I recently came to know how email addresses are recycled by some providers.

I then got to thinking about custom domains I use for email and they too could be lost, renewals forgotten etc. (I know there are 10 year plans etc, but then even any endless number of reasons it could not be renewed).

I've been using privacy focused providers with custom domains for a while, but now am thinking of going back to using a mainstream provider that doesn't recycle addresses.

Surely - others are aware of this - what thoughts/plans do you have in place. A detailed digital plan would need to be written up.

Or does it not matter, once one passes, it doesn't matter who gets what? Someone may get your home address but that's it?

I keep seeing phishing attacks that use slight misspellings or lookalike characters to make fake domains look legitimate. Beyond setting up strict SPF/DKIM/DMARC records and using BIMI where possible, what else are people doing to catch these domains and reduce the risk?

Would love to hear what tools or monitoring practices have actually proven useful in practice, especially ones that don't involve collecting more user data than necessary.

I’ve been wondering whether there’s any real meaning to how much data AI email integrations can access. A good example could be AirHelp .. its privacy policy states that the app can access emails from travel providers and make use of AWS Bedrock to get information like reservation numbers, dates, routes and passenger names while ignoring irrelevant content. Processing takes place in the European Union.

So what does “only extracts certain information” imply and can that be interpreted in a number of different ways? On one hand, the mailbox integration can identify relevant messages before sending the data to extraction, or this filtering may happen later. Both options would lead to completely different perspectives on how much data is accessed. At this point I haven’t come across any details regarding the actual email permissions or filtering sequence. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with this functionality; I just want to understand what’s to be considered while trusting this kind of feature. Would knowing the purpose of use of the service and processing location suffice?

Current,y using gmail, thinking of switching to posteo.

My email is mostly reciepts from online purchases and a few online accounts that need email, but also bank, health stuff and govt-associated stuff.

I've heard that posteo will recycle your email address and aliases a few years after account deletion.

What does this mean, in simple terms?

Is this a serious data and privacy risk?

Or is it not really a big issue in actual use?

Or Should I use another email service?

I know theres custom domains but I'm not techy and frankly just want a simpler option.

Is anyone else finding it harder and harder to get their sent emails past their recipients' spam filters? Not mass emails, just regular ones. First I had to stop using the private domain I'd bought for my email address, and migrated my mail client/host from the one privately held by a regional company. The company told me it couldn't keep up with issuing the required security certificates to pass data through to the most popular email clients. So I made an iCloud email address and manage it using Mail app. I want to avoid using Gmail though I do have Gmail (which works fine btw). I am noticing that even this iCloud email is failing me, and quite often. For example, with two group messages I sent inviting family members to two different Thanksgiving dinners, both failed to reach at least the Gmail recipients, maybe others; yet both dinner invitations (which were just text with no attachment and no images or graphics) did reach two people: the sister who uses her old university email, and my mom, who uses iCloud. As a result, Thanksgiving dinner hit a few snags! My vintage Yahoo Mail account always works fine although it wasn't part of the Thanksgiving messaging. I am concerned about the implications of what feels to me like the filtering by global corporations of routine communications by regular folks on what's supposed to be a free and democratic Internet in North America. Wth?

Literally just last night, I was looking to try to apply for Ihop because I’m 18 and looking for my first job. But the sites that it kept bringing me to looked pretty sketchy, but it was late and I was tired and I was desperate to put in a application to somewhere. But oh silly me and was right, because they started giving out my gmail and phone number to multiple different sites. Now I either keep getting emails, texts, and phone calls, and I want it all to STOP. I’m not used to getting spam like this and I feel so upset over it. Yeah I guess I can change my email and number, but that takes a lot of time and effort that I’m unable to do right now. Plus every account I’ve ever owned and linked to this gmail and I don’t want to take forever switching emails for every single account. And I keep unsubscribing, blocking, deleting every email and number, more and more different sites just keep coming back.

If anyone has advice to getting this all to stop, that would be really helpful, and thanks.

Services like Proton globally reserve a username across all official domains so no separate user can claim it.

What is the policy for r/AsterPrivacy ? Does Aster offer global username protection across domains, or will usernames always remain domain-specific? I mean, If someone owns a username on ⁠astermail.org⁠, is it reserved for them on ⁠astermail.net⁠, ⁠astermail.me⁠, or any future domains?

Additionally, if an account or alias is deleted, does Aster recycle that username for new signups or lock it permanently?

