#fastmail

[jexetic]

Zoho Mail: too complicated

I was thinking about switching from Fastmail ($5/month) to Zoho Mail ($15/year). Obvious the price is great. However, at least for now, I’ve decided switching to Zoho is way too complicated.

The Fastmail interface is nice. I also recently discovered a Mac desktop app for it. It sync all my contacts to iOS perfectly, and the app there is good too. Overall, I’m extremely happy with it. I never have any issues with email, contacts, or calendar. I never really have to think about them. Fastmail just works. And $5 a month isn’t really that expensive.

Zoho mail would probably work. But the amount of settings worry me that transferring everything over won’t go completely smoothly. Part of this is just moving platforms in general. But Zoho just seems like it has way too much going on. Fastmail does a few things, and I think it does them really well. The app, in my opinion, doesn’t look as good as Fastmail.

I don’t know. I’m sure if I wanted to spend a few hours getting really familiar with Zoho mail, I could transfer my domains over and get everything setup to a point that I know it is stable. But I don’t feel like it is worth the time and thought.

[gemsreallife]

Step 1 of getting away from Google

I had to choose a new browser for my laptop since I plan to do away with Google. I've got my personal google accounts as well as the google suite that we use for the shop. I'm tired of reading about how they keep hiring ex-intelligence from Israel, so I'm going to stop giving them my money and my data.

I went with Vivaldi browser because of their distaste for AI. I'm extremely fed up with every single platform or service I use pushing it on me, so I'm actively walking away from companies who are doing it.

Also, I created my new email account! I wanted to sign into Vivaldi so I could keep track of my bookmarks and things, so I had to make that choice. I selected Fastmail because they offer a minimalist inbox with no ads. It's not free, but I'm willing to pay for the pleasure of not having things sold to me.

Now every day I am logging a few things into the new browser and updating my emails. I'm also weighing whether I can live with a dumb phone when I am not traveling. I'm currently in the process of stripping away apps I don't need from my smartphone.

Now I've got a lot things switched over, and I can use this browser for my work. There will be a long process of taking information out of my old accounts. I'm not expecting it to all be done quickly, there are decades of emails and data in there. But it feels really good to have moved a lot of the essentials!

[geddyqueer]

i'm working on exporting/backing up my tumblr (you should do this too). order of operations: download my blog archive onto a spare harddrive; go through my fic tags and copy anything not already cleaned up/archived onto ao3; go through my various fandom tags and copy any meta into a document which i'll eventually crosspost to dreamwidth; go through my rush archiving tag and download any pictures that aren't yet archived on my computer. really cursing my 2018 self for not doing this when i nuked the old blog, but whatever. we can only move forward.

[undyinglantern]

so what’s a good alternative to gmail?

[ailurinae]

Free Protonmail has a lot of limits though, really only good for minor things, you can't do many rules to sort into folders etc. Plus the UX isn't super great (though much better than in the past). For me free Protonmail would never be usable for my main email.

If you can afford to pay I highly recommend Fastmail or other paid email. Paid protonmail could work, but even then other ones have better UX.

Are there any email services you recommend? I'd love to ditch my gmail and maybe my outlook too.

Protonmail! I recommend protonmail!

There is some prior history where you'll see people complaining that protonmail shared customer data but the data they shared is data that is 100% necessary to be unencrypted as a result of email protocol and cannot be hidden even in extremely secure email (that protocol is why email is inherently insecure and if you want a secure messaging tool just use signal). As a result of the subpoena that forced them to share that data, they changed their retention policy in favor of keeping less data to better protect users.

WEIRD side issue: I've created a few online shopping accounts that did not allow me to create an account with a protonmail address; it's worthwhile to keep a throwaway gmail for exactly those kinds of things and those kinds of things only.

