Tutanota / Mailbox.org?
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Every once in a while they'll send you an email with special CSS styling so you can't avoid seeing it and you can't unsubscribe from it. They call it a newsletter. It's advertising. It's less news and more begging you to buy more of their stuff. Very occasionally they'll bump new features onto a higher tier but still show that feature in your UI, with special CSS styling. God forbid if they try to upgrade your account but you deny because you're happy with the features you have now and the amount you pay; they push harder and harder the longer you're on a 'legacy' tier.
It happened to me. It'll happen to you.
special CSS styling so you can’t avoid seeing it
you can't set your client to plain-text only?
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Huge beginner here, but privacytools.io says Mailbox is encrypted? Is it the "end to end" part? How did you find out they're not?
https://www.privacytools.io/privacy-emailMailbox encrypts the email at rest on their servers but with the encryption keys they own. Protonmail, in contrast, uses zero access encryption where they encrypt your data with your public key and they do not know or have access to your private key to be able to decrypt the data even if they wanted to.
Mailbox has a zero access encryption service called (I think) Guard that basically encrypts the email with PGP where they would no longer be able to decrypt your email. But it’s not enabled by default.
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I'm all for options, to be honest. What ideally I'd like is some sort of good encrypted email based in some safe European country, which can achieve decent Android integration. Proton apps are pretty useless to that effect (lack of offline basic functionalities, the calendar app isn't even an android calendar provider).
I'm not too hard in moving around my emails, since for the last few years I've been giving my email @duck.com which actually ends up sending to my final email after some tracking cleaning. Changing email provider would entail only updating my @duck.com destination. -
It's not on your list but I've had a Mailfence email for the last couple of years and they've been solid.
You could also use YUNOhost to host your own on a VPS. I had no experience before setting mine up and it was fine. Unlimited email accounts and aliases out of the box, plus you can host other stuff besides, like a website, file server or even a fediverse instance.
I'd try avoiding email hosting. I've heard way too many times that it's too much pain when it fails, and when it fails basically emails are bounced. I can't afford to miss taxes emails or other important stuff.
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Didn't know Mailbox had a free tier! Gotta check that out.
For what's worth, I'm going to give it a shot on the month trial. But I already see the middle tier for 3€ offers 10GB email only. I think I can fit my current old mail backup in about 4GB, but it would be slightly tight, I guess. I'm on an older Proton plan which charges about 3USD per month (by-yearly) and it gets me about 20GB. I think shared between cloud and email (I'm not actually interested in the cloud part, I have Seafile for that).
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However, mailbox can still be encrypted with pgp, and has some built in supports which make this easier.
One problem I had with proton/tuta is that you cannot use a third party app due to the encryption, which you can with mailbox. A problem I have with mailbox is that it does not support fido2 for login or 2fa, which could be a security concern.
Thanks, these are the kind of valid points I'm looking for. I noticed the lack of 2fa when I was registering for the demo, they only asked for a backup email or a phone number...neither too privacy-friendly there. But I guess I can live with that.
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As far as I’m aware, there is a huge difference between these three in that Mailbox.org is not end-to-end encrypted. So if that is an important feature for your use case, that may disqualify them from your options.
Email is never "end to end encrypted" outside of layering something else on like PGP- which you could use with any email service.
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we encrypy our stuff for you, trust us bro
Their clients are open source. Might not be "standard" like PGP, but if you could read code, you could verify that it's encrypted before it gets sent.
Wouldn't that be only between Tutanota users anyway? Sure, you could use PGP manually, but it is more annoying, I prefer the seamlessness of doing so in my client. Not to mention not having an option if you, say, don't like the UI!
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special CSS styling so you can’t avoid seeing it
you can't set your client to plain-text only?
Tuta does not have a text-only mode for it's interface.
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Email is never "end to end encrypted" outside of layering something else on like PGP- which you could use with any email service.
It is under certain circumstances. Specific to ProtonMail, it is E2E encrypted if you send a message to another ProtonMail user. They also have a feature where you can send an encrypted email to an outside address. I think in that case the recipient gets a link where they can then input the decryption password to read the message.
But you’re right about any email you receive (from a non-ProtonMail address). Those can not be E2E encrypted and are only stored encrypted at rest.
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Hi guys!
I'm looking for a Proton alternative. So far I've seen these two recommended. I was wondering what are the pros/cons of each? Seems Tutanota offers more bang for the buck in mailbox size etc, but I'm not sure. I'd also like to have a better integration with Android, because Proton's email/calendar apps suck big time.
Thanks!
Take a look into Posteo if having a custom domain is something you can live without.
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Take a look into Posteo if having a custom domain is something you can live without.
Posteo
Wow...This one seems to be a very good one as well. How come it's not even mentioned in privacytools.io or privacyguides.org? -
Posteo
Wow...This one seems to be a very good one as well. How come it's not even mentioned in privacytools.io or privacyguides.org?You also get SMTP with posteo, if that is important to you.
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Posteo
Wow...This one seems to be a very good one as well. How come it's not even mentioned in privacytools.io or privacyguides.org?Not sure.
It's not as popular, but i use it with my own PGP keys & Thunderbird and it's great!
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Every once in a while they'll send you an email with special CSS styling so you can't avoid seeing it and you can't unsubscribe from it. They call it a newsletter. It's advertising. It's less news and more begging you to buy more of their stuff. Very occasionally they'll bump new features onto a higher tier but still show that feature in your UI, with special CSS styling. God forbid if they try to upgrade your account but you deny because you're happy with the features you have now and the amount you pay; they push harder and harder the longer you're on a 'legacy' tier.
It happened to me. It'll happen to you.
The GDPR ensures there's no mailing list you cannot unsubscribe from, if they won't let you it's not a good thing
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You also get SMTP with posteo, if that is important to you.
With that you mean it's standard access IMAP/SMTP from any client you want, as opposed to Proton/Tutanota and their custom apps right? Yeah, I prefer a standard protocol and my own app.
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Hi guys!
I'm looking for a Proton alternative. So far I've seen these two recommended. I was wondering what are the pros/cons of each? Seems Tutanota offers more bang for the buck in mailbox size etc, but I'm not sure. I'd also like to have a better integration with Android, because Proton's email/calendar apps suck big time.
Thanks!
Posteo rocks.
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Disroot is fine
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It is under certain circumstances. Specific to ProtonMail, it is E2E encrypted if you send a message to another ProtonMail user. They also have a feature where you can send an encrypted email to an outside address. I think in that case the recipient gets a link where they can then input the decryption password to read the message.
But you’re right about any email you receive (from a non-ProtonMail address). Those can not be E2E encrypted and are only stored encrypted at rest.
Protonmail uses pgp under the hood. Their encryption was only ever within proton accounts because they had an automatic key lookup system. You can of course add your own keys, but most didn't. Still pgp.
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Mailbox encrypts the email at rest on their servers but with the encryption keys they own. Protonmail, in contrast, uses zero access encryption where they encrypt your data with your public key and they do not know or have access to your private key to be able to decrypt the data even if they wanted to.
Mailbox has a zero access encryption service called (I think) Guard that basically encrypts the email with PGP where they would no longer be able to decrypt your email. But it’s not enabled by default.
That's true once it's received, but it's still processed by proton and now we know they are pro-nazi so who knows what they would do.
You can avoid this with pgp as stated (default for proton to proton messages), but I don't think it's worth considering the at rest encryption at proton anymore.