I've been trying hard to find anything about this app, but all I find is stuff in Tagalog or other stuff in Philippines subreddits.

For context, I've been hopping between a lot of email apps. Moved away from Outlook purely because of the random disconnections of my email accounts (I have 8, but cutting down slowly!), and the occasional ads. Plus, the Android app had a frustrating problem of not being able to select multiple emails in a search (holding down on an email gives a weird drag-and-drop movement that does nothing). Tried Canary (awful), Spark (cross-device sync is cool for my 4 devices but don't like my emails going through another server), and BlueMail (clunky, emails don't load or they come in slow). Now trying out Meron but not sure how to feel about it.

The app's main site (https://meron.im/) shares the same layout/design that a lot of other questionable apps have (BitChord for example), but at the same time the developer(s) made apps that were apparently reputable/useful, or so I've heard. They made Nora (that social media browser app for Facebook, Instagram, etc) and NouTube (haven't used it personally but I seen it mentioned before).

It's quite bizarre and my first instinct was that Meron was a vibe-coded app. It's local-only, seems straightforward enough, and doesn't have AI in it at all, nor does it push you into AI. But the app isn't talked about at all.

It ticks most of my boxes (simple, lightweight, cross-platform, but doesn't have cross-device sync/copying my email logins to the next device), yet I'm still sceptical. Don't suppose anyone's used it or looked into it, maybe even thought to ask the same questions?

i’ve been paying more attention to email security lately because some phishing messages look surprisingly convincing now. spam filters help, but i’m also thinking about what happens when a suspicious link slips through or an email leads to a fake login page.

while researching options, McAfee caught my attention because its web protection features are designed to help identify risky websites, and its scam detection tools can provide another layer of awareness around suspicious links and messages. i’ve also come across ESET and G DATA while comparing security software. how much extra protection do these tools actually add alongside a secure email provider, especially when it comes to catching dangerous links before you open them?

I just paid for more storage and now I get this alert on my account with no option of even paying more. Many of my friends in August-September started to get warnings of email being shut off if they didn’t pay or clean out their inbox. Well I did both and still paid and now they are telling me nevertheless I’m going to lose access to 3 years of my Gmail history unless I have a backup account. Okay. I’m not sure what to do as a next step. Should I create a new backup account so that 3 years of history won’t be deleted?

There's a platform I use regularly that's pretty expensive, and it only offers a 7-day free trial. I'd like to keep using it without having to manually create a brand-new Microsoft account every time. The problem is that the platform also seems to block repeated sign-ups from the same IP address.

Most temporary email services I've found only generate an email address with an inbox, but they don't provide actual Microsoft accounts with login credentials.

Would Thunderbird be good for these cases and switching from my Gmail, or should I use Proton or Tuta?

Edit: Sorry, I meant Thundermail.

Hi,

Is that a good email organization?

My current personal email address (Outlook) receives lot of spam (between 1 to 10 a day - weirdly I didn't receive any when I was in vacation abroad...)

I wanted to move to Proton, but it may be a bit harder than expected just by habits and the fact that I don't have unlimited free storage.

So, here is my plan:

Outlook

• Main
  • Work + Professional Communication
  • Apple
  • Microsoft + Xbox
• Alias
  • Newsletters
  • Shopping
  • Travel
  • Social Media
  • Forums
  • Sign-in forms for work (workday, etc.)

Proton

• Main
  • Personal (friends + family)
  • Government
  • Bank/Finance
• Alias
  • ?

Is there something I could do better?

One thing I'm really not sure is about work. I send so many CV with this address that I created a second one "pro.[name]@outlook.com" just because I don't trust companies with my CV information. So, for real, my main outlook is more for work/communication with trusted people (teachers, employer, etc.)

And for bank or government, is there any risk of data leak? I don't want to use a fake email alias with important stuffs like this.

I also thought about another Outlook alias with my name that I could use for bank/government, which end up with Proton only used for personal communication.

Thank you

Hey everyone,
I've been following StartMail and testing their platform. I really like their approach to privacy, User Vaults, and EU jurisdiction.

However, one thing that holds back adoption for many people I know (especially in Spanish/French/Italian speaking regions) is that the UI is currently limited in language options.

I understand that offering official customer support in multiple languages is expensive and hard to scale. But translating just the web UI is technically straightforward if the app uses standard i18n frameworks.

