Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by xkarga00 | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

xkarga00

I have been looking for a free e-mail provider that takes privacy seriously. Isn't there anyone out there?

View on HN

The best option I found, to match my own preferences, was Runbox:

https://runbox.com/why-runbox/email-privacy/

Edited to apologise: The cheapest option seems to be $20pa, sorry. I find it excellent value.

What's your privacy risk assessment?

I just don't want advertising companies or the NSA sniffing around my personal communications. It has to be private as private should be.

> It has to be private as private should be.

But you also don't want to pay any money for it?

No. Do you believe that by paying money your privacy is guaranteed? Even Fastmail's privacy is doubtful regarding its non-US clients -which would be my case if i used it.

Ok, but why would anyone set up and run an extremely privacy-hardened service for you, for free?

Probably because i am not the only one who would use it.

What would a company possibly have to gain by creating a service that a lot of people will use and not pay for?

Despite what you may have "learned" from the examples of Facebook and Twitter, companies giving away things for free isn't a very good business model.

Paying for it allows them to spend time researching better systems and gives them some buffer in the dace of legal attack. See also anon.pennet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penet_remailer

Stopping advertising companies sniffing around is easy. Hushmail will do that.

Stopping a government is different. Are you preventing just the slurping of data? (Just because they have your emails in their cache doesn't mean they're grepping for you); or might you be targeted? In which case you're going to have to carefully use operating procedures and software. And make sure the people sending you email do the same. Also, you'll need better locks, and no windows on the ground floor and etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com