[the-daughter-of-lilith]

Things to consider in regards to your privacy, remaining connected, and informed:

- Invest in a burner and Faraday bag if possible

- Use a separate identity on platforms (fakepersongenerator.com)

- Utilize throw away emails for sign ups (FastMail)

- Consider reformatting your device for a privacy focused OS like Graphene

- Utilize privacy focused apps like Signal and ProtonMail

- Keep up to date with news through sites like SoylentNews or GroundNews

- Use Brave or Firefox w/ privacy extensions

- Review privacy settings and permissions (Apply the Zero-Trust principal)

- Use a VPN that's not US based (ProtonVPN, Mullvad, etc.)

- Remove location metadata from your photo settings

- Consider all images can be geolocated

- Use a Virtual Credit Card (VCC) for purchases

- Use personal data removal services like Spokeo or Intelius

- Do not enable biometrics

- Airplane mode is your friend

- Join privacy based communities like r/privacy

[sab-cat]

March 27, 2025

The idea behind email masking is simple. The masking service gives you a randomized address you can use as a decoy instead of your actual email. It can be a series of unrelated words, or a string of letters and numbers. When someone sends a message to the burner email, it will be automatically routed to your address without anyone knowing.

Providers include privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo’s Email Protection service, Firefox Relay from browser maker Mozilla, email service FastMail and independent services like Addy.io. The encrypted service Proton Mail offers email masking with its password manager and standalone SimpleLogin service. There are many others....

False solutions

There are other so-called hacks that you might have heard about.

You could set up a throwaway account with a free email service like Gmail or Yahoo. But it’s tedious to do this.

Some Gmail users add a plus sign and an extra phrase or combination of characters between their username and the @ sign. It helps track who’s sharing your address as well as filter messages.

But “from a privacy standpoint, that does nothing,” said Yen. “Because people can just simply take away the plus and get your original address.”

[donjuaninhell]

Man the Gmail spam filter is really starting to shit the bed and slip up more frequently, I'm seeing three or four obvious spam e-mails slip through into my inbox every week or thereabouts. Maybe I should buckle down and sign up for a paid e-mail service like Protonmail or Fastmail.

Also Johnson Roberts is a great fake name.

[kennak]

GCP (Google Cloud Platform) で働くことになると言われたとき、私は乗り気ではありませんでした。 私生活では Google 製品には近づかないようにしています。 Fastmail の場合は Gmail、DuckDuckGo の検索、iOS の場合は Android、Firefox の場合は Chrome をオフにしました。 それはプライバシーとは何の関係もありません。実際、Google が私の個人データをどのように使用するかをかなりよく理解しており、イデオロギー レベルでそれに反対していないと感じています。 機能面で私に十分な利益が得られるのであれば、個人データの使用について十分な情報に基づいた決定を下すことに問題はありません。 私は個人的な生活ではほとんど Google サービスから離れています。Google がどのように意思決定を行っているのか理解できないからです。 私は Reader や Google の墓場のようなものを殺すことについて話しているのではありません。 企業は何かを試みますが、うまくいかないことがよくあります。それが人生です。 それは、基礎技術がどのように認識されているかさえ分からないということです。 Google 社員に大きく依存している Golang は うまく いっているでしょうか? 彼らはそれに満足しているのでしょうか、それとも危険にさらされているのでしょうか？ Flutter は終焉に近づいているのでしょうか、それとも繁栄しているのでしょうか? 彼らは Gmail を気に入っているのでしょうか、それとも今月 Gmail を担当する幹部からの人気がなくなってしまったのでしょうか? Google 内で何かがうまくいっているのか、それともうまくいっていないのかを把握できないため、Google のスタックを自分の生活に取り入れることに不安を感じています。

GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine) レビュー

[jexetic]

I can’t decide if I want to pay for email.

I’m having trouble. Lately, I don’t love monthly subscriptions. I wrote a post about how I was considering cancelling Spotify. Ultimately, I’ve decided to keep Spotify for now, because I like being able to organize my music into playlists and having access to those playlists on whatever device I’m using at the time, whether it’s my gaming PC or my phone or my laptop. Now, Fastmail is on the chopping block.

