I was thinking of switching to Tuta mail but they don't support IMAP. Recommendations for a privace-focused, ethical email provider outside the US?
@jibsaramnim@bitbang.social@ndw I've been a happy customer of #Fastmail (they're on Mastodon, too: @fastmail) since January 2018, and can comfortably recommend them if you're looking for a solid email host.
They're based in #Australia, and have full support for #IMAP, #CalDAV, #CardDAV, as-well as #JMAP if your tool(s) supports that. I like that they only do email and do it well. No ever-expanding product suite of tools I don't really need, nor any confusion on who the customer is. Nice and straight-forward :).
@jibsaramnim @ndw I also can recommend @fastmail. Btw, they have made a big contribution to the new #IMAP RFC standardization , as well as #JMAP
@jibsaramnim @ndw @fastmail unfortunately last I knew Fastmail has some infrastructure and a corporate presence in the USA
@surfhosting @ndw @fastmail Oof, you're right. They list a "satellite office" in Philadelphia on their careers page, and on their "Security basics" page under physical location security they list their main servers being located in Philadelphia, with a secondary site in St. Louis (ref: https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000280221-How-Fastmail-provides-a-secure-service#physicalsecurity)
So, even though they're based in (and advertise themselves as being) Australia(n), all data is 100% US-hosted. This.. is most unfortunate. I don't quite understand why they went this way.
@jibsaramnim @ndw @fastmail sorry to be the bearer of bad news on that. Fastmail's US presence is why I switched to @runbox quite a few years ago now, otherwise their service is great.
@surfhosting @jibsaramnim @ndw Thank you for the mention and for choosing Runbox, we’re happy you’re here!
@jibsaramnim @surfhosting @ndw @fastmail Fastmail host their service in the US to have shorter roundtrip times, meaning faster service (re their name!) for the majority of their customers. I understand that, from a business kind of view, but regret that it keeps me from using their service, which I would otherwise like to do. (1/2)
Due to the more complicated handshake with a number of roundtrips for setting up a secure channel, TLS connections are more sensitive to latency than plain TCP connections. I noticed that particularly with IMAP, when I went from UMTS to LTE on the mobile phone — what felt rather sluggish before was suddenly much faster. This was much less due to the larger bandwidth, but mainly the much shorter latency.
https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/ssl/what-happens-in-a-tls-handshake/ (2/2)