Toolbox 6, articles to read and try
Duration: approx. 60 min
Lesson: Here you will get to know safe and trustworthy providers of email, contacts and calendars

The use of e-mail has become less important due to social networks and instant messengers (e.g. Signal or Telegram). Nevertheless, in many public and private situations it is essential to have an e-mail address, contact details and a calendar.

And even if e-mail providers such as Google or Microsoft are user-friendly and very popular, it is more the small, specialized providers where your data (even regardless of encryption) is in good and safe hands.

These providers:

  • see us as customers and not as products
  • do not have our e-mails searched by algorithms for advertising purposes
  • only work together with investigating authorities if there is a given reason (e.g. a court order).
  • are pioneers who provide an infrastructure that is privacy-oriented and can also bypass data retention without cause

The two trustworthy providers I presented offer not only e-mail but also contact data maintenance and calendar management. You can keep this data in sync between all devices.

protonmail

https://protonmail.com/de/ – ProtonMail from Switzerland has been trying to rethink e-mail in a really new and simple way since 2014. There is an app for all mobile platforms and a web interface for desktop. This secures the connection from the end device to the Proton headquarters. Emails between Proton customers are automatically encrypted. Mail traffic with non-Proton customers can be encrypted normally with Open-PGP.

In addition to email, Proton also offers a calendar and a VPN service.

Mailbox.org

https://mailbox.org/de/produkte Mailbox.org (officially founded in 2014) comes from Berlin and has experience in e-mail hosting, Unix and encryption since 1989. mailbox.org also has an excellent international reputation for security, encryption and reliability.

Mailbox.org offers web access and includes email , calendar and contact management in one account. One can effortlessly keep emails, calendar and contacts in sync across all devices (Win, Mac, Linux, Phone, Pad). With this you can, for example, completely bypass the use of iCloud for synchronization on Apple devices.

E-mail traffic and the mailbox can be protected with PGP encryption.

Mailbox.org has also been operating its own exit node in the Tor anonymization network since 2016. This allows customers to protect themselves from data retention without cause .

Sources, tips and links for further reading

PrivacyGuides, Private Email Providers , 09/05/2021

TechRadarPro, Best secure email provider of 2021 , 05/05/2021

The Wall Street Journal, The App Developer Sifting Through Your GMail , 05/05/2021

Mailbox.org, Using the mailbox.org Tor Exit Node , 05/05/2021

Mailbox.org, Security and Encryption , 05/05/2021