Other cloud providers may not read your mail to serve you ads, but they still put your data on an easy path to a government data funnel.<p>If you want to avoid that, but the creepiness isn't enough to scare you off email all together your options are to self host, or (better service, less privacy) rent a server.<p>I'm currently renting a dedicated server from OVH^. The servers are in France, with prices starting at $3 a month. You can put use the same server for a blog, VPN internet proxy, owncloud data dump, whatever you like.<p>Setting up mail is more time consuming than you'd think, unless you use a pack like Zimbra or iRedMail. I'm using Zimbra for some specific features, but iRedMail plays nicer with other software. They are pretty much the same thing, a package that sets up a mail server, some spam filtering, an admin interface, and roundcube for webmail.<p>^note that OVH will be sold out on that deal for around a month, but you can get a VPS in the mean time (recommend Digital Ocean). Take regular backups if you are buying cheap, expect a hardware fail once in 3 years so be prepared to get a replacement up very fast. The idea here is to be just obscure enough that your data is not retrievable without unlikely manual intervention.