I’m in a quest to find a good email provider that doesn’t ask for a cellphone or another email address while creating an account, cock.li used to do this but now it’s “getting back on its feet”
Just signed up for Tuta and they do not ask for this.
Tuta won’t let you check mail unless you give them a phone number or pay, if I recall correctly.
Proton?
There used to be a way to make Google accounts with no number but that’s probably been patched. I generally refuse to add numbers if I can help it.
Proton, Mailbox & fastmail are all good options. Best way to avoid it is self-hosting but that is beyond most people (as in time-consuming).
If it’s associated with a specific device it will let you (ex my Android tv has its own account, no phone)
create 2 proton mail account und use each other as a backup e-mail
Don’t u need an existing email to bootstrap that process.
I think you used to be able to “bootstrap” a proton account with a mail.ru account (which needs no prior email or phone), but I don’t think that works any more
How do you get DSL/coax internet when you can’t visit web pages?
Spoiler: With the good old telephone.
nope, you can skip for the first account and then validate after the fact
Proton? More like pro Nazi.
OFTL Did they support Trump?
Their founder did, very openly and expressively, it was quite bizarre
Then he tried to walk it back by gaslighting.
“I wasn’t being political” said the man who was clearly being political.
The CEO made a remark about Trump, and used his corporate account for it.
If I recall correctly (no press statement was made by Proton), it was a personal remark on a corporate account, which he was quick to allow anyone to do. It also didn’t support Trump as a whole, just a remark Orangeman made about getting small business a level playing field (which I totally trust from an olicharch).
I’m still sticking with Proton for the foreseeable future, as its privacy awareness and advocacy is still a core business value.
Ionos enabled me to do that.
But I chose not to.Personally I use mailbox.org, it’s not free, but you are not the product
Selfhosted email I guess.
Is that even feasible without getting marked as spam by all the major players?
You can host your domain pretty much anywhere and they will provide mail hosting as part of most packages. From there, it’s up to you to talk to their servers to manage your mails, typically through IMAP.
Hosting companies will be whitelisted as far as mail routing is concerned.
Yes. I host my own using Mailu.io. With the proper records, you will be able to send emails to any big email provider (proton, gmail, outlook). You need to pick a good TLD (.com, .net, .org, etc) so you don’t get your email thrown into the spam folder immediately.
If you buy a domain now, you will probably get on the Spamhaus blacklist, which every big email service seems to use (again, proton, gmail, outlook, and probably others), so you will need to wait a few months and keep a good spam record (well, don’t send spam emails obviously and keep your email server with the proper configurations).
Also, pick a good VPS provider (No vultr, no linode) with low levels of abuse, because if you setup your email server in an IP range with a lot of abusers, you may get your email flagged. (You can check that using https://www.uceprotect.net/en/rblcheck.php, but I’m not sure if uceprotect is trustable).
Hi, I recently set up my own email server
- It’s a huge pain in the ass getting things like DMARC and DKIM and whatever to work. Without those, most providers won’t even deliver your messages. But luckily, there are websites that help you check and fix your configuration
- Even once you do get these things set up correctly, most providers will send your outgoing messages straight to the recipient’s spam folder
- That being said, I believe most providers will mark you as “not spam” if the other person initiates the conversation. So this could be a non-problem if you’re making an email for your business and putting it on business cards or something.
- Mullvad (VPN provider) self-hosts their support email, and they seem to be doing fine.
Hope that helps
I’ve been considering getting a pager or a burner phone just for this
Most phones are dual Sim these days
Better to not associate this number to your main phone anyway. Less likelyhood to have the info stolen from you.
Can pagers receive text messages? I thought they are closed ecosystems, basically?
you know i’m not sure.
What i want is a phone that is basically a beeper for text messages. Doesn’t even have to send. just receive the stupid OTP. I wonder how hard that’d be to make with like a raspberri pi or something
Just get a virtual DID number from something like Voip.ms or virtualphone. There may be other providers out there that use crypto for payment for added privacy, but if all you want to do is be able to keep your real phone # off the grid, these work.
usually they check for VOIP numbers and give you an error. Has to be legit.
Never had that problem with the Google voice service
Yeah yeah it’s google, but it gives numbers that work
Google voice is hit or miss. It’s worked for a lot of smaller sites for me, but the bigger / more corporate it is, the less likely it seems to work.
