I've used Yahoo email for quite some time and endured all they've subjected me to: the hacking, the advertising, the user unfriendly improvements, the knowledge that my emails probably go to some agency of the U.S. government, and who knows what else.
But this frog is about to jump out of that pot of slowly heating water. I've recently opened an email account at Hushmail.com, a Canadian company, with the hope that it will provide better privacy from the U.S. government, advertisers who want to mine email info for clues as to what I might be willing to buy from them, and also Obama's Big Data campaign info collection machine.
In any event, their Privacy Policy looks fairly decent. Here's an excerpt:
We will only disclose account data in the following circumstances:
If we receive an order enforceable under the laws of British Columbia, Canada, compelling us to disclose account data for a specific user account. The account data we disclose may include data in an unencrypted format. Because such orders generally state that we are not permitted to disclose the existence of the order to a user, we will not disclose to any user the existence, or nonexistence, of any order we may have received.
[Their emphasis.] Presumably, an overly broad order from the U.S. FISA court wouldn't bind them. Of course there could be a treaty between Canada and the U.S. that lets Eric Holder into their database, especially since the 19 Twin Tower terrorists entered the U.S. through Canada. But I haven't researched this and don't know.
However, I do like this part:
We do not analyze your email for the purpose of displaying advertisements.
[Their emphasis.] That sort of analysis is the way Yahoo makes money off us.
But then we get to the Disclaimer. The first sentence says that the company "does not represent or endorse the accuracy or reliability of any of the information" at their website. WTF? They say they'll do something and then say we can't trust them. It looks like something Irwin Mainway would write.
Anyway, they currently provide three levels of email service for individuals. One is free with a storage cap at 25 MB. The next level provides 1 GB storage at $34.99/year, and one up from that gives the user 10GB storage at $49.98/year.
Post Script: Indian reservations are sovereign territories within the U.S. with treaties establishing the relationship between the tribes and the U.S. government. We've seen how the tribes conduct businesses, e.g. tobacco sales and casino gambling, outside U.S. government regulations. Maybe they should get in the email business. There must be millions of Americans who would like to get the U.S. government out of their in-boxes.
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