I have a 20ish year old history in my Gmail account organized in labels and all that. I wonder if it will be viable to migrate?
Considering labels are very non-standard, which caused trouble over IMAP since forever, I wouldn’t count on that part.
Labels are displayed as folders on IMAP, which means that a single message could appear in multiple folders. Are there any other problems you’re talking about?
One of the problems that annoyed me in the past is the complexity and ambiguity of deleting an email over IMAP. Depending on whether it’s the last label of the deleted email, deleting an email from a label’s directory either removes a label from this email, or actually deletes the email.
Please archive shit. It’s OK to save old data, but not on the service. There are ways. Even banks, the most obsessive and legally strapped data hoarders keep their 5+ year old data in deep cold storage, away from the active services. 99.9^% of information that old won’t be looked at by anyone.
Not true.
It’s much easier to keep old data in active storage where it can be classified, searched, and have retention/deletion policies applied. Moving it elsewhere makes it more likely you’ll just hang onto it forever while not using it at all.
When was the last time you had to find a 20 year old email? Share your anecdotes.
Edit: I’m not being snarky, there are legitimate and more functional solutions.
Warranty… Some are 15-20 years, but you need proof of purchase docs, which are often emailed data.
Why not having an archive of exclusively warranties? Emails can be downloaded, indexed and compressed. I agree on keeping archives of old stuff. But emails used as cloud drives are a huge problem for IT and security reasons. A legal folder is better and facilitates backup, encryption and much more accessibility.
So you don’t really want to archive in the technical sense, you want it offline for security, which is valid but extremely inconvenient for regular end users.
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I don’t disagree that you should set up retention policies to delete old email, I disagree that you should remove old emails from primary service/storage.
I actually did need a 15 year old email a few months ago. I don’t recall what I needed, but I then set up a retention policy to delete old stuff.
welp I signed up for the waitlist.
I’ll use it for a disposable email at first, and if it endures and does well I’ll move my main shit off to it.
I’d consider it. If they host things outside of the US/start moving operations overseas, it’d be a lot more interesting. I sub to Proton for email, VPN, and drive support. Still hoping someday for proper Linux drive support so Mozilla/Thunderbird can target that
I’m listening…
But how is a small non-profit going to afford a free email service? Ads in every email?
Based on what I’ve seen in their forums it will be a paid service. I think it will be free at first for beta testers but I assume they are targeting people who currently use services like Proton.
Thanks for the info.
But I think they’ll still need an ad driven free version to gain acceptance.
Sounded great until the “assist” ai feature. I friggin hate Gemini in gmail so any other kind of ai is an automatic nogo for me
If this works out it might be a nice place to migrate to away from my self-hosted e-mail provided they eventually let you bring your own domain. Just sucks that e-mail is essentially the most secure thing you need to have since compromising that can compromise every account attached to the e-mail. That’s a lot of trust you need to instill in your e-mail host.
I have fond memories of self-hosting a qmail setup for a long time, then eventually migrating to a postfix configuration, back in the day.
Keeping up with spam filtering finally did me in.
The spam filtering is painful. I kinda work around it by giving a unique e-mail for everything and of one starts getting spammed I just rid of that e-mail. Tends to give you advance warning of data breaches too since you’ll start seeing the spam come in before the announcement.
You say you’re self hosting your email, how are you doing that?
I meant hosting wise, at home or using a VPS? How did you get a fixed IP/ what are you using for a proxy?
It’s a colocated server. I provided the physical server and they put it into a rack in a datacenter with power and networking (static IP).
VPS, I wouldn’t run a mail server from my home network. If you go with mailinabox you don’t need to set up a proxy, it’s pretty simple.
Whatever their doing, it’s not worth it.
Eh it depends. I’m fortunate enough to be in a good IP block so I don’t get my e-mails dropped purely on that. It’s been a good learning experience and I’ve leaned on my own server a number of times for troubleshooting at work since I can see the whole mail flow. The only problem I have is the free Outlook/Hotmail will not accept my e-mails. Everybody else seems fine. All that said, I don’t host anybody else’s e-mail so I haven’t had any spam come out of my IP, and I would never in a million years host e-mail for a customer.
