EU data regions are a reflexive action by companies that try to hold on to their EU customers (and more and more are leaving, surprisingly the larger ones seem to be leading here). Realize that as long as you are still hosted on US owned infrastructure or that if there are US (or: five-eyes) owned companies anywhere in the stack your data can still be forcibly pulled and often without you being aware that this happened. There are only very few such stacks that are 100% owned by EU entities.
True. Australia is part of the Five Eyes alliance. Fastmail is an Australian company. Australia also has the <i>Assistance and Access Act</i> - <a href="https://havenmessenger.com/blog/posts/australia-assistance-access-act/" rel="nofollow">https://havenmessenger.com/blog/posts/australia-assistance-a...</a> - which just stops shy of asking Australian tech companies, like Fastmail, to build backdoors into their products so that the government can "legally access" data from them. (When the law passed, Fastmail lost many clients - <a href="https://www.itnews.com.au/news/fastmail-loses-customers-faces-calls-to-move-over-anti-encryption-laws-519783" rel="nofollow">https://www.itnews.com.au/news/fastmail-loses-customers-face...</a> ).
> just stops shy of asking Australian tech companies, like Fastmail, to build backdoors into their products so that the government can "legally access" data from them<p>It stops just short of saying that you must do this<i>preemptively</i>, but is pretty clear that you must do it if they ask you to.
Why do I never hear about this ‘feature’ from American products like gmail which 99% of the HN audience is using? Isn’t USA a member of Five Eyes?<p>I admit it is a concern, as a Fastmail user, but this discussion only seems to happen on the Fastmail threads, yet no one bats an eye if one is suggested to open a gmail account like everybody else.
> Why do I never hear about this ‘feature’ from American products like gmail which 99% of the HN audience is using? Isn’t USA a member of Five Eyes?<p>Not sure why you haven’t heard about it but US Cloud Act is a big reason for EU companies not trusting US companies: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act</a>
Because people who are using Fastmail care about privacy and have decided <i>not</i> to use Gmail (probably for that reason). Fastmail presents themselves as privacy-first. So people discuss where that might not be the case.<p>Their homepage:<p><i>Free email isn’t really free: you’re paying with your privacy. As a paid service, we only serve you, our customer. This means we have no split loyalties, no mining of your personal data, no sharing it with third parties, and no ads, ever.</i>
Because Fastmail is one of the relatively rare non-American companies that's managed to get a good position in a challenging market. The UK's "Snooper's Charter" also has a mechanism to send Technical Capability Notices that require tech companies to build things to spy on their users.
Why would a US company tell you that it's going to spy on you for the government?<p>American products in particular are often mass consumer products that aren't particularly privacy focused. Everyone who cares about privacy already knows that Gmail isn't private - not only is it American, it's also owned by a domestic espionage conglomerate - but might be expecting Fastmail to be private, so that one is newsworthy.
Because everybody on HN is most likely aware that Google is an American company and that by using them you pretty much can assume that your data can be compromised without your knowledge or recourse. Post Snowden there should be zero doubt about that. Fastmail is worthy of scrutiny because people might believe that they are materially different when in practice they probably are not.
> Why do I never hear about this ‘feature’ from American products like gmail<p>I can't relate, I hear people complaining about American spyware online all the time in tech circles like HN.
> Why do I never hear about this ‘feature’ from American products like gmail which 99% of the HN audience is using? Isn’t USA a member of Five Eyes?<p>There is lot of hate toward Google (and other top US companies). Especially due to autobanning of accounts, 2FA etc. at the moment people have fastmail as their darling - because they are the underdog, no AI forcing in products (at the moment) etc. It is like stripe from 5 years ago.<p>Most have given up in snooping. Or you need to go to proton mail but it has other issues. Every company is subject to some regulations.<p>at the end, if the receiver of email has to also keep it safe. Do they?
Because it's a criteria for choosing Fastmail.
And you can’t tell anyone if you do, on pain of jail.
Almost any goverment can force any company to build backdoors into it's products, only protection is to use open source (it's much harder to implement backdoor in open source) on own physical hardware, not in cloud (computers owned and controled by some else).
> your data can still be forcibly pulled and often without you being aware that this happened<p>as a german i feel the urge to point out that this technically also applies to european companies...
With more hurdles for the US, but still technically applicable
That's true but the EU still has a - mostly - functioning legal system. See 'Schrems' and other lawsuits that came out as they should have.
True, I think the calculus is more about who you think is more trustworthy than what tools they have to damage you.
I am almost positive things are not the way they were and requests for data access especially if the subjects background is "suspect" are more highly scrutinized.<p>And as the Americans are choosing to interfere in European domestic politics and trample their own laws and constitution the more scrutiny their requests will get.