Last time I checked, Google Voice is only available for US residents. Not sure if there’s alternative.
Theres an LTT video where one of the boys intercept all Linus’ calls and texts, classic prank.
You mean the Veritasuim video with linus in it?
I absolutely love this.
It is the same thing that happened with US Social Security Numbers, which were originally just tracking numbers for that one purpose that were coopted by capitalists and treated like something special.
deleted by creator
999,999,999
It’s 1B. You’re forgetting zero.
Now I know your social security number. You fool!
It’s not just “capitalists” (whatever that means), every government agency seems to want it, employers and banks are required to ask for it, etc. It’s more than just “some people misused it,” we actually wrote it into regulations.
I remember I was flipping through some of my mom’s old college stuff and there was a club that she was involved with and everyone listed their address and social security numbers. It was wild, no idea why they felt the need to collect socials. But this was a very long time ago.
My college ID used to be my social security number, so maybe it was something like that? Iirc that’s no longer allowed in the US.
Good lord.
Imagine giving an institution like that your money.
It wasn’t that uncommon at the time. Take a look at this 2005 study the US GAO did on the issue: Social Security Numbers: Federal and State Laws Restrict Use of SSNs, yet Gaps Remain Also, this news article on the trend.
Internet security and internet privacy are only incompatible goals when combined with incompetency and shit user-exerience design.
- Phone numbers
- social security numbers
Stop making personal information into digital ids because when it inevitably ends up in some kind of data breach. These companies all throw their hands up saying sucks to be you.
What I hate is when they want you to store “secret” information like your mother’s maiden name/ first pet name for later verifications. You know these are stored in plain text of course. My own damn government does this stupid shit, and they’ve had several hacks of PII including gun registrations because as far as I can tell, nobody competent works in government IT.
Security questions don’t care what you put in there. It’s not an exam. It’s basically just an alt password.
I just generate a string of alphanumeric text from my password generator and stuff those in there. If I lose my password vault somehow I’m cooked anyway, so.
I use bullshit answers for these, and save them in the notes section of my password manager.
I choose random questions and store the random passwords that I use as answers in my password manager. It’s also more secure because people can’t just Facebook stalk you for answers.
Nah, man. Gotta get my $2.97 check.
Yeah, just generate a unique ID and ask only for the information you actually need.
Are Internet security and Internet privacy incompatible goals?
They are if the security is tied to knowing that an account is a person.
Emails can be simple - mine is $firstName@$lastName.me Tbh phone numbers are quite long and if people can’t remember 4 digital pin… Still you can generate qr code mailto: links
It’s not an accident. They’re not stupid. It is intentional. They want your personal information. Most of your personal information is tied to your email but it’s easy enough to spin up an alias to sign in with. Requiring a phone number ensures that they know exactly who you are and can buy/sell/use your data accordingly. They also know what a giant pain in the dick it is to change your phone number, especially when you need it for these security checks. They also know sales conversion rates are much higher if they can get you on the phone. So yeah, they’re not going to stop doing that.
Please. It is the most annoying part of trying to use some sites and I rather not give out my number to people who store important info in plain text files.
Yes. Don’t forget your phone number will be exposed to the public when the business gets hacked.
Not if. When.
To the same audience: quit selling my fucking phone number!
I ditched a phone number I had for 10+ years because it was leaked everywhere. Only a few short months after updating my number with the DMV and a handful of other government agencies I started receiving scam calls/messages again.
At some point we need to adopt some fucking privacy laws. This is absolutely bonkers—is no one else fed up??
Edit: I already know how to silence unknown callers. What I want is to not have the problem in the first place, ideally by 1) having companies not sell personal data to third parties and 2) being able to block spoofed (non-encrypted) caller ID.
Don’t worry, here in Europe we are full of privacy laws but I still receive tents of spam calls per day. Usually from non UE countries faking the number with my country numbers.
Anything with a London 020 number is guaranteed to be a man with an Indian accent pretending to be from British Telecom.
Australia has a “do not call register”. It seems to mostly work, but telcos are having trouble with calls originating from outside the network with spoofed caller ID. We still get spam/scam calls from India among other places.
Even if they’re not calling you directly, they are still using your phone number to link you to things and create a shadow profile behind the scenes.
So does the US, though you need to re-register every so often. It works pretty well, but it’s not advertised very well.
