Disclaimer: I have been a user of almost every email provider mentioned below, and I am not affiliated with any of them.

You can read Forward Email’s comparison with many providers here: https://forwardemail.net/en/blog/forward-email-vs-mailbox-org-email-service-comparison , by substituting mailbox.org with others on their list.

In short, Forward Email has some wrong information. They attempt to achieve full score in every security test and prove they are superior to their competitors with scores. I don’t know what is driving Forward Email towards being a pupil, and it seems like many privacy seekers get trapped into how high they score in the Internet.nl tests.

Just performed a fresh install of Arch, and try to use zsh instead of bash.

To make it remember history, and inherit nice aliases from bash , make a file .zshrc with the following:

# Created by newuser for 5.9
export PATH=$PATH:/home/user/.local/bin
# uncomment the line below if you feel like using oh-my-posh 
# eval "$(oh-my-posh init zsh --config 'catppuccin')" 
alias ls='ls --color=auto'
alias grep='grep --color=auto'
PS1='[\u@\h \W]\$ '
export XDG_DATA_DIRS="/var/lib/flatpak/exports/share:/home/user/.local/share/flatpak/exports/share:/home/user/.local/share/flatpak/exports/share:/var/lib/flatpak/exports/share:/usr/local/share/:/usr/share/"
HISTFILE=~/.zsh_history
# How many commands to store in history
HISTSIZE=10000
SAVEHIST=10000
setopt SHARE_HISTORY
# uncomment the lines below if you installed Fcitx 
# export XMODIFIERS="@im=fcitx"
# export GTK_IM_MODULE=fcitx
# export QT_IM_MODULE=fcitx

By default, GNOME doesn’t recognize tray icons from applications. This would be a headache for applications that starts up silently and automatically minimizes to tray. Head to Flatpak manager and install Extension Manager, open it and search for AppIndicator and KStatusNotifierItem Support, install the extension and you’ll be able to see icons showing up.

Disclaimer: this post is a machine translation of the original Chinese version. Please refer to the original content for accurate information.

Preface

Keyoxide is similar to Keybase.io, used for verifying the identity consistency of online accounts.

For example, search for contact@forgejo.org on Keyoxide.org, and you’ll see that Forgejo owns a Mastodon instance account @forgejo@floss.social, the domain forgejo.org, and a Forgejo instance account @forgejo@codeberg.org.

You can also search using OpenPGP public key fingerprints. For instance, search for my fingerprint (which can be found on the “Contact” page) on Keyoxide.org, and you’ll see that Yuki claims ownership of accounts such as ActivityPub, Matrix, Forgejo, as well as the domain obsp.de.

Earlier this month I wrote an article with the title Encryption in Email Practice. My point of view is pretty straightforward, “encryption not complete means no encryption at all”, and people should stop relying on email for any secret or privacy. Nevertheless, people would not just stop because I (and many others) said don’t, as the inertia of communication is hard to revert.

The most interesting article I have read as an email enthusiast should be E-mail providers - which one to choose?, as the author themself appears to be a super paranoid and the ultimate seeker of privacy. The inspection method they have used is not technical, as they basically went through the privacy policy page of each provider and tried to sign up through Tor. Their criteria is at least extreme and trivial, if not hilarious:

The short answer is yes, the long answer is not always.

The benefits of using your own custom domain, and the drawbacks of not using it, are listed below:

• Email providers would shut down, and all you have to do is changing MX records.
• You don’t always need to pay for extra addresses. A simple catch-all would solve the problem, and you can reduce spam by setting up rules with each recipient address.
• More solutions available. Some email hosting providers are exclusive for custom domain users, and you can engage with different providers with your inbound and outbound, get the best solution of each. For example, I self host my inbound email with mail-in-a-box and have full control over the spam filter, but I’m concerned with IP reputation and deliverablity, so for the SMTP service I simply choose Amazon SES at a low price.

The points above sound pretty valid, but people have raised some concerns: