FastMail loses customers, faces calls to move over anti-encryption laws

If anyone&#x27;s considering moving their email addresses over this, please take the time to get your own custom domain to host email on. That way you can switch providers more easily and actually own your email address.<p>As a shameless plug: Purelymail, the mail service I&#x27;m working on, could use some more beta testers. It&#x27;s (to my knowledge) the cheapest way to get email on a custom domain right now. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;purelymail.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;purelymail.com&#x2F;</a>

Related: Mozilla may treat Aussie staff as &#x27;insider threats&#x27; to code base<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.itnews.com.au&#x2F;news&#x2F;mozilla-may-treat-aussie-staff-as-insider-threats-to-code-base-519793" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.itnews.com.au&#x2F;news&#x2F;mozilla-may-treat-aussie-staf...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=19243630" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=19243630</a>

The way you get this to end is by annoying the common people of Australia. The Internet death penalty would be one way—have FAANG completely stop doing business in Australia until this is repealed, and block Australians from their services. No Facebook, no new copies of Windows, no new Macs, nothing that runs on AWS. It’s a small enough country that it wouldn’t really be a dent in their bottom lines. Congratulations, you just got most of a country to angrily write their parliament-critters.

It&#x27;s amazing to me that the people who write these laws are the least capable of understanding their impact.<p>If I am reading FastMails statement right, they have been forced to add backdoors to their codebase and not been allowed to tell their team about it. Only a lawmaker who has the technical acumen of say, my grandmother, would decree something like that and think it was a good idea. Australia deserves better than these clowns. Then again, I live in the US so...

I&#x27;m a long time Fastmail customer and will consider moving over this. I would prefer Fastmail moved their servers and place of business incorporation to an encryption and privacy-friendly country.

I’m sure Bron, Rob or Nigel will weigh in shortly. Fastmail is a damn fine service, I now trust Australian internet privacy even less due to recent law changes and this does concern me not just with Fastmail but as someone that designs and hosts platforms for software the organisation I work with writes - which is also in Australia.

It saddens me when I’ve been a Fastmail customer for 4 years, happy with the pricing, happy with the service as a temporary resident my only way to make a stand about the laws is to move away from Australian service providers. I’ll likely start migrating mail shortly after purchasing a .dev domain.<p>If it wasn’t for my Australian partner I’d likely of left by now as tech work is limited here, severely behind places like London, currently feeling like it’ll be difficult to progress beyond where I am now within the AU. A lot of it is also now dubious big data, I.e what can we snoop on to sell you more or sell the data collected for dubious purposes.

Anyone know of a FastMail alternative? I was considering opening an account with them, but after reading this, I am concerned with the privacy implications, especially as I am trying to get off of Gmail.

I understand the concern over the law in general, but I don&#x27;t agree with the sentiments about email in particular. Email is not and should not be considered completely secure, so if that is a need, something else should be used. In my opinion, the Australian law does not make it any more insecure or less private -- everything that could have been obtained via warrant prior to the law&#x27;s passage is the same data that is accessible with it. If that&#x27;s a concern, set up your email in a different jurisdiction.<p>I am currently a FastMail customer because I like the product, and this does not make me think I need to move. Unless something else changes, I&#x27;ll keep it where it is.

&quot;We won&#x27;t release any data without the required legal authorisation from an Australian court. As an Australian company, we do not respond to US court orders.&quot; [1]<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fastmail.com&#x2F;help&#x2F;ourservice&#x2F;security.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fastmail.com&#x2F;help&#x2F;ourservice&#x2F;security.html</a>

I was surprised to learn last month that &quot;you can impersonate other Fastmail customers by just spoofing the email address&quot;.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=18996200#18997054" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=18996200#18997054</a>

Here is FastMail&#x27;s response to the Government inquiry.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aph.gov.au&#x2F;DocumentStore.ashx?id=ec39b475-9559-4fa4-94ca-d45294534200&amp;subId=666615" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aph.gov.au&#x2F;DocumentStore.ashx?id=ec39b475-9559-4...</a> [pdf]

Yes they are. I decided to leave O365 business and was ready to switch to FastMail when this law was passed. I decided to keep looking and found German mailbox.org and chose them instead. So far so good.

I&#x27;m currently in Western Europe waiting for the delivery of forms to cancel my Australian business number, this law has destroyed industry confidence in the Australian government for customers and service providers.<p>Even if rolled back, the political and social environment that spawned it remains, and committing to development resources in Australia now is a fool&#x27;s errand if you have any alternative.

Not surprised - I dumped Fastmail when Australi passed a lot of intrusive and anti-privacy laws. And as it is a part of the 5 eyes program.

If I may, I want to share my recently pleasant experience with MailU[1]. I am in no way related to them, but it worked very nicely, it wasn&#x27;t difficult to setup, and it sorts a lot of things out that have always been a pain for me when setting up my own mail server.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mailu.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mailu.io&#x2F;</a>

I put a few domains on FastMail for family members to avoid using Google and also avoid using my fascist BOFH mail servers.<p>They know that if anything is sensitive, they and their friends will need to pgp or 7-zip encrypt the payload. I will gladly continue to use Fastmail if that is the only way to keep people I care about from staying logged into Google.

Gee, is almost like the political grubs had absolutely no idea about encryption and how it works and how it will be virtually impossible to implement these stupid laws. Who would have thought that&#x27;s the case? So very disappointed in all politicians at the moment, in my opinion, they&#x27;re all scum bags

Also I learned recently that Australia&#x27;s internet is getting more censored every year: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Internet_censorship_in_Australia" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Internet_censorship_in_Austral...</a>

When I saw the most recent provacy stripping law pass (maybe 3 months ago?), it pushed me to move everything to my own custom domain. I also signed up with ProtonMail and have started the migration.<p>I’m not the only one, people I know who have used FastMail for years have decided to jump ship.

I am a happy FastMail customer. The service is great, it is indeed fast and they&#x27;re a small company devoted to doing email and serving their customers.<p>I don&#x27;t plan on leaving FastMail.

So what&#x27;s a good alternative to FastMail?

&gt; Your 1-year Standard subscription expires on Sunday, February 24, 2019.<p>Good timing?