https://erkinekici.com/tags/email/Recent content in Email on Erkin EkiciHugoen<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CC BY-NC 4.0</a>Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://erkinekici.com/articles/comparing-email-privacy/Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://erkinekici.com/articles/comparing-email-privacy/<!-- Before publishing article, research those: Providers not yet in the comparison, in rough order of value: - Forward Email: open source, forwarding-first, cheap custom domains. Competes with Migadu at the low end and fills a slot nothing else covers. - Hey.com: highest reader recognition of this group. US jurisdiction, no zero-access encryption, 99 USD/yr. Expected to land near Fastmail/Hushmail. - cock.li: its servers were seized by German authorities (verify the year and jurisdiction). Every other entry's government-access score is predicted from published policy; this one has an observed outcome. - Purelymail: budget custom domains, alongside Migadu / MXroute / Namecheap. - Neomailbox: Swiss. Its ownership opacity is itself a scoreable finding. - Systemli: activist collective, overlaps Riseup and Disroot. - Autistici/Inventati: same overlap. Its police server-cloning incident (~2004) may work better as precedent inside Riseup or Disroot than as its own entry. - Thexyz: Canadian, 5 Eyes, little differentiation from Namecheap or Zoho. - Greenhost: hosting company, mail is a side product. - Pobox: Fastmail has owned it since 2015. Confirm it is still a distinct product before scoring it, otherwise it double-counts Fastmail. - OnMail: confirm the service still operates. Edison Software's history of monetising inbox-derived shopping data is the cleanest example of the failure mode this article is about, so it belongs in Out of scope if the service is gone. Facts left open because the source would not load, not because the provider is silent. One browser visit each: - Runbox: per-year request counts in the live transparency report table. - Iroco: per-GB price tiers for the Collective offer, behind a JS-rendered signup form. - Combell: accepted payment methods, never enumerated in its own docs. Also confirm which entry-tier price is current, the home page (4.49 then 2.99 EUR) or /email-hosting/basic (6.99 then 3.99 EUR). - Kolab Now: current /privacy and /pricing pages, both JS-rendered. The entry reconstructs its commitments from the ToS and a 2018 blog post. --> <h1 id="comparing-email-provider-privacy">Comparing email provider privacy</h1> <p>Which email provider actually keeps your mail private? It&rsquo;s easy to pick on cost or storage and then discover the host sits in a Five Eyes jurisdiction, holds the only key to your messages, never publishes a transparency report, and quietly turns over data on request. This article compares mainstream and privacy-focused email providers under a single <strong> <a href="#privacy-impact-framework" >Privacy Impact</a></strong> score. Every claim is sourced from the provider&rsquo;s own legal terms with a verbatim quote — and a <a href="#audit-a-provider-yourself" >reusable prompt</a> lets you score any provider not listed here.</p>