--- layout: page permalink: /providers/email/ title: "Private Email Providers" description: "Find a secure email provider that will keep your privacy in mind. Don't settle for ad-supported platforms. Never trust any company with your privacy, always encrypt." --- {% include sections/email-warning.html %} {% include sections/email-providers.html %}

Our Email Provider Criteria

Please note we are not affiliated with any of the providers we recommend. This allows us to provide completely objective recommendations. We have developed a clear set of requirements for any Email provider wishing to be recommended, including implementing industry best practices, modern technology and more. We suggest you familiarize yourself with this list before choosing an Email provider, and conduct your own research to ensure the Email provider you choose is the right choice for you.

Jurisdiction

Operating outside the five/nine/fourteen-eyes countries is not necessarily a guarantee of privacy, and there are other factors to consider. However, we believe that avoiding these countries is important if you wish to avoid mass government dragnet surveillance, especially from the United States. Read our page on global mass surveillance and avoiding the US and UK to learn more about why we feel this is important.

Minimum to Qualify:

  • Operating outside the USA or other Five Eyes countries.

Best Case:

  • Operating outside the USA or other Fourteen Eyes countries.
  • Operating inside a country with strong consumer protection laws.

Technology

We regard these features as important in order to provide a safe and optimal service to users. Users should consider the provider which has the features they require.

Minimum to Qualify:

  • Encrypts account data at rest.
  • Integrated webmail encryption provides convenience to users who want improve on having no E2EE encryption.

Best Case:

  • Encrypts account data at rest with zero-access encryption.
  • Allow users to use their own domain name. Custom domain names are important to users because it allows them to maintain their agency from the service, should it turn bad, be acquired by another company which doesn't prioritize privacy etc.
  • Support for WKD to allow improved discovery of public OpenPGP keys via HTTP.
    GnuPG users can get a key by typing: gpg --locate-key example_user@example.com
  • Support for a temporary mailbox for external users. This is useful when you want to send an encrypted email, without sending an actual copy to your recipient. These emails usually have a limited lifespan and then are automatically deleted. They also don't require the recipient to configure any cryptography like OpenPGP.
  • Availability of the email provider's services via an onion service.
  • Subaddressing support.
  • Catch all or aliases for users who own their own domains.
  • Use of standard email access protocols such as IMAP, SMTP or JMAP. Standard access protocols ensure customers can easily download all of their email, should they want to switch to another provider.

Privacy

We prefer our recommended providers to collect as little data as possible.

Minimum to Qualify:

  • Protect sender's IP address. Filter it from showing in the Received header field.
  • Don't require personally identifiable information (PII) besides username and password.
  • Privacy policy that meets the requirements defined by the GDPR

Best Case:

  • Accepts Bitcoin, cash, and other forms of cryptocurrency and/or anonymous payment options (gift cards, etc.)

Security

Email servers deal with a lot of very sensitive data. We expect that providers will adopt best industry practices in order to protect their users.

Minimum to Qualify:

Best Case:

  • Support for hardware authentication, ie U2F and WebAuthn. U2F and WebAuthn are more secure as they use a private key stored on a client-side hardware device to authenticate users, as opposed to a shared secret that is stored on the web server and on the client side when using TOTP. Furthermore, U2F and WebAuthn are more resistant to phishing as their authentication response is based on the authenticated domain name.
  • Zero access encryption, builds on encryption at rest. The difference being the provider does not have the decryption keys to the data they hold. This prevents a rogue employee leaking data they have access to or remote adversary from releasing data they have stolen by gaining unauthorized access to the server.
  • DNS Certification Authority Authorization (CAA) Resource Record in addition to DANE support.
  • Implementation of Authenticated Received Chain (ARC), this is useful for users who post to mailing lists RFC8617.
  • Bug-bounty programs and/or a coordinated vulnerability-disclosure process.
  • Website security standards such as:

Trust

You wouldn't trust your finances to someone with a fake identity, so why trust them with your email? We require our recommended providers to be public about their ownership or leadership. We also would like to see frequent transparency reports, especially in regard to how government requests are handled.

