Email - which apps keep it private

[wigfield]

I see with aqua mail you are now getting ads on the free version, what next. i dont like these ads.

 

[jayanda]

Regarding Blue Mail, this is how they responded to my questions....

We do not store any emails on our servers. Emails are stored on your original email server and on your device. We always attempt to use SSL / TLS.



We hope this helps.

Cheers,

Blue Team

 

[jayanda]

Have only just seen that someone else already elicited more detailed response from Blue Mail.
I have also looked into Easily Do, and Profimail Go
Lonely cat Games responded to my questions about Profimail Go as follows..."1) Data are stored in private memory which no app or user can see.
Also more information about security is here: http://www.lonelycatgames.com/wiki/profimail/privacy
2) There's no app password; Android devices have good Screen lock built-in, so no need for apps to duplicate this.
3) Yes,it does have the option to delete emails from the webmail inbox, on a mail-by-mail basis
4) If you choose SSL connection to server, then network traffic is encrypted.

Best Regards,
Lonely Cat Games Team"

I have read a few recent articles stating SSL encryption is no longer as secure as it used to be, so not happy to use a mail client that relies on this alone.

Regarding Easily Do, Edison responded as follows

"To keep our services free for you to use, we collect and store information from commercial messages such as promotions and receipts. We always remove any information that identifies you personally (emails, names, addresses). We aggregate the data for research about ecommerce trends or allow the data to be used only for aggregate reports. These aggregated reports are used by businesses that purchase our Trends product. We prohibit businesses from tracking or advertising to any users individually, and from using the information for any purpose other than understanding ecommerce trends. You can see and access examples of the aggregated research we develop at Edison Trends.

We encrypt all data in transit and at rest. You can read more about our privacy practices here, and then feel free to read our privacy policy in more depth here.

On iOS, we allow you to use TouchID to open the app if you desire, and we plan on adding passcode support to our Android app in the future.

Anything you delete in our app should also be deleted on the server automatically, however we don't have an option to leave a copy on the server, we're considering this though.

In the meantime, please drop us a line if you have questions or suggestions!


Best,
Jonathan"

For my purposes, Droid mail sounds the better option, if dev has another option for payment than through Google play. Apps with ads are barred from all my devices, I resent anyone taking the liberty of using my personal possessions as a billboard. I prefer a time limited trial if dev wants to be paid.
Have also signed up with Tutanota, and will route my sensitive mail through there.

 

[jayanda]

While the question about business model is legitimate in this case, I would argue with the last statement in your post: Some people do it "for the fun of it".
Just one example: https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=SECUSO+Research+Group

As for Blue Mail, there is a phrase in the privacy policy that concerns me as well (and has not been mentioned yet):

"Some of the information Blue Mail uses to communicate with your device – like its IP address – can be used to approximate the device’s location. This information may be used to administer, analyze and improve Blue Mail."​

In view of the other information about what they do, my question is: how exactly are they collecting IP address(es) of my device and how are they using location information? Are they analyzing that for each message, or do they continuously poll my IP?
Or, maybe it is about the access to their website via browser?​

There is also a phrase in Blue Mail privacy policy, regarding the analytics they use, which says ..."The web tools collect information sent by your browser, including the pages you visit and other information that assists us in improving Blue Mail." When I read this, I see it as a privacy violation phrased in terms of some kind of future benefit to the user.

 

[android_idiot]

I'm moving away from AquaMail Pro, even though I don't get the nasty ads in the message view in the Pro version. The lone developer has sold out to MobiSystems and although he's apparently still involved I think the handwriting is on the wall.

Uninstalled that and used stock email app for a while. I don't have special needs, just want a usable UI and reliable and secure service. Had tried CloudMagic, Blue Mail / TypeMail (before becoming aware of security and snooping issues in these apps). Recently retried K-9, MailDroid but don't like the user interfaces and MailDroid used a lot of battery for some reason. Also Alto, which is pretty nice but their (AOL) privacy policy is unacceptable.

I just finished the 2-week trial of Nine. Has a pretty nice UI and is about as secure as you can get these days. No intermediate account/message storage on a server. It offers much more than I need but seems like the best bet at the moment. Pricey ($14.99), but if it could be my last email app, at least for a few years, I think it's worth it.

