An alternative to gmail
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Hello everybody, I hope you all are ok, and working on exciting projects.
I have this question wich I thing it would be useful to many more persons, especially newcomers on the Gnu/Linux world. So the question is somewhat relevant.
Let me frame the question: I use gmail as my predominant mail, but because of the events that everybody knows about espionage, Nsa, Snowden, whistle blowers and all the rest...and also because if google is a so big company, if they want my personal data, I think they should pay me... I want to stop using anything related to google. So I will began by the email.
What are the alternatives to gmail? I mean secure alternatives, even if they are difficult to implement (I am not afraid of difficulties). How do you, elders linux brothers, deal with this mail question? how do you manage it?
Many many thanks in advance, again I believe this is a important question to make and answers, because mail is were is so much of our important data.
Thank you for your time and pacience; thanks
if you like to use tor there is Sigaint
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIGAINT
I am a translator!
In a sense, handing over your data to Google is how you're paying for the email service.
Optimally, you should run your own email server on your own hardware; that way, you have full control over it. If you can't do that, you can instead rent a VPS and run your email server on that. Either way, it's going to cost you money (it takes electricity to run a computer 24/7, after all). Chances are you have a dynamic IP address, so you're going to need to use a VPS.
There are also plenty of other email services. If you're paying for it, it's much more likely that data about you isn't being recorded by them.
Of course, for maximum privacy, you should encrypt your emails with GnuPG. There's a guide for doing that in Thunderbird here:
->In a sense, handing over your data to Google is how you're paying for the email service.
That's a good point, one that I heard before but I have to counter that argument:
- Now my data is more valuable than when I started using gmail: my all life is there: what I do, what my friends are, were I shop, what is my bank and what I do with them, what is my businesses, what I communicate with my Doctor, and so on... Is this data not more valuable than a email service? I am being scammed!
-In addition their services have devalued: all the security things that now we all know, just put a lower price on their services and plus,
-there are more email services out there.
Anyway that link you so kind give is pure gold, thanks I am reading it right now.
obrigado
That's the lie they keep repeating so that naive people like you, onpon4 (not Takumi13), believe it. It is not so. Privacy is an Human Right. Nothing in the world legally enables Google to spy on you. They are providing a service used by many, like television, but the difference with television is that Internet technology allows to spy on the users, so they are just having no scruples in doing it. No matter how many times they tell that lie, spying will continue to be illegal. If spying, and not advertising, was the only thing truly compensating Google for its service, they'd better closing its service immediately, because there's no way spying is going to become legal.
This is even more illegal in Europe, where privacy is an Human Right twice, because being recognized as well in the European Convention on Human Rights. Also, Convention 108 of the Council of Europe protects the privacy of the europeans from the countries that signed it. Also, in the European Union, the Data Protection Directive and its sucessor, the General Data Protection Regulation, protects the privacy of the citizens of the Union.
In addition to this, spying the mail and e-mail is a criminal offence in most countries. In Spain it certainly is, punished with a minimun of two years in prison.
Google has spied on people over the years, and when taken to the courts it has delivered the most shamelessly hilarious lines... When confronted with the accusations of spying everybody's Wi-Fi traffic, they said "it was broadcasted", as if the Wi-Fi network of someones' home was the RKO. When confronted when the accusation of searching the content of e-mails, they said "as when you send a letter to a professor at the University, there's some aide that will read it first".
Don't be a fool. Care about your rights. Or if you don't, at least don't give away our rights, because the rest of us do care about them.
I referred to Takumi13 by mistake. It was onpon4 the naive one.
I agree that mass surveillance is an injustice, but it's absolutely true that the only reason Google is offering an email service without charging for it is because they can exploit your data. My point was not that you should accept it; my point was that if a service that costs money (as hosting emails does) is being offered to you without charging you money, chances are you are paying for it some other way, and you should keep that in mind.
And I understood it like so, from the beginning ... Ignacio.Agullo sorry but it's not cool to call someone of naive, I think.
I am a translator!
Nice list there. It's allways good to know. But I think I'll use that of the IceDove with email encription using gpg as sugested by onpon4. It's always something better than my actual position. Many thanks and still is a good link these one!
google made EIGHTY BILLION DOLLARS on our data! Please read this essay:
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/free-isnt-freedom-epstein-essay
see how evil they are.
Recently I think I saw an anti google group on a list at gnu social, I just might join it. :D
Keep in mind that thunderbird isn't in trisquel repositories. If you want to use this software, you'll have to install it's free fork icedove.
If you want to use GPG to encrypt your mail, and maybe pop3 protocol to automatically take your emails from the server, the use of icedove will be helpfull.