I kind of like having email at my domain. One of the benefits of paying for email is, as long as I’m willing to continue paying for my domain (which is a cheap yearly price) and somewhere to host my email (which is Fastmail, for now), I’d never have to switch my email address. I can use one email (or aliases at my domain, if I feel like it) to give to people and create online accounts with, and never need to worry about getting a new address to people or updating accounts. And that is kind of nice.

The thing is, I don’t email that many actual people. It’s just not one of my main methods of actually communicating. My email is significantly more often used to get information from companies, and to login to my accounts online. I send a lot less email than I receive. So I’m thinking that maybe sending email from my domain isn’t actually that important. I could just use a gmail address if I need to actually send emails to a person.

But Fastmail also isn’t that expensive. It’s half the price of Spotify for new customers ($6/month), and right now I’m only actually paying $5 monthly because they haven’t switched me to the new pricing yet. That is really not very much money even at the new price. And it’s kind of nice having all my email at my domain and having the ability to send from my domain if I need to. Because I do give my custom domain email to anybody that needs to email me. I recently moved into a new apartment, and I used my custom domain email to do all of the communicating before signing the lease. That’s not something I’m doing every day or even every month, but it is something that I want to have zero issues with. So maybe the $5 a month is worth the peace of mind knowing that I’m not relying on either a Gmail address that I could lose access to, or some clunky forwarding solution to keep using my own domain without paying for actual hosting of the email. 

I know for sure I want to be able to keep giving a custom domain email for online accounts so I don’t risk losing access to all my online accounts if I lost access to whatever email account I chose to make that isn’t at my domain. I just don’t know if I want to continue to actually host the email for the relatively little cost, or axe the monthly subscription completely and setup some kind of forwarding solution for that. Sometimes being able to send from my domain is definitely nice… I’m just tired of subscriptions… 🤔 I don’t know…

[zohaibyter]

Fastmail replaced my Gmail and I'm never going back

Nathan Drescher / Android Authority I had the digital equivalent of an epiphany the other day. I opened my inbox and saw…email. Only email. There were no ads, no AI-generated summaries, and no prompts. It was a strange, yet welcome, feeling after years of using Gmail. Checking my inbox no longer felt like an argument with an algorithm. That’s because I switched to Fastmail earlier this year. It…

[mauve-bric-a-brac]

Email alternatives to Gmail

Tuta: Based in Germany, Tuta offers an end-to-end encrypted email service (with encrypted calendar!). Tuta Mail recently shipped an email importer, making it easier to migrate away from your current provider. The free plan offers encryption, 1 GB of storage, and one calendar, and paid plans start at €3 per month. The company has taken a strong stance against incorporating AI in its email client.

Fastmail: Based in Australia, Fastmail has been operating since 1999. While it doesn’t offer end–to-end encryption, it’s no slouch when it comes to security. It doesn’t offer a free option, but plans start at a reasonable €6 per month.

Proton: Based in Switzerland, Proton has long been synonymous with privacy. What started as an end-to-end encrypted email service has expanded to offer a calendar, wallet, VPN, password manager, and cloud storage, making it a pretty compelling Google competitor. (That being said, we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out their CEO’s recent praise of Trump.)

[marvinthemillennialmouse]

One trick I use--because my email provider allows this--is to add something to the email address I use for an account somewhere.

Example: Website - WhosGotTheEgg.whatever Account email: Marvin+GotTheEgg@(provider).(domain)

The email will still go to your main address, but it will still show that "+whatever" so you can see which address it was sent to.

This is called "Plus Addressing" or "Sub-addressing" and a lot of the major providers have this feature enabled: Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, Fastmail

You can check to see if your provider allows it by sending yourself a test email. A lot of "powerusers" do this for a variety of reasons.

It makes it harder for someone to guess what your account's email address happens to be--even if they know the address base.

You can can check that 'have I been pwned' site for several email addresses to see which of your accounts have been breached with more precision.

