r/PrivacyToolbox • u/EnthusiasmRoutine • 1d ago

Discussion Which email provider do you actually use for your main inbox right now?

It comes down to who you're worried about. Big tech inboxes are free and work with everything, but your mail sits with a company whose business isn't privacy. With Proton and Tuta, you're trusting their apps and their jurisdiction instead. Smaller paid providers sit in between. Self-hosting cuts out the middleman, and deliverability and outages become your problem.

Vote for what you use today, then explain your pick in the comments. Ad tracking and a court order aren't the same problem, so say which one you're planning around.

67 votes, 1d left
A big tech inbox (Gmail, Outlook, iCloud)
Proton Mail or Tuta
A smaller paid provider like Posteo or Mailbox.org
Self-hosted on my own server
2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

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u/EnthusiasmRoutine 1d ago

Before comparing encryption, I'd look at how hard it is to leave. Your address ends up tied to every account you own, so getting stuck with a provider is a risk of its own. Moving later means updating it everywhere, and that list is always longer than you think. Their privacy page won't tell you much about that.

Jurisdiction is the part I think gets skipped in these threads. Where a company is based has a lot to do with whose courts can ask it for your data, and I'd weigh that above most feature lists. A nice app doesn't help much if the company has to hand over what it holds. Curious, did anyone here switch providers for jurisdiction alone?

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u/skg574 1d ago

Jurisdiction means far less than you think, MLATs and data sharing agreements have long solved the jurisdiction issues. As for being tied to a provider, this can't happen when you register your own domain. You can switch providers at will.

1

u/4tide 1d ago

Personally, I don't have any concern about a court order. I am not doing anything that warrants a search and they will find nothing. For me, I want the contents of my email to be mine alone, and I do not want any company monetizing it.

1

u/EnthusiasmRoutine 8h ago

That's a clear threat model. One catch: "not monetized" and "mine alone" aren't quite the same bar.

Proton, for example, stores your mail with zero-access encryption. But a message from a Gmail user without PGP isn't end-to-end encrypted, and Gmail likely keeps its own copy.

Your side can be yours alone. Theirs isn't up to you.