This was a tough decision, having used Gmail since 2007/2008. However, I had to draw the line and stop giving Google my data for free.
The problem with email is that everything is transmitted in plain text. Technically, Google can store every message you receive and know everything, and U.S. agencies can request access to that data (this include also EU citizens under the EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Frameworks).
For someone like me, who cares about privacy and runs as much as possible on my own home servers, that felt like way too much.
So I decided to switch to another provider, one that respects privacy a bit more. Of course, this meant no longer “paying” with my personal data, but instead paying the actual price of the email service.
The beginning
Let me start by saying: I use email in a very basic way. I send and receive a lot of messages (at least 50 a day), but they’re plain text/html emails with no attachments or fancy features. I couldn’t care less about the rest of the “suite", like notes, contacts, calendars and all that extra stuff.
So, after a bit of research, I narrowed it down to three different services:
Mailbox.org
Proton Mail
Tutanota
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