You can filter your inbox by that +"whatever" so you can shunt stuff off into a folder or label it or whatever to help organize your messages.

You can actually look through your spam (if you get any) and see which companies have sold your email address, in case you want to take action with respect to having your data removed.

You can more quickly and easily catch scam emails in their tracks. Example: You get an email saying someone is trying to change your password over on Facebook. Your Facebook account email is: Marvin+Facebook@(provider).(domain) But the email address it's coming from isn't the one you use for Facebook but rather something like: Marvin+Twitter@(provider).(domain) or just Marvin@(provider).(domain) Because the scammer isn't using the ACTUAL address you linked to Facebook, you can know immediately that it's a phishing attempt. Report and delete.

Most websites should allow you to use a Plus Address email, but some may not. Your mileage may vary.

And sure, it can be a bit of a pain in the ass, checking numerous different email addresses, and you do run the risk of forgetting what you added to your email address for that specific website, but this little tactic has been a godsend for me.

Sometimes, it's just a matter of adding a few extra steps that can make all the difference, because the people that get your data from these breaches now have those few extra steps they have to pass to actually scam you.

No system is perfect, but you can sure make it more difficult for bad actors to get you.

Change your Tumblr password now.

Humongous data breach just happened, with loads upon loads of sites being affected. Tumblr's among those. Also on the list is Wattpad for you fanfic people out there- among many, many other places.

There's a searchable list at the bottom of the article. Highly recommend scrolling or searching through, seeing what places you may be on that have been affected, and securing all your accounts. This thing's kind of big.

If you know people on any of the sites affected, let them know about this too, and spread the article around.

[lukewarmguayoyo]

Degoogle with me 💕

General resources:

Personal Recs

Gmail:

Protonmail and Tutanota are IMO the best gmail alternatives. I have however heard very good things about Fastmail.

Google Search:

Startpage: Google results without all the BS

Ecosia: Sustainability focus, Results from Google and/or bing.

Qwant: Privacy focused, Bing results + their own Index

Brave Search: Completely independent index, my personal favorite.

Browser:

Librewolf: Privacy focused Firefox fork

Waterfox: Same as librewolf, but with a very nice mobile app as well

Zen Browser: Similar to the Mac exclusive Arc browser, Privacy focused with a lot of very nice features. Very aesthetically pleasing. Available on windows, Mac AND Linux! One of my personal favorites.

Floorp: Japanese browser based on Firefox, very similar to Vivaldi browser, another one of my personal favourites.

Mullvad Browser: Privacy focused, open source, free, developed with Tor! Best used in combination with Mullvad VPN

Photos:

Ente: Privacy focused cloud photo storage, encrypts everything before backing up, doesn't take forever to load like proton drive does. Very affordable. Has some fun features similar to Google Photos, but running locally on the device.

Drive:

Nexcloud: Best alternative but self hosting. Worth getting into self hosting for, IMO. Comes with Collabora too as a Docs replacement, which is fantastic.

Filen.io: Haven't tested myself, allegedly next best thing to self hosting. Encrypted and client side.

Syncthing: Not a cloud service, but it may do what you need, syncthing is a continuous file synchronization program, meaning it syncs files in two devices in real time, not storing these files in any server, it just matches them across the devices.

Youtube:

Arguably the hardest part of de-googling.

Grayjay is, in my opinion, the best solution for this case.

Maps:

Another really hard one, I'm personally still testing alternatives. As I find navigation to be quite more sensitive, I don't feel comfortable recommending any I haven't personally tried and trust myself. As of right now, HERE we go has been working decent enough for me as someone who Doesn't Drive.

Everything I personally recommended that's not a phone app also works on Linux, so if you wanna ditch Microsoft too while you're at it, these should help you in the process.

I'm fairly certain I've forgotten some categories of interest, feel free to ask for anything else, though looking it up on the subreddit will most likely bring up just about every alternative.

And that's about it from me! Hope this helped at least a little bit, good luck on ditching Google!