Google can read your emails whether you opt out or not.
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They can also read your more personal emails if the other party uses gmail regardless of what you use. The best you can do is try to distance your different "online personas" by separating personal emails, purchases and other use cases keeping Google out of as many as you can without needing other people to also jump ship.
* unless you use pgp
So they can read your emails?
Which nobody does
Lol wut. Everyone on proton does, and half of my work contacts do
I literary got 0 PGP encrypted emails since I started using email in 1998.
As part of my most recent move I switched from windows to Linux. I gotta switch away from google now. What's the current recommendations, is Proton still in hot water? Ideally something I can link my own domain or domains up to
I'm on https://mxroute.com/ they are cheap and hands off. Sometimes that means you get yelled at in the beginning to RTFM because they don't have the time to deal with each individual, just follow the manual and you never need their support.
Proton hijacks your screen with full page ads. They are very pushy with it. I recommend you find something else.
I clicked an email notification and got this instead of the message. It's gross.

Also this ad is hilarious. "BLACK FRIDAY" "-80%". It's 4$
Proton is definitely no good. Ads, freemium, AI garbage, Bad 3rd party client compatibility, CEO loves Trump, etc.
Its better not to put all your eggs in one basket so dont try to find a single provider for all your needs.
All email services will be able to read your emails unless you encrypt them yourself (PGP). So there are no "private" email providers really. What you should look for is just a functional provider that works well with proper clients like Thunderbird (available for desktop and mobile).
This is a list of many tried and tested servers, just pick any of the "OK" ones: https://providers.delta.chat/
Deltachat is an app that allows you easily use email in and end to end encrypted way while making it look like a standard instant messenger. For this to work properly, the provider needs to support 3rd party clients properly, so this list gives you a good look at the technical quality of the email provider.
See how Outlook, Proton and Tutanota are non functional? Thats because they dont implement the email standard properly in order to lock users into their platform and apps.
I see Proton and Tuta recommended here, often.
I also see complaints about both (Proton's politics and Tuta's tendency to lock and clean free accounts).
Both seem better than Google, who seem to be tightening their grip on those unable to walk away.
Tuta’s tendency to lock and clean free accounts
Tuta deletes free accounts that have not been logged into for 6 months.
Proton’s politics
What?
Tuta deletes free accounts that have not been logged into for 6 months.
This, and I heard that some legitimate newly registered free accounts have been wiped a couple days later by anti-bot automation. So I guess one would want to age their Tuta account (or you know, just pay for it) before they trust it with too much.
I've had a free Tuta account for some time without any issues.
Proton is MAGA
Better rec is get your own domain and try out any other service, if you own the domain you can always hop if needed.
Any suggestions on a good one to use with my own domain?
Proton locks automatic email forwarding behind a subscription, so if you ever want to move away from them but not immediately lose any emails that go to that inbox, your only choice is to pay.
Good info, thanks!
I route my email through my domain names, and so I can reroute emails at the DNS level, but I can see this being important to some folks.
I'm pretty sure they will still use it and maybe pay a small fine/bribe later on.
Assuming they honor the opt-out which you would have no legally provable basis on which to sue them ever...
Assuming they honor the opt-out, most of the other gmail recipients won't opt-out, so they can still read your emails on the other end.
Ah, the digital close-door elevator button.
They work in Japan.
I opted out by deggogling 10 years ago..
Enjoy all the nigerian prince and dick pills scams, I guess...
Google can read all my 25000 undeleted newsletter advertisements promotions and coupon deals flyers I get. Nothing important in that mess.
Same here. I'm not actively using it, but it fills up with spam. Training AI on that... excellent idea 😈
same, some of my accounts had that from doing offers for games for in-game currency,
I might just move to office365
“I’m in this picture and I don’t like it.”
There’s one upside though; Jeffrey Epstein can’t opt out anymore.
Sneaky devils, thanks for sharing!
Is there a way to self-host your own email? Seems like the safest option at this point.
don't. Its the hardest thing, next to maintaining the office printer.
We outsource that shit for a reason.
Yes, but it can be involved and one mistake means your email could potentially never make it to peoples inbox as it will be seen as spam, etc. Not even mentioning that if your server was offline for an extended period of time (e.g. 2-5 day vacation), you could lose incoming messages.
Not to mention that most VPS IP ranges are on blocklists nowadays due to past abuse, and getting them whitelisted with every major provider you want to send emails to is an exercise in futility. Getting an address that’s not already blacklisted somewhere is quite rare.
To send mail reliably you’ll have to use a third-party service like SendGrid or MailChimp and configure your mail server to forward emails through them. They likely aren’t that expensive (completely free for the basic tier I think) for personal use cases (e.g you’re not sending newsletters to thousands or something) but it defeats the purpose anyway if your goal is to make your emails purely private.
