[tor-talk] Email provider for privacy-minded folk

[Joe Btfsplk]

On 2/11/2013 10:04 PM, grarpamp wrote:
>>   * Privacy-conscious (don't parse my emails to target advertisements to
>> Anonymous-/encryption-type services offered by HushMail or Safe-Mail
> That rules out gmail, yahoo, hotmail/live.
> Few services will state they don't, and statements are no guarantee.
> Privacy (OpenPGP, etc) is your responsibility, there is no trust.
> There are activist mail providers out there, you will have to look for them.
> They probably won't willingly shovel your data to the mine, but still.
>
>>   * Free would be nice (I don't want to lose my email account if I lose my
> The rest are just shopping items, but when you do find one, consider
> sending them a donation and a note about why you chose them once
> in while. Because with no ads and no selling and mining you, they need
> to make their money the normal way. Try giving $5/yr to fastmail and
> don't abuse them in return. Since you don't seem to have a major issue
> with paying, that should work, as does their mail.
>
Whether a provider is "good" depends partly on one's expectations. For 
$5 you can get a Fastmail.fm acct w/ no ads.  But if you're looking for 
your mail to be deleted from logs quickly (or possibly ever), after you 
delete it from their server, look elsewhere.  Their official policy is 
it may not be practical for it to be deleted from all logs.  It depends 
on what one wants / needs, in terms of privacy.

Other providers "rarely keep backup logs," & some like Lavabit, "usually 
delete logs of incoming mail within 7 days.  Records of outgoing mail 
are deleted as soon as they are delivered."

Like you said, (true) privacy is the users responsibility.