[ta98789878]

Any lawyers care to comment on this claim of theirs?

It has been pointed out to us that since we have our servers in the US, we are under US jurisdiction. We do not believe this to be the case.

https://blog.fastmail.com/2013/10/07/fastmails-servers-are-i...

As a non-lawyer I would expect the US to be able to serve their host with a warrant to get whatever data the judge said they could have.

[joering2]

You are correct but from lawyer perspective (IANAL btw) it is important they use the word "believe". As I was explained by a friend who is attorney, if you never had experience with certain law, like in this case perhaps never been subpoena for records by US, then you have a right to say you "believe" something is not the case. This is still not deceiving statement. But the moment you have been proven wrong by US Gov for example, your claim would have to be removed.

on FastMail alone I did not like how slow it is. I was testing them and Protonmail at the same time and was very impress how simple it is to setup my multiple domains/users on Proton and how fast encryption/decryption works. And Protonmail "[...] is outside of US and EU jurisdiction, only a court order from the Cantonal Court of Geneva or the Swiss Federal Supreme Court can compel us to release the extremely limited user information we have.[...] [1]

https://protonmail.com/security-details

Full disclosure: I don't work for Proton; I'm just their happy mailer :)

EDIT: Slow I mean their GUI comparing to Proton. It might be more the number of extensions I have to block or limit different shenanigans such as AdBlock etc.. but needless to say, Proton does not have that problem.

[eridius]

What do you mean, how slow it is? I've been using FastMail for a few years now and it's always struck me as being very fast.

[jnagro]

name checks out.

[jnagro]

They are in Australia I believe, still part of the "five eyes" https://www.privacytools.io/#ukusa

[atbentley]

Their privacy page has some notes on this

> We do not participate in, or co-operate with, any kind of blanket surveillance or monitoring. (We also point out that Australia does not have any equivalent to the US National Security Letter, so we cannot be forced to do something without being allowed to disclose it.)

So while they cannot harvest data and then share it in bulk, they can access data in individual cases and share it with law enforcement.

https://www.fastmail.com/about/privacy.html

[brightball]

I don't know if it will answer their specific claim, but you can read Protonmail's explanation for being based in Switzerland here if you're curious: https://protonmail.com/blog/switzerland/

[bluGill]

They can get the data, but the data is encrypted so there isn't much that can be done. (unless they can guess your password, which is possible but hard).

At the very least, anything that the US would try would be noticed by someone who is not subject to US gag orders. Potentially they can get Australia to provide those orders, but now it is an international thing, which is more difficult than the US going alone.