"Gmail alternative"
Email. Just say email. It's email.
this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2025
72 points (93.9% liked)
Privacy
1821 readers
95 users here now
Welcome! This is a community for all those who are interested in protecting their privacy.
Rules
PS: Don't be a smartass and try to game the system, we'll know if you're breaking the rules when we see it!
- Be civil and no prejudice
- Don't promote big-tech software
- No reposting of news that was already posted
- No crypto, blockchain, NFTs
- No Xitter links (if absolutely necessary, use xcancel)
Related communities:
Some of these are only vaguely related, but great communities.
- !opensource@programming.dev
- !selfhosting@slrpnk.net / !selfhosted@lemmy.world
- !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !drm@lemmy.dbzer0.com
founded 4 months ago
MODERATORS
The word you are looking for is 'webmail'.
Sadly "Gmail" is what a lot of people know mail as. They're not even aware anything other than Gmail and outlook exists. I at least always have friends and family looking at me weird every time I tell them my mail is the name of my custom domain, some even think I'm joking with em 😅
It's a sad reality.
Mozilla needs to fix their poor image before trying email.
Frankly, after the last few years I don't trust them with a browser, let alone email.
Not happening. I already pay for an email service that has been privacy centric from the start, and has none of the bad news Mozilla does.
Mozilla has flat out lied to us about changes in Firefox with "No, you just misunderstood what we're doing" . Why should anyone trust them with email?
Pound sand Mozilla.
Despite the headline, this is being done by Thunderbird, not Mozilla
Thunderbird is completely independent of the Mozilla Corporation, the makers of Firefox. But the Mozilla Coperation[sic] supports Thunderbird by hosting many of the Thunderbird infrastructure and resources.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-faq#w_who-makes-thunderbird
Yea sounds like too closely related imo. Probably best to keep away.
I like Firefox
Well, the alternative is worse, so I am still on Firefox
Try Firefox forks like Librewolf, Waterfox, Floorp that are not associated with Mozilla.
Agree, the trust is lost and they did nothing to help their case.
I've been staying away from Firefox forks mainly because the risk with delayed security updates. Don't know how's the reality of it, maybe larger forks are reliable but it's a bigger risk with smaller teams behind the product
I am sick of tech press regurgitating press releases
Anything not selfhosted and/or decentralized, including VPNs, is, by design, not 100% privacy-first.
The service being decentralized doesn't really do anything about privacy, I'd even imagine it being harder to implement privacy controls on decentralized services.
Also the potential privacy "gains" from VPN rely on the fact that there's very large number of users using that service, making it harder to connect the dots. This basically means that self-hosting it for privacy is a bad idea, though it always depends on your threat model.
Lemmy is decentralized, FOSS and can be self-hosted, but it's absolutely not even near "privacy-first" design besides allowing pseudonymous sign-up.
Now thundermail promises some level of privacy, but we're yet to see much. Are the mailbox databases encrypted with customer owned keys, and mailflow logs not collected? That'd be my first question to determine if they're truly privacy-first.
Thundermail -- not to be confused with Mozilla's decades-old Thunderbird email client -- will be an email service similar to Gmail that can be used within Thunderbird and on the web. With Thundermail, you can use either a Thundermail email address or a custom domain. Also, this new 100% open-source email service will never use your email to train AI, flood your inbox with ads, or collect and sell your data. (So maybe it's not that similar to Gmail.) That's a big win for those who are concerned about privacy.
Huh interesting, Mozilla and Proton are having more and more overlap. More choice is a good thing?
Okay so its not like Gmail, but is free
So how it paid for?
at the beginning, we plan to offer these services for free to consistent community contributors. Other users will have to pay for access.
Where does it say it's free?
Proton?
No, they don't support the Trump administration
They're a swedish company. I don't think this would have any impact. Besides, I don't think it's a good reason to dump on then just because of that.
They are a Swiss company first of all. Second, the CEO praised the Trump administration for being "anti-BigTech", which is as far from reality as it could get, then tried to explain without even remotely admitting it is completely false. So he is either totally clueless or in bad faith. Then there was a huge wave of posts and articles about how he was misunderstood and how Proton is a nice and good company who operates for the good of mankind. In my opinion each and all of these facts are more than enough to stay away from Proton and don't let them anywhere near my personal data.
Hm… I see.