Err… does this mean we can get a Mozilla or Thunderbird email address?
Yes, sort of. Thundermail addresses, apparently, or bring your own. From the linked article you’re commenting on:
Users can send and receive email using new Thundermail accounts they sign up for. The service will also allow using your own custom domain (e.g. [email protected]).
You have always been able to use your own domain email with Thunderbird. The big news here is the fact that they are launching not only a web based mail service a la Thunderbird but also providing an email server for addresses of [yourchosenname]@thundermail.com. which is gonna be pretty great.
Yeah, but the Thunderbird client… ain’t great.
And yes, I’m a Linux nerd since 2003. Thunderbird’s client sucks.
That said, I hope this is successful.
Whats wrong with the thunderbird client.
Even when I was on windows back on XP I used it. Never had a problem with it or its functionality, personally.
Nerds like us can figure it out.
But it’s hardly user friendly. I’m not going to get into the minutiae, but Joe Blow could probably get it to fetch, and send, but the user interface options like font size, etc., blows. Typical nerd “It’s good enough for me, RTFM, losers.”
And I’m too old to fuck with things for fun. I want it to just work, and I’m not paying Apple prices for that, or supporting Microsoft’s eventual SaaS subscription model, which WILL eventually happen.
I mean… It doesnt exactly take being hackerman, master of all hackermans to open a dropdown menu, bro.
I’ve been using Thunderbird for email for years. I use it with some SMTP servers on shared hosting platforms, a yahoo account and a few gmail accounts - one with calendars. I don’t have any problems with it. Runs stable, doesn’t crash or do weird things. My only complaint would be search is a little clunky, but it works.
I had to use Outlook client for year at another job and that client was hot garbage.
and it does RSS
What client do you recommend instead?
For Linux, I can’t think of another user side client. I use web based.
So, I’m happy to see Mozilla get into that arena.
Depends what you’re after. I’m a Thunderbird user, but if user friendliness is the aim then Geary is quite good.
I assume they mean that you can use your own domain with their email server.
I.e point your MX records to them.
Of course you always could use your own domain in their email client. It would be a pretty shitty email client otherwise.
Out of all the articles and the official release announcement, you could share, you shared forbes which violate people privacy.
Why?
Tbh because it was the one shared on Reddit. Though if you have the right browser extensions when I wouldn’t worry about it too much.
Upvoted for honesty lol.
I went looking for something official but couldn’t find it.
You imply OP knows how to read & they read the whole article and noticed the source. 💀
Lol sure destroy all the trust with your users THEN launch an email service. Hard pass fro me.
I guarantee you they’re already planning to train an LLM on everybody’s emails, or at least sell them to AI companies doing training.
I think it’s incredibly important that people know, with absolute certainty, whether or not the new Mozilla/Firefox privacy policy in any way applies to / covers such a service.
I’m not saying I know the answer- What I’m saying without a concrete, permanently applied answer it’s not even considerable.
What is it that you’re concerned about? Assume that I have no idea what either the new or old Mozilla privacy policy is, please. I tend to assume that all such are a pack of lies and everything is spying on me.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-firefox-i-loved-is-gone-how-to-protect-your-privacy-on-it-now/
That article says it better than I can in s short post. Firefox’s terms of use/privacy policy went over like a lead balloon last month.
Thanks for the link.
There is no email service that exists without a terms of use and privacy policy. I still feel everyone overreacted about Firefox. It’s funnier how many people said they switched to Brave because of it and all the super shady stuff Brave has done.
Firefox/Mozilla operated without any of the new additions for nearly the entire history of the internet until this year. If anything, “over”-reacting to the new policies was too weak a reaction. You do you and all, but I’ll agree to very strongly disagree.
at exists without a terms of use and privacy policy. I still feel everyone overreacted about Firefox. It’s funnier how many people said they switched to Brave because of it and all the super shady stuff Brave has done.
Being angry at the Mozilla foundation for those changes is understandable. Switching to Brave because of it is plain stupid.
