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Are private email providers worth it?
(lemmy.zip)
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this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2025
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Privacy
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Well, the way I see it is it's like taking candy from someone who says "I put razorblades in this candy" versus somebody who says "I did not put razors in this candy." Sure, maybe the latter is lying but are you going to pick the former? There's really no viable way to run your own email server with actual delivery anymore, and it's clearnet in transit anyway, so I don't really see the downside in "trusting" Proton or another provider enough to pick that over Google. To get any benefit, you would need to move things over though. If you're unwilling to do that work, the reality is you're just on Google and Microsoft and training their AIsand it is what it is. If you think about it, though, even if you move half of your logins to Proton or Tuta or whatever instead of Google, you are depriving them of half of what they know about you going forward.
SMTP relays make IP reputation a complete non-issue. As long as you aren't sending hundreds of emails a day, there are multiple free options (free tier, subsidized by paying corporate customers who send a lot of emails).
I think a Proton or Tuta is a better option for most people than dealing with a transactional SMTP provider, which is almost certainly selling all outgoing email contents for AI training at least if not even more nefarious things.
That's a big assumption, and that kind of behavior is specifically prohibited in the privacy policy of most, if not all SMTP relay providers, as well as GDPR regulations. If you think they're violating their own privacy policy and government regulations and doing it anyway, there's no reason to think Proton isn't as well, or any other email provider, so that's kind of a non-starter argument IMO. Plus this only applies to outgoing emails, not incoming. I don't know about you, but I send about 5-10 outgoing emails a year, there's not much to be gleaned there. Incoming is what you'd want to protect more than anything.
The thing that razorblades have real tangible consequences. I'm talking about something you can't even verify. Sire, in principle those that claim not to do something are better, but with that logic, WhatsApp, telegram, and the Facebook messenger are perfectly valid communication platforms and all 3 claim e2ee.