Having multiple email adresses is also a way to protect your privacy : you use each one for different purposes.
You also have this https://www.spamgourmet.com/index.pl
If I choose POP3 all the email will be in my disks! I assume that from time to time I'll have to wipe out my folder because I have very limited storage in my computer. How so you manage it? If you could give me an hint.
Many thanks in advance.
E-mails do not take much space. Here is the space occupied by more than 62,000 e-mails I sent and received along the last 8.5 years:
$ du -sh ~/.local/share/evolution/mail/
6,1G /home/banana/.local/share/evolution/mail/
It is nothing when compared to the size of a modern disk. And those disks have become quite cheap: nowadays, US$ 200 are enough to buy a USB 3 external hard drive with 3TB of space (~500 times the space the 62,000 e-mails occupy).
Where do you backup? Backups are a must!
To make your point even better, $200 is a bit on the high side for 3TB. I usually budget $25/TB (and that price will continue to come down as time goes on; it used to be more like $100/TB.) So I'd be looking more in the $75 range for a 3TB drive as of today.
Well, it depends on where you live. In Brazil, it actually is hard (though possible) to find a 3TB external drive for the equivalent of US$ 200.
Why are 3TB hard drives even being discussed? That's not even close to necessary, As your numbers show, even with tens of thousands of emails, that's less than 10 GB. The base OS never takes up more than around 16 GB, so anything 32 GB or more will do just fine.
Personally, I "only" use around 120 GB (out of a 500 GB hard drive), and almost all of that is videos. Emails don't even register.
You are right... but are external HDDs with less than 1TB of space still produced? There are flash memories but the unit cost (i.e., the cost of one GB) is higher and they are not as reliable.
I don't know, but even if they're not, they're still available and much cheaper. On Amazon, I found multiple 250-320 GB hard drives being sold for less than $20. If it were me, and I needed a hard drive, this is what I would be getting; why spend $100 for an additional 700 GB of space I'm not even going to use?
Although it does not really answer your question, https://www.fsf.org/resources/webmail-systems lists "Free Software Webmail Systems" that usually make privacy promises too.
@Takumi13 you may be interested in reading : Google Has Most of My Email Because It Has All of Yours
https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email-because-it-has-all-of-yours
&
OpenPGP Best Practices
https://riseup.net/en/security/message-security/openpgp/best-practices
Of course I am! Reading it right now... Today I installed Gnupg in the sequence of have installed and configure Icedove (not done yet some other programs are needed and are not in the trisquel repositories, so I have to do the installation manually, so I guess I'll have to postpone the Enigmail installation). But yes, I am educating my self on this Gnupg and private/public keys things, very important things!
many thanks for the precious links there!
p.s. Just a note I hope more people are reading those links, this is for the good of all not just me that made the relevant question. This is good information!
Hugs
Enigmail & gnupg2 are in the trisquel repo via your synaptic package manager :) thats all you need for Enignmail then the wizzards does it for you ;-)
thanks now I have Enigmail and Icedove completely configured and usable.
Many thanks to all the forum guys.
> I want to stop using anything related to google.
Congratulations, I hope more people will follow your example. We have to stop feeding these monsters.
I just deleted my whole google existence a few weeks ago and it has been nice. :) I've been using fastmail for a few years now with no problems and life without google has been completely fine!
I am a translator!
>I just deleted my whole google existence a few weeks ago and it has been nice.
Implying they really delete anything, but good for you. :)
Thanks! :) Haha yeah good point. I'm sure my data will forever be in one of google's data-centers buried secretly within some mountain. At least I'm not giving them any more data (well i think lol)!
As a layman I'm not sure if I'm following everything but: what about riseup.net as an alternative?
Edit: as I recall Riseup offers similar service as "googledocs".
I have been using Riseup for about a year now. So far I'm very pleased, rock-solid service. Be aware, they are a donation-based service and there's been a few times they had no choice but to ask everyone to donate something to help out (which I felt was quite reasonable). Someone has to pay somehow for bandwidth, servers and such.
ProtonMail is a free alternative (as far as I remember).
Another alternative might be Startpage's StartMail https://www.startmail.com/, though it appears that it is fee-based.
An additional fee-based service is VFEmail.
Between the suggestions already made and these, I'm sure you can choose something that will suit you, best of luck :)
I am a translator!
Riseup is great, their services and websites, all prime stuff :)
Of those providers on the websites I linked, apparently the only free as in beer one you can create an account, anonymously and without javascript is safe-mail, just had the account confirmed (took 2 days).
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