I do think the brave devs or teams starting spreading the “switch to brave” as a growth hack. No right minded person would pick brave over ff. Maybe librewolf sure.
You can’t know that with absolute certainty. Sorry, but if you’re using someone elses server for your communications and they’re not end to end encrypted, you should just assume that they can and do read your emails, and act accordingly.
Mine is E2EE.
Unless everyone you communicate with have agreed to use the same standard as you, no, it is not.
Do you so it over PGP? Or is it done with ZAE like with Proton?
People still use Email???
mostly people with jobs
Tell me you have no meaningful impact on the world without telling me you have no meaningful impact on the world.
The people who dont are usually old as people who dont need it anymore or kids
You are like those people that always say “Do people still use INPUT SOMETHING”. Do you text or call only? What about your work? you call or send a text instead of email ? maybe drop of some files instead of emailing them? I have so many questions.
Tf else would you you even use
fax
“The fucking blockhain” - some cryptobro
“My ENTERPRISE runs on WhatsAppp/SquareTeams/Discord/Slack” etc etc…
Of course that works until that “enterpise” needs to send invoices, and get invoices.
I sent three faxes today 😎
Xwitter?
the entire world.
If only they could develop a federated short message system.
Messenger/WhatsApp/slack messaging style but federated like email
Email was originally one of the first federated systems. Anyone can host a server and send messages back and forth from other servers with a set standard. That basically is federation.
Email is federated, it’s just not really a medium people want to limit to 500 chars…
Nothing at all stopping you from writing a client that only allows 500 char messages in and out.
Someone even built a chat system that used email under the hood.
check out deltachat, it’s an email client with an interface like an instant messaging app
Email still has it’s place. So changing the interface will likely make email less useable.
Ideally something alongside email but not email.
Matrix is pretty much that already.
Matrix is one example of such a system.
Thunderbird Pro will apparently be:
This email thing plus Thunderbird Send (which is basically https://send.vis.ee/), Thunderbird Appointment - a scheduling tool and Thunderbird Assist, which is:
“…at least for now, being cautiously labeled as “an experiment” that will allow users to take advantage of AI features within their email. However, the goal is to be lightweight enough that the language models can be run locally on a user’s PC in the interest of privacy. This service is being developed in partnership with Flower AI, which leverages Nvidia’s confidential compute to provide private remote processing in the event a user’s PC isn’t powerful enough. Sipes emphasizes that any remote processing features attached to Thunderbird Assist will always be optional, in the interest of ensuring complete user privacy.”
So AI shit that nobody asked for or wants.
"[…] This service is being developed in partnership with Flower AI, which leverages Nvidia’s confidential compute to provide private remote processing in the event a user’s PC isn’t powerful enough. Sipes emphasizes that any remote processing features attached to Thunderbird Assist will always be optional, in the interest of ensuring complete user privacy.”
That’s a lot of words to say “we made an AI that totally won’t suck up your data, trust me bro”
“nvidia’s confidential compute” had me choke when reading it. Sure bro, sure.
This sounds like proton except I haven’t heard a thing about cost or encryption which leads me to believe you will pay with your data and there will be no encryption.
Proton is the bare minimum for email services. Email should be fully redone at its core.
This covers my thoughts about damn near every “helpful” feature this side of auto-complete email addresses.
They said it will be opt-in and are trying to make it local-first. Their provider(?) apparently allows fallback to nvidia cloud compute when the hardware can’t handle it.
I’m not using AI to write my fucking emails, regardless. Just wanted to let people know.
p.s. Sorry, I’m dumb, skipped over quote in parent comment. Point is, there’s more to the service than optional AI bullshit, and you shouldn’t have to disable it.
Archive link for anyone else for whom that article crashed their tab.
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Yet thunderbird still can’t single click open an email in a new window. If I recall correctly the request has been filed in 2014 or smt 💀
Nope, still requires double click.
It’s almost like you didn’t read my comment and went straight to angry. This has been suggested for years with 0 response from Thunderbird team and there’s no way to extend it without forking and patching everything yourself.