The stock app (Android 5.1) also accesses my email servers directly but the app isn't on the Play Store and I don't know where to look for privacy terms. You have to wonder if it's the same as Google's other email apps. If I thought it was secure I'd just stick with it, but who knows?

And more generally, can't Google be snooping on ANY app we install?

So I'm getting close to purchasing Nine in hopes the policy terms don't change and the app retains its current usability.

P.S. Thanks to Crashdamage for this thread. Very sad.

 

[Hadron]

Although the source of this is an Apple site, at least one of the apps named also has an Android version, and it's likely that the list is not complete. Hence I thought it was relevant here:

https://www.macrumors.com/2018/07/02/third-party-email-apps-reading-user-emails/

Summary: there are companies who allow their employees to read a sample of emails "in order to train their systems", and assert that this was covered by their general privacy policy and hence no need to get consent from the people whose email was being read.

 

[dan55]

hi guys,
read this thread a few months back and it changed my ways! ... moved to Nine mail which is pretty good imo - looks very nice
...just been trying out Aqua mail - doesn't looks quite as good - support seems keen - similar conversation and forwarding bug though :/
probably go back to Nine
....or maybe try a 2* app
cheers
dan

btw I cant stand the gmail app

btw2 - forgot to say .... GREAT thread thanks OP

 

[dan55]

EasilyDo came out a year or two after MailDroid was released and did not do well. I know they rebranded, but don't know much about their revenue process at this point. Again, a company with developers will need to pay those developers somehow. K9 is open source and free and MailDroid has ads and a pay version...these are the only 2 that don't have servers, don't have a huge development team that needs to be paid a lot and have been around a while with loyal users (and no major advertising).

I don't think Nine has remote server either :/

...just gave maildroid a quick once over - not too bad - bit of a pain to setup - plus sent mail doesn't appear in inbox when selected :/

 

[dan55]

back to nine

 

[DonB]

Sad looking at this post and realizing that "Crash" has left us from this earth over 2 years ago.

I guess he'd be happy we're still posting in his threads.

Dan, I believe Nine is a PD email app ?? I assume they only offer the free version for 14 days. Are you still back with Nine, or have you moved to anything else. I went back to Aquamail for now, but I'm still searching.

 

[Hadron]

Nine is paid only (with 2 week trial). I've been using it for best part of a year now, works fine, also works with exchange email if you use that, and also supports calendar/tasks/notes/contacts from Outlook and Exchange accounts (sadly doesn't for imap accounts, so can't manage Google calendar and tasks, but it does give me back the ability to manage Outlook calendars with my other calendar apps, which Outlook.com used to give me but which I lost when they replaced that with Outlook). So for me it's been worth a few $.

 

[DonB]

Hadron, great to talk to you again. Thanks for the info.

Any suggestions on a free replacement that's worthy and safe. I'm back for now with Aquamail, but can do without the video adds when sending emails, LOL

If anyone else has any suggestions for me to try, I'll give it a whirl.

 

[Hadron]

I trust MailDroid and K9, but neither has the UI polish of AquaMail.

Have you tried an additional blocker?

 

[DonB]

I trust MailDroid and K9, but neither has the UI polish of AquaMail.

Have you tried an additional blocker?

I did try a few blockers but they weren't great, any suggestions.

 

[Hadron]

Sadly, without root I'm afraid my experience matches yours. I've tried Blockada, Block This, DNS66 and AdGuard, and found them all very similar: each blocks some stuff but lets a fair amount through. None comes close to the IPtables-based root adblockers.

The question would be whether any of them would stop those video ads you mentioned, which sound frankly obnoxious.

 

[DonB]

Sadly, without root I'm afraid my experience matches yours. I've tried Blockada, Block This, DNS66 and AdGuard, and found them all very similar: each blocks some stuff but lets a fair amount through. None comes close to the IPtables-based root adblockers.

Yep same here, I was also using DNS66, well I'll deal with it for now, thanks bud

 

[Fox Mulder]

Interesting, I've been using Blokada on my no-longer-rooted S5 (since I updated to 6.0) and I find it to be just as effective as AdAway.

RIP Crash.

 

[DonB]

Interesting, I've been using Blokada on my no-longer-rooted S5 (since I updated to 6.0) and I find it to be just as effective as AdAway.

RIP Crash.

I've tried Blokada and still had the adds in Aquamail.