Minimum to Qualify:

  • Public-facing leadership or ownership.

Best Case:

  • Public-facing leadership.
  • Frequent transparency reports.

Marketing

With the email providers we recommend we like to see responsible marketing.

Minimum to Qualify:

  • Must self host analytics (no Google Analytics etc). The provider's site must also comply with DNT (Do Not Track) for those users who want to opt-out.

Must not have any marketing which is irresponsible:

  • Claims of "unbreakable encryption". Encryption should be used with the intention that it may not be secret in the future when the technology exists to crack it.
  • Making guarantees of protecting anonymity 100%. When someone makes a claim that something is 100% it means there is no certainty for failure. We know users can quite easily deanonymize themselves in a number of ways, e.g.:
    • Reusing personal information e.g. (email accounts, unique pseudonyms etc) that they accessed without anonymity software (Tor, VPN etc)
    • Browser fingerprinting

Best Case:

  • Clear and easy to read documentation. This includes things like, setting up 2FA, email clients, OpenPGP, etc.

Additional Functionality

While not strictly requirements, there are some factors we looked into when determining which providers to recommend.

Email encryption

What is end-to-end encryption (E2EE) encryption in email?

End-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a way of encrypting email contents so that nobody but the recipient(s) can read the email message.

How can I encrypt my email?

The standard way to do email E2EE and have it work between different email providers is with OpenPGP. There are different implementations of the OpenPGP standard, the most common being GnuPG and OpenPGP.js.

There is another standard that was popular with business called S/MIME, however it requires a certificate issued from a Certificate Authority (not all of them issue S/MIME certificates). It has support in G Suite Enterprise/Education and Office 365 Business or Exchange Server 2016, 2019.

What software can I use to get E2EE?

Email providers which allow you to use standard access protocols like IMAP and SMTP can be used with any of the email clients we recommend. This can be less secure as you are now relying on email providers to ensure that their encryption implementation works and has not been compromised in anyway.

How do I protect my private keys?

A smartcard (such as a Yubikey or Nitrokey) works by receiving an encrypted email message from a device (phone, tablet, computer etc) running an email/webmail client. The message is then decrypted by the smartcard and the decrypted content is sent back to the device.

It is advantageous for the decryption to occur on the smartcard so as to avoid possibly exposing your private key to a compromised device.

Email metadata

Who can see the email metadata?

Email metadata is able to be seen by your email client software (or webmail) and any servers relaying the message from you to any recipients. Sometimes email servers will also use external parties to protect against spam.

What is email metadata?

Email software will often show some visible headers that you may have seen such as: To, From, Cc, Date, Subject.

When is email metadata used?

Client software may use it to show who a message is from and what time it was received. Servers may use it to determine where an email message must be sent, among other purposes not transparent to the user.

Where is the email metadata?

Email metadata is stored in the message header of the email message.

Why can't email metadata be E2EE?

Email metadata is is cruicial to the most basic functionality of email (where it came from, and where it has to go). E2EE was not built into the email protocols originally and is also optional, therefore, only the message content is protected.

How is my metadata protected?

When emails travel between email providers an encrypted connection is negotiated using Opportunistic TLS. This protects the metadata from outside observers, but as it is not E2EE, server administrators can snoop on the metadata of an email.

Email cloaking services

AnonAddy

AnonAddy lets users create aliases that forward to their email address. Can be self-hosted. Source code on GitHub.

Self-hosting Email

Advanced users may consider setting up their own email server. Mailservers require attention and continuous maintenance in order to keep things secure and mail delivery reliable.

Combined software solutions

Mail-in-a-Box

Mail-in-a-Box is an automated setup script for deploying a mail server on Ubuntu. Its goal is to make it easier for users to set up their own mail server.

Mailcow

Mailcow is a more advanced mail server perfect for those with a bit more Linux experience. It has everything you need in a Docker container: A mailserver with DKIM support, antivirus and spam monitoring, webmail and ActiveSync with SOGo, and web-based administration with 2FA support. Mailcow Dockerized docs

For a more manual approach we've picked out these two articles.

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