Privacy is a biggie in the online realm, particularly in that most personal of areas – your email account. Sadly, when you’re signing up to the perk-filled services of Google and company you’re more or less giving them free reign to scan your emails (though the search giant has recently announced that it will stop this dodgy practice). Other companies like Outlook and Yahoo aren’t as bad but will still hand over data as soon as the US government cracks its whip.
Thankfully, there are quite a few secure email services that offer email privacy and encryption. We have reviewed and selected six of the best email services that should keep your data safe from hackers and the authorities.
1. Hushmail
This web, mobile and desktop-based email client has been around for a good while now, and has kept up with the times by offering an underground bunker’s worth of security features in an elegant interface. Not even Hushmail itself has access to the contents of your email, all of which is protected by encrypted passwords.
You can send 2048-bit encrypted messages to users of other email providers such as Gmail and Outlook, as well as sync up with people who use other popular encryption methods like OpenPGP. All the usual spam-filtering, blacklisting and anonymity options are in place too, including an unlimited number of email aliases to keep your identity private.
Unfortunately, Hushmail doesn’t have a free version anymore, although you can test out whether it’s right for you with a 14-day trial. It’s completely ad-free, and gives you 10GB of storage space to boot.
2. Runbox
Not the most well known super-secure email provider, but in a business where anonymity is key, maybe that’s not such a bad thing. At every point of the process, Runbox has safeguards in place to keep your information away from those who may want to snoop on it. Every time you send emails, they’re sent over a secure encrypted connection, and anything sent between your email and Runbox servers is encrypted as well. The data isn’t encrypted when it’s sitting on the servers, but it’s locked away in a vault in Norway where personal data is protected by the Constitution. (they take that stuff seriously over there!)
You can pay the annual price plan using Bitcoin (the cheapest subscription is $20 a year) for extra anonymity, there are two different kinds of two-factor authentication, and there are no external tracking cookies, meaning that Runbox isn’t in bed with advertisers to harvest your data.
At the time of writing, Runbox is working on integrating a PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) encryption option, which will require both the sender and recipient to generate an encryption key to open emails.
3. Mailfence
Mailfence does the whole business of privacy a little differently from other services on this list. It uses OpenPGP public key encryption which offers end-to-end encryption based on a key that you share with the recipients of your emails. This whole feature is optional, of course, so you don’t have to go through the whole rigmarole for every mundane email you send.
Mailfence can’t see into or scan your emails because of their encryption. This service, which also offers calendar, cloud storage and collaboration features, was made in the wake of the Snowden revelations by a group of developers who are passionate about your rights to online privacy.
Finally, in what must surely be a dig at Google, when you go to the Mailfence website and are asked if you want “Secure and private email service,” you can click “No,” at which point you will be redirected to Gmail. I like these guys!
4. ProtonMail
ProtonMail is one of the most highly-regarded apps on this list. Forbes called it “the only email system NSA can’t access” and with good reason. Their servers are located in Switzerland, which means the US government cannot forcibly shut them down or order them to produce information. In any case, the emails are encrypted end to end, which means it is impossible to intercept and decipher them. Also, ProtonMail does not log IP addresses, so you are truly anonymous by using this service.
Creating a ProtonMail account is free, though you can upgrade to a premium account to access more features.
5. Tutanota
Tutanota is a completely open-source and free email service which offers end-to-end encryption of emails, including the ability for non-Tutanota users to securely respond to encrypted emails. Once the intended recipient receives your encrypted email, they will not be able to view the subject, attachment or message unless they can produce a password (which both must have agreed upon previously) that will unlock the contents of your message. You can also choose not to encrypt your emails, but that defeats the purpose of using Tutanota.
For free accounts, you get 1 GB of storage and no aliases, but you can upgrade to premium for just €1/month to add up to five aliases and map your own domain to Tutanota. Mobile apps are also available for Android and iOS.
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