2022-05-21, 12:41

Now that I'm retired I'd like to self-host, but the prerequisite would be getting a permanent static IP (currently I'm on a CGNAT SIM in a Tplink router at home, and that is not always on), but it is unclear to me how to get that for a "private citizen" (not commercial nor academic).

Look into getting a VPS (virtual private server). That will get you a remote box (usually Linux) with a static IP that can easily be set up to handle mail.
You don't need to be an organisation for that, and any low-end VPS should do fine for basic personal mail handling.

back2themoon wrote: ↑

2022-05-20, 17:58

Google flagging one the best Android clients as "spyware" (FairEmail - story worth a read)

Huh. Wasn't even aware of the developer has halted work on FairEmail. But at least the app is still functional at the moment, with no noticeable glitches.