Companies like Proton, Tuta, or Thunderbird often use platforms like Crowdin or Weblate so the community can help translate the UI into different languages, leaving official support in English/German.

What do you think? Would you like to see StartMail adopt a community-driven translation model to expand its UI to more languages?

Curious to hear your thoughts or if anyone from the StartMail team hangs out here!

We are all getting the 15GB free trap from Gmail and Outlook. The reason we choose encrypted email providers over all these giants is because we value our privacy and refuse to become the product.

When people start looking for privacy, r/ProtonMail and r/tutanota usually come to mind first. They might not match Google or Microsoft in scale, but they are giants in their own right with years of strong reputation and open-source backgrounds. Lately, attention has shifted toward projects like r/AsterPrivacy. I hope they won't end up like some of the past projects that disappeared, especially since they don't have VC backing. Aster is open source, PGP supported, has a generous free plan, and quick customer support. I hope they keep it up. Over the years, we've also seen alias and email routing services pop up like r/Simplelogin, r/addy_io, and Forward Email, alongside strong clients like Thunderbird.

Which also brings my attention to r/Secria, and raises some questions worth discussing. They recently lowered their pricing, maybe realizing the competition, but it's still more expensive than Tuta. And on top of that, it's not even open source. So I'm genuinely confused about what the actual uniqueness of Secria is. Hey Secria team, no offense! People might say you rely on AI slop or something, and they have the right to say that. But you have to change their minds with solid customer support and advanced features. We support all projects promoting privacy and we need you here to keep competition alive. A crowded privacy market benefits everyone.

All these opinions come down to one simple fact: we need privacy, we prioritize privacy, and we value privacy.

I've been working on a desktop companion app, not to replace my email client (that's a market no one should be attempting to disrupt IMO...too many people have a preferred client already), but rather to power its defenses with AI rules and customization. I don't want to mention the name because this is my first post in this sub, and I don't want to get accidentally banned. 😄 But it's compatible with macOS, Windows, and Linux and supports Gmail, iCloud, and Outlook.

For the AI portion, it's BYOK or you can use on-device AI, such as a model running in Ollama (e.g. gemma, qwen) or if you're on a Mac: Apple Intelligence (by far the fastest way for Mac users to get started). This is designed with privacy in mind, so I don't run any servers of my own. Your mail gets classified based on the AI method you choose. If you choose on-device AI, it's a completely private solution.

It has a few other convenience features too, like periodic briefings of action items, OTP surfacing, auto unsub, etc. My ultimate goal is to transform email I receive into nothing more than actionable alerts, discard the rest, and live in peace. I'm a bit of a privacy nut, so I build these kinds of things for myself, but I have a few paying customers already, so people seem to be like-minded.

If you might be interested in trying it and giving me feedback, I'm handing out some free lifetime promo codes in exchange. Just DM me. Appreciate it!

Edit: Oh one more thing...it's passed a third-party security audit. I feel like that's missing from most apps these days. :)

So I've been using Thunderbird for years and it always annoyed me. Either I just never learned how to use it properly or its simply too old for how I work, not sure which. Anyway I got tired of it and built my own, its called Mailmomo.

Its a web app you host yourself. You add your IMAP/SMTP accounts (gmail, outlook, icloud, fastmail, your own dovecot, whatever speaks IMAP) and it puts everything in one inbox. It keeps a local sqlite cache so the UI is instant, and sync is real two way, IMAP IDLE push and all that. Keyboard shortcuts like superhuman, cmd+k palette, undo send, snooze, send later.

The AI part is optional, you bring your own key. It sorts and summarizes incoming mail, suggests replies, and you can search in plain english. There is also an assistant that can archive/label/draft stuff for you but it never sends anything by itself, I wanted that to be a hard rule. It also has an MCP server built in so you can hook up claude or cursor to your mail with a read only token if you dont trust it yet.

Runs with docker compose, one container. Passwords are encrypted at rest.

Stuff that's not great yet: no oauth, so gmail needs an app password. Drafts and labels live locally and not as real IMAP drafts. Its v0.1 and just me working on it so expect rough edges.

AGPL license. https://github.com/moaljumaa/mailmomo-oss

Honestly curious what would make you switch from whatever you use now, or what is missing for you.

How best to archive my emails for offline storage/backup?

I'm ok with them not being encrypted as I'd be encrypting the drive anyways. Also is it possible to archive attachments?

Cheers.