Especially if European companies have an office and significant share of customers in the US.
europeans like it more when just european governments are doing it
For anyone curious, it's the CLOUD act:<p>> The CLOUD Act primarily amends the Stored Communications Act (SCA) of 1986 to allow federal law enforcement to compel U.S.-based technology companies via warrant or subpoena to provide requested data stored on servers regardless of whether the data are stored in the U.S. or on foreign soil.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act</a>
The point of control is Congress, until we stop electing corpratist politicians, we will continue to get bad legislation.
It doesn't matter if it's Congress. At the end of the day America's internal governance systems are America's problem. The rest of the world should not care if a certain branch is causing issues, and frankly, is starting to come to that conclusion.<p>It's unfortunate for us, but we very rarely isolate individual government systems for other nations.
It's weird how everyone focuses on that part of the CLOUD Act. The CLOUD Act actually did two things: (1) that, and (2) provided an expedited way for the US to enter into Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties (MLATs) with other countries.<p>It was the MLAT thing that the various civil liberties groups object to (I'll cover the problems with those down below). There was very little objection to the first part.<p>The first part was not controversial because pretty much every country has something equivalent (for reasons I'll cover below), as did the US except specifically in the case of data covered by the SCA due to poor drafting.<p>One of the big reasons for the SCA was created was the emerging "third party doctrine" meant that instead of having to get a warrant or subpoena against you to get your data they could simply subpoena it from any of your service providers that had it. The SCA made it so the third party doctrine subpoenas would not apply to stored communications.<p>There were still cases where the government would need to compel the service provider to turn over the data. They wanted something with the probable cause requirements of a warrant but the delivery method of a subpoena. (A subpoena asks someone who controls the data to turn a copy over. A warrant is for when the government wants to raid the data center and seize the data. Since that involves the government directly acting where the data is located it only applies to someplace where they have jurisdiction).<p>So they created a new thing, the SCA warrant. The called it a "warrant" because it had the probable cause requirements of a warrant, but neglected to add something saying that in other respects it functions like a subpoena. I'll call this a pseudo-warrant.<p>The SCA was not the first pseudo-warrant. That would be the warrants under the Wiretap Act of 1968. Territoriality questions did not arise under that because by its nature the data it sought copies of was always in the US.<p>With the SCA the data might not necessarily be in the US. Years later Microsoft argued that because it is a "warrant" it should have the territorial restrictions that normal warrants have. The CLOUD Act clarified that it was indeed supposed to be like a subpoena as far as territoriality goes.<p>There have been some more pseudo-warrants created since then, but their drafters learned from the SCA and made sure the original legislation was clear on just what they were.<p>The reason pretty much every country has something like that, going back well before online documents, is because <i>not</i> having such a thing leads to big problems. If anyone in the country could shield documents from subpoenas (or whatever the equivalent is called in that country) by merely storing them across a border every company with documents that it needs to keep but that might be incriminating later would get sent to a storage facility across a border as soon as they were no longer actively using them.<p>For example as soon as a car company in Detroit releases a new car all the documents where during development engineers brought up safety concerns which management decided to not address would be sent across the bridge to a storage facility in Canada.<p>With electronic documents it is even easier. You would not have to wait until you aren't actively using the documents to stick them outside the country. Just stick your file server across a border and make sure you only have copies in country when someone is actively reading or editing them.<p>And so pretty much everywhere subpoenas compel someone in the country who controls the documents to fetch them (or copies) and turn them over. The actual location of the documents is completely irrelevant.<p>The thing that was worrying about the CLOUD Act was the MLAT provisions. MLATs are treaties where the participating countries agree on law enforcement. They include things like sharing information and cooperating on investigations. Normally these are enacted just like any other treaty. The executive branch negotiates them and then the Senate votes on ratification.<p>The CLOUD Act adds an expedited process where the Attorney General and the Secretary of State can sign an MLAT. Congress is not involved. These agreements allow foreign law enforcement to make requests directly to US service providers instead of going through the diplomatic channels normal MLAT requests go through, and they allow them access to stored communications that the SCA would normally block.<p>There are some safeguards. The foreign government is not supposed to intentionally target US people who are in the US and are not not supposed to use the data they get to infringe freedom of expression. There's also a 180 day window before these executive MLATs take effect during which Congress can block them by passing a joint resolution to do so.<p>Civil rights groups and many others were not impressed with those safeguards.
Which wouldn't matter where the data is located, so I don't think that this is the reason Fastmail is doing it, because a savvy enough company would know that the problem is that the company is US based.
They're Australian
Australian companies are also subject to the USA Cloud Act. As is the UK, with Canada coming on board soon too.<p>Even the entire EU is in the process of negotiating the same agreement.<p><a href="https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/united-states-and-canada-welcome-negotiations-cloud-act-agreement" rel="nofollow">https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/united-states-and-ca...</a><p><a href="https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-and-european-commission-announces-resumption-us-and-eu-negotiations" rel="nofollow">https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-a...</a>
That is plain wrong, and on top of that, the CLOUD act doesn't really solve anything because if the order to obtain data is legal for the US arm but illegal for the EU arm, releasing the data from say Ireland to the US would immediately lead to steep monetary and legal penalties for the EU arm.
