Hey all, I’ve been taking my digital privacy and security much more seriously this year, but the one thing I’ve been stuck on and feels overwhelming to me is email. So I wanted to know what do you guys use or what practices do you follow? Do you keep a separate email or alias for every single account, or just compartmentalize, like one email address for online shopping, one for business, one personal correspondence, and etc.
What services do you use? Right now I have a free Tutanota and ProtonMail account but haven’t decided which one to pay for, if either. ProtonMail makes me iffy with the amount of controversy and debate that has come out of them in recent years even though it comes with a lot of other nice stuff like cloud storage and a vpn. Tutanota I just dislike the fact I can’t add it to third party mail apps like Thunderbird, but this might not be a deal breaker. I know there are others, so what do you guys use? I don’t need something to protect my emails from the NSA or organizations like that but definitely something more private and secure than gmail. Thanks.
It really depends on who you “fear”. I mostly use Forefox Relay and have chosen Google (Gmail, Android, etc) as the “devil I know”. If I end up in a state actor’s cross hairs (TLA, etc) I assume I’m a meat popsicle. Mostly I’m trying to thwart internet randos/vigilante and marketing firms that want to violate my privacy and I think Firefox Relay is enough to trip them up.
I don’t view Google as escapable and I think they are under a lot of scrutiny. My view of Google is they want to collect and keep data and sell access as a service without losing their own control of the data. I don’t see them having much incentive to sell raw data to others.
I have a custom domain name I now use for work-related contacts and societies. Currently it runs Google Apps since I don’t want to deal with spamlists etc. But I can easily move it elsewhere with minimal interruption. I almost did during the recent Google Apps drama. I recently changed jobs after being at my previous employer for about 8 years and learned it’s a real pain/time sink to chase down contacts otherwise when you move employers. And my new employer has draconian BOFH email retention policies that maybe make sense for employee email but are just hell for my professional but not employer-tied identity/activities. I don’t use it for work that belongs to [current employer], it’s for work networking things like society memberships, certification agencies, working groups, society committees, etc. Basically work that would apply at any of my employers and would move with me elsewhere.