At some point we need to adopt some fucking privacy laws.
Yeah we absolutely had to ban TilTok because of privacy concerns but the idea of creating a law to protect our privacy is ridiculous beyond all reasoning. The stupidity of the United States government is absolute.
Agreed, but I’m not addressing TikTok specifically but rather policies similar to GDPR.
I’m confused of how this keeps happening to people.
Like I use my phone on most sites that allow it and I’ve never had spam/scam calls really, but I’ve also explicitly unchecked the marketing boxes that appear on the signup so maybe that it.
The last instance that actually happened to me was with entering my university a few years ago for my BS degree. They 1000% sold my contact information as some part of the deans/honors list process. I reached out to them and stopped that so fast.
quit
sellingdemanding my fucking phone number!FTFY
At some point we need to adopt some fucking privacy laws. This is absolutely bonkers—is no one else fed up??
Look at you, trying to use the government to solve every day problems that face pretty much all of us.
Don’t you know we only focus on gridlock issues to distract us from real issues now?
I do, unfortunately.
I have an app called Silence that lets me block calls from numbets not in my addreasbook. Highly recommended
https://github.com/x13a/Silence
Reminder: Dont blindly trust random internet sources!
That’s not the problem I’m referring to; this is already built-in to iOS (and I hope Android).
I’m pretty sure a lot of scam calls use machines that call every possible phone number within an area code and see who answers. There is no way to avoid it.
this right here. I stopped getting scam calls years ago, I stopped answering and they just eventually stopped calling. If you don’t interact with the call (interact being ignore it or mute it NOT reject it) and it just goes to voicemail, they seem to eventually stop
If you’re job hunting, or work in specific fields this may not be a reasonable thing to do and that’s at least part of the problem.
This would deem troublesome yea, being said I firmly believe in separating work and home. I wouldn’t be willing to use a personal number for work related activities, at least not public related activities. Being said, I have no good solution for that, at least you are being paid for the scam call I guess.
Job hunting is what I meant. And you pretty much have to use your personal phone for that. I haven’t ever had a company phone. Doubt they’d give it to techs.
Lucky you. I’ve been letting calls from any number I don’t recognize go to voicemail for years and nothing ever seems to change.
I just block and report as spam any spam text messages I get and any calls that get marked as scam likely. It was terrible before the election because I live in a swing county in a swing state and I think everyone was just mass spamming every number in the area code, but since then I haven’t really gotten much, maybe one errant text every 2 or 3 weeks. Which is much better than it was last spring and summer when the amount started picking up for me.
Setup a whitelist, I think it’s native on iPhone and there are multiple Android apps. Only calls from your contact list will ring through. My voicemail is, “You’re getting this because you’re not on my contact list, send a text and I’ll get back to you.”
I set my phone to decline calls from unknown callers years ago.
These calls are already illegal. I used to report them to the FTC but I never heard anything back so I have no idea what happens, but I presume nothing. If I had the time to take them, and if they spoke English, I would record them with the Cube ACR app (which no longer works) and convince them to incriminate themselves. Ask their name, company, location, time/date, whether they ran my number through the DNC registry.
lists sourced from drivers licenses and motor vehicle registration records are literally sold by some states.
Source?
wisconsin literally has an opt-out/opt-in (based on your current status) box on vehicle registration renewal forms, for one.
Yep, wish I’d known that a couple years ago.
Oh everyone is fed up but we just elected a guy and government who is sure to make it all way way way worse.
He just helped put the nail in the coffin of the lie that crypto is for anything but scams, don’t worry, it’s gonna get real bad before it gets any better.
In South Africa, where I live, everyone is assigned an ID Number at Birth. You need an ID number, thumbprint scan AND proof of address to get issued a SIM card number due to a law introduced called RICA. It was meant to help fight crime. Worried that the government could listen in to calls or read their SMSs, the criminals just switched to WhatsApp, which also happened to become cheaper than SMSs and gained popularity in this time.
The cops never seemed to crack WhatsApp. The only drug busts that happen are when an open secret becomes laughably too open and when they harass every person arriving from South America at O.R. Tambo international airport just to catch the decoy mules carrying 12g of cocaine (total). Every dealer I ever organised with was over WhatsApp.
So now, woopsi, RICA stopped nothing and just became a liability. That treasure trove of fragile data made its way to scammers and spammers. A total net negative.
