Hi,
I know this is not exactly a pure "degoogle" but as many members of this community are looking for a gmail replacement I would like to recommend an anonymous mail forwarding service like https://addy.io/. I would also like to hear your opinions on this or several similar services.
In case you don't know what it does here is my short explanation: It is an email forwarding service. So basically you sign up with your (new non gmail) email address. Whenever you sign up for something you would normally use your email you use a new Addy.io mail instead. This works on the fly without having to login to Addy.io beforehand or even having to use a plugin or app. Let's say I would want to sign up for Lemmy I would just type "lemmy@my_name.addy.io" in the email form. Now all mails to this address get forwarded to my real email address without Lemmy knowing it. I think this has a lot of benefits:
- Additional privacy: the service I sign up to doesn't know my mail. In case it gets hacked it is more difficult to figure out where else I signed up.
- Phishing and spam protection: Mail from "my bank" to my Lemmy address saying I should change my password. I don't think so. But now I know they got hacked or sold my data and I can just delete the alias.
- switching mails: let's say you just degoogled your mail but now it turns out the CEO of the new mail provider is a dick. Switching you mail on all the services and news letters you use again? I don't think so. Just change one mail in your forwarding service and your good to go
What's the advantage over a duck.com alias? I think 10MB monthly bandwidth might be limiting if you receive lots of spam, and might block you from receiving actual important email. I'd be afraid to use their free tier. Duck on the other hand doesn't seem to have a bandwidth limit, and it's just free.
I wonder whats the catch. I have a hard time accepting some company would provide such a service for free no limits (unless its a non-profit run through donations or similar).