I'm in the process of getting rid of as much Google-related stuff as I can. Yesterday I already started with moving everything I had stored in Drive (backups and other stuff) to my Nextcloud and the like. Now I want to change my main email, the one I'm going to use for, my accounts here in the fediverse and so on. So I'm looking for alternatives.
At the moment, apart from Gmail, I also have an Outlook (from when it was hotmail), a Proton account (though in view of their CEO's recent statements I may not keep it) and a new one on Disroot.
Which of the aforementioned services works best for a normie not well versed in cybersecurity like me?
Do you know of any alternatives I'm not aware of (I've heard of Tuta, but nothing else)?
The stuff with Proton... It depends on what you need. Just an alternative to degoogle your life, it'll work for now, but they may slide into a more pro Broligarchy stance in years to come. For some people, they're still a little too invasive for what they want.
Email is inherently insecure, so its best to lock down a few and just fluidly transition around as you need.
I am using Tuta and am very happy with it. I like the feature where you can send encrypted Mails to anyone and they're unlocked via a password (i dont know if others have it). Important for me at least is, that they're based in germany.
I would probably stick with Proton for the time.. Gmail isn't private, Outlook I see as being about the same as Gmail.. just blue.. and then Disroot from this Reddit post suggests it is not encrypted at rest.
Andy Yen is also Pro-Ukraine, Pro- Hong Kong protesters, anti Russia censorship.
(And I think he donated money to Ukraine during the Russian Invasion of Ukraine if I recall correctly)
Andy Yen said stupid things, but he isn't American to know the fact that just because Democrats suck, doesn't mean that Republicans are any better. Its not like Andy Yen went full "Elon" mode and seig heiled, Andy Yen is a right-wing Libertarian that have no idea what he's talking about.
I've been using mailbox.org for a while, and I'm happy with it. It costs 1€ per month at it's lowest. They have also been developing an open source video conferencing thing (included in the 1€), which from my experience is much better than jitsi.
I’m planning on moving to mailbox.org eventually. I was going to keep using an outlook.com until my 365 ran out but they are currently shoving copilot buttons all over the UI. I’ve been wanting to use my own domain anyway.
I'm also considering alternatives to Proton myself. I've seen the privacy-oriented communities give a bunch of options. Search "Privacy" and you'll see them listed. Tuta probably isn't bad as a paid account but the free app left a lot to be desired the last time I checked (no message search or sorting like Proton).
The process will not be abrupt but gradual. I will stay with an email service that seems to be the most functional for me and I will change one by one first the accounts and services I use the most and then the ones I use the least. When my old email is unlinked to most things in my life, I'll leave it abandoned for about half a year or so, to adapt, and then I'll delete it definitively (if it's possible without anything exploding or Google sending a Drone to kill me lol).
When I switched away from gmail, I found it to overall be pretty straightforward. Whenever I would log into a service, I update the email. Any service I didn't log into clearly doesn't matter enough to me. My gmail is now a spam account for old shit I don't care about.
It's the only service I don't self-hosted, although I do backup my email on my home server. Email protocols don't tolerate downtime, if your server is temporarily unreachable you won't get messages and people will probably assume the email address/domain isn't even valid.
@photonic_sorcerer@NONE_dc It's not something you'll get perfect straight out of the box, but receive only is fairly straightforward. The difficulties come when you want to send something that won't get immediately rejected or thrown into the spam box.
If your server goes down you'll miss incoming emails, and IMO residential ISP and power service isn't reliable enough for your main email address. If mail can't get delivered people get the impression you gave them a fake email address, which can be more than embarrassing.
Edit: Yeah this is the same Purism scam company, scroll down to the bottom, click the website, it redirects to the webpage where you buy the Librem 5. Lol this company is a scam company.