I’d encourage everyone else in other countries to apply major pushback to any government proposals in this direction.
Do people still believe that drug trade is ran by criminals?
I am pretty sure in every country, it is controlled either police or the spooks.
I am done pretending otherwise. Criminals are just useful idiots, the real thugs are the police and security apparatus
[citation needed]
there are MANY MANY examples don’t be a lazy pelican with your beak open. go look
The person who makes a claim has to back it up
stay ignorant and dangerous friend
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_cocaine_trafficking
This is just one example;)
“Bitcoin, it just seems like a scam,” Mr Trump said. “I don’t like it because it’s another currency competing against the dollar.”
— Donald Trump
Of course, Trump Coin made just for him is fine. And any security who bribes him. Oh wait now none of them are securities; Gary Gensler was our last line of defense.
[Edit: got it backwards]
Did we? My government leader hasn’t changed nor have we had an election lately
There’s a subset of Americans who are rather like ostriches: heads so deeply buried in the sand that they forget anything exists outside their immediate surroundings. Reminding them that the rest of the world is out there rarely has any positive results, however.
If they could read they would be upset by that.
Bane of my life as about a year ago my dad switched his sim and immediately started pestering me about not being able to log into his accounts.
Yes he got rid of the old number completly and expected me to somehow make his logins work. This is still going on to this day when he complains to me something doesn’t work it’s because he’s tied it to his old phone number.
Computer technology is fundamentally insecure so long as everything is connected all the time. It drives me mental that idiots keep trying to foist the whole of human society onto devices which are clearly unfit for the task.
Technology exists to keep all your personal data exceptionally secure. Modern encryption is incredibly difficult to break (impossible really).
Humans are fundamentally insecure. Any time you read about a data leak, it’s because somebody stupidly opened an attachment or fell for a scam. Any time someone gets “hacked,” they didn’t. They gave away their information. Human error and a lack of education are the problems.
While I also disagree with the claim that technology is “fundamentally” insecure, it’s unfortunately not that often made by smart and caring people.
While I also disagree with the claim that technology is “fundamentally” insecure
For pretty much everyone other than perhaps the CIA and Mosad, it is.
I have absolutely no need for my phone number, nor do I use it for anything that I couldn’t use a voice app for. Just get rid of them altogether.
Yeah I mean I’d get rid of that and email entirely if I could but unfortunately there are legal and societal expectations.
Get married, then legally, you only need one lol.
We need email. It’s one of the few protocols that are 100% in the user’s control. I run my own mail server. I can’t do the same for whatsapp.
We’ve added a lot of checks to email (SSL, DKIM, DMARC, SPF) so it’s very easy to identify spam these days. It’s also easy to avoid giving any two companies the same email address. That’s something much harder to avoid with a phone number.
For 2FA, per-account email addresses and authenticor apps are the best approach for privacy.
I run my own mail server. I can’t do the same for whatsapp.
No, but you can do the same for a wide variety of chat apps.
it’s very easy to identify spam these days
LOL then why is my inbox constantly full of spam?
Platforms like SimpleX solve spam by requiring participants to have an invitation to message you. You can either send them a 1-time invitation or you can use a semi-permanent one that can be posted publicly and rolled as necessary without losing contact with anyone you’ve already connected with, so by the time it’s mined somehow and sold to some company, it’s already changed.
For 2FA, per-account email addresses and authenticor apps are the best approach for privacy.
LOL what? No they’re not. How does an email protect your privacy over just a username?
LOL what? No they’re not. How does an email protect your privacy over just a username?
They said per-account email addresses, presumably meaning that when giving out an email address, you would use a different one for each service. That way, they couldn’t be used to link you across services, and you could easily delete one (and know who to blame) if it was abused.
Yes, I understand how email aliasing works. Again, how is that more private than a username?
I don’t see a claim of it being more private than a username. Perhaps the person you’re arguing with views them as equally private, or is thinking of services that require some form of contact info. I can’t speak for them.
It’s right here:
For 2FA, per-account email addresses and authenticor apps are the best approach for privacy.
I can’t speak for them.
But you just did.
Zoomer spotted, opinion rejected. Email >>>>> chat apps.
Zoomer spotted
Haha, not even close
Email >>>>> chat apps.
Wrong again. But please, do go on.
You’ll pry email from my #coldDeadHands, but I haven’t had a phone number for a decade.
