this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
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Asklemmy
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Proton Mail and Tutanota are great free options.
Last I checked, the encryption in Proton Mail means you have to use their app, no third party apps allowed. Is that still true?
Yes, that's still true. If you want to be able to use a third-party mail app, I would look at Fastmail or Mailbox.org. They don't have free plans though.
Phone app? Yes you have to use their own app. On a computer besides the browser version you can use Thunderbird and other applications if you download ProtonBridge.
To clarify, this is a paid feature and not included with the free tier
Yup, and it’s kind if a pain since their mobile apps aren’t great. I’ve been using them for many years, and lately have been considering jumping ship.
Email encryption isn’t something I actually care about. If I wanted to send someone a super private message, I probably wouldn’t use email anyways since it’s just clunky, and it’s unlikely the other person is using proton mail too (which means the message wouldn’t be encrypted anyways). All I really want is to not have my email provider be scanning my messages to profit from my data.
But the effort to switch to something else is making me stay…
You don't use encrypted emails only to communicate privately. If they are not encrypted, your e-mail provider will probably scan them, whether it is for profit or under request from the NSA. That's what Snowden uncovered.
That's a good point, but also the more I think about it the more I realize it's futile. Google is 100% going to scan the messages I send to gmail users, and match it to me somehow.
With Tutanota the Gmail user only gets a link (optionally password protected). Google can’t scan the actual content of the mail.
Same with Proton if you enable encryption for emails to non-proton addresses
I’ll be honest, when it comes to online purchases you may find that a protonmail email will require extra processing/fraud checking due to the amount of fraudsters that use it. Combine that with a vpn and it will just be a pain here and there with online purchases like additional ID verification/delayed orders etc…
Been using protonmail for my main email for three years, never had one issue. But I'm in Europe, maybe in the US it's different?
I’m more talking global purchases. Just the email will probs be ok but if you purchase using that email and a vpn it raises flags.
This has happened exactly once to me, and it was the VPN, and not the email address.
Paid plan folks can also make use of simplelogin.io
Proton Mail just has 5 gigs for the free version. Doesn't seem like it's enough for me to switch to it long term.
They also expand your storage every year, so it's not like it's stuck there forever. For reference, I've been on Proton for about 3 years now (paid plan) and I have a data storage cap of 540GB and I've never had to buy more. Also, I all my emails so far only consume 340MB - so even on the free plan I'd still have years to go before I reached even 5GB.
(Also, I'll admit I don't email much.)