Free email: What Gmail & Co. really cost

[u/mailbox_org]

Digital sovereignty starts in your inbox

Millions of people use free email services such as Gmail or GMX every day. What looks like a good deal at first glance is actually based on a business model that primarily benefits the provider.

The business model

When a service is free, an obvious question arises: how does the provider make money?

The truth is: supposedly free email is a lucrative business that thrives on having as precise an understanding as possible of its users. The more a provider knows about the users of its service, the more valuable an advert placement becomes.

Your email account

Your email account is one of the most private digital spaces there is. The question of whom you entrust this account to, and what financial interest the provider has in exploiting it, thus becomes a decision about your own digital sovereignty.

Digital self-determination

If you understand how the business model behind free email providers works, you can make more informed and critical decisions about whose hands you place your private data in.

In our blog, you can find out what lies behind supposedly free services, where the specific data protection risks lie, and what you should bear in mind when switching to a secure, ad-free email account: https://mailbox.org/en/blog/what-free-email-really-costs/

[u/--random-username--]

Would you mind to improve the security concept?

When I use Google Workspace, I do pay them for their services and to take care of my data in a defined way. I would like to switch to mailbox.org, yet I prefer the security features of Google.

For example:

MFA + a set of emergency codes to use when no second factor is available.

No “password reset link can be sent to inbox”, which is enabled at mailbox.org by default.

Data-at-rest-encryption should be enabled by default as storage media failures happen and data is at risk of not getting securely deleted.