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by spencerflem 517 days ago
Fwiw, I had a similar experience and ended up switching to Fastmail. Less private which is a shame, but still achieves degoogling
4 comments

My own experience of migrating my calendars and contacts from iCloud to Fastmail went seamlessly. What's more, the user experience on my iPhone went pretty much unchanged, including in Apple's own Calendar and Contacts apps, which has been very nice. Would recommend!

(It's worth noting for the privacy conscious that Australia, where Fastmail is based, has a truly terrible set of laws when it comes to government snooping, so if your threat model includes the Australian government, probably best to avoid Fastmail.)

IIRC, Australia also shares data with the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand.
And Australia is Five Eyes, which means FBI/DHS/DEA/ATF all have warrantless access to everything in Fastmail via FAA702.
Seems to be a useful summary of 702 from a USA perspective: https://cdt.org/insights/section-702-what-it-is-how-it-works...
This is out of date. We know now from multiple different sources that 702 is routinely used illegally to spy on US persons as well.

It has also regularly been renewed and is still in full effect, and appears that it will remain so in perpetuity. It is the #1 most used source in US intelligence gathering.

According to the article, Section 702 sunset on December 31, 2017.
FWIW, A good compromise between Proton and FastMail is Infomaniak kMail and/or kSuite.

Like Proton, it’s Swiss based, like FastMail, everything is using standard protocols. So unlike Proton, it’s just basic mail with no encryption but at least your mails are in a pretty safe jurisdiction.

If you care about it and use the webmail, the UX is pretty much ok but let’s be honest, FastMail is waaay ahead everyone else when it comes to usability. If you just use native clients to access your mail/calendar etc … it will just be the same.

It’s also a little cheaper than FastMail.

Here's a relevant article - essentially I think Fastmail may actually be the more private option, since E2EE email promises are only at-rest if you don't use PGP.

https://ownerofhappy.org/encrypted-email-bad

I was going to ask if Fastmail went smoother. Bron (CEO) is active in IETF doing the JMAP related stuff and other things, he is responsive to discussion in that place, I felt like they are working to make things more gooder better.

Proton is secure. But it can be very hard to work with. I help seniors who were taken there by their more paranoid friends and associates and now struggle with the GUI and tying it into older mail clients