Your linked information doesn't indicate anywhere that Australia or any other foreign government is subject to US law. The latter states that negotiation with the EU on this topic was suspended in 2019.<p>Things have changed. With Chinese law in regards to data within Chinese jurisdiction a long-standing thing and an unfriendly American government potentially in power for an extended period, other countries are realizing the importance of data sovereignty.
That’s not going to help anyone.<p><i>The Five Eyes is an Anglosphere intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These countries are party to the multilateral UKUSA Agreement, a treaty for joint cooperation in signals intelligence.</i><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes</a>
isn't there this five eyes thingy?
Yeah, this does absolutely not solve the CLOUD Act issues. <i>However</i>, it is good to look at what the ramifications of the CLOUD Act is for e-mail:<p>- The US could request your data. You probably shouldn't use e-mail for anything sensitive anyway for <i>many</i> reasons. E-Mail was traditionally not encrypted and I think that many servers still allow plain-text communication. The protocols are old and there are all kinds of downgrade attacks. Aside from that, even if your service does not fall under the CLOUD Act, you are probably f*cked anyway, because most people you communicate with are using services that fall under the CLOUD Act.<p>- The US can force the provider to block your account. The workarounds are: regularly backup your e-mail (easy for services that offer IMAP) and, most importantly, use a domain with an extension that is not under the control of a US (or probably five eyes) registrar.<p>Use an E2E-encrypted messenger with perfect forward secrecy, etc. for most personal communication.
Email itself is not encrypted but the links between email servers are. That makes it non-trivial to intercept email.<p>However, most people these days are using webmail from the big-tech companies which makes it relatively easy for LEA and intelligence agencies to read your email.
Something like 99% of email is now done over TLS.
Five Eyes is only surveillance, right - they don't transfer court orders or arrest warrants?<p>So Australia may spy on data entering and leaving the Australian server that serves US customers, but they can't just seize the server based on the Five Eyes agreement.<p>BTW it's expanded to Fourteen Eyes and it's generally good to assume that <i>all</i> Western governments are cooperating to about this degree.
EU sovereign clouds are taking off right now - especially when it comes to sensitive data (government, healthcare, etc.). Lots of players moving into the space. The common denominator - nothing touches the US.<p>AWS, Azure, GCP, Oracle, Schwarz Digits, SAP
Requiring that you believe those companies that they won’t hand the keys over to the US at the first ask.<p>Like, the critical problem with the AWS sovereign pitch is that you must believe that they won’t give the keys to the US, and they also won’t give the source code that’s hosted in the US to the government either for them to find vulnerabilities in. I don’t know if that’s good enough unless you just need the data to stay in the EU and you don’t care if another country sees it.<p>I know they probably did some work on it (what if primary AWS goes rogue and the EU entity must work without it) but I don’t know if they explained how they’re safe to the public.
Don't forget Lidl!
You can strike at least four of those.
You're spreading misinformation since AWS, Azure, GCP (Google) and Oracle are all U.S. companies which are subject to the CLOUD Act.<p>Just because they pretend to be European-based by setting up a European subsidiary with so-called firewalls means exactly...nothing.
> AWS, Azure, GCP, Oracle<p>What? Those are US companies, they will have to give out your data under the Cloud Act. Only Schwarz and SAP are free from that by being German companies.
Can you point me towards some resources that show EU customers moving?<p>Not that I don’t trust the statement, I just would like to know more.
I hope Airbus is large enough for you?<p><a href="https://thenextweb.com/news/airbus-scaleway-aws-sovereign-cloud" rel="nofollow">https://thenextweb.com/news/airbus-scaleway-aws-sovereign-cl...</a><p>And many others besides, pretty much every company I've looked at in the last year is either acutely aware of the problem or they are already executing on it. With Trump and his merry band of criminals repeatedly stating they're going to take Greenland by force you can't blame them either, that would effectively put the EU on a war footing with the United States (I still can't believe I'm writing this sort of thing and it is not entirely fiction), the end result of that would be that there would be an absolute run on EU hosted capacity. They're just trying to beat the rush and hope they'll never be proven to be right.
Tnx!
"This is not Airbus abandoning US big tech. It will keep AWS for its Skywise aviation-data platform and a customer-support tool. It also still runs Microsoft and Google productivity suites, plus Salesforce, Coupa and Workday."
<i>HN Search: airbus critical apps scaleway</i> - <a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=airbus%20scaleway&sort=byDate&type=story" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...</a><p><i>Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48415217">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48415217</a> - June 2026 (235 comments)<p><i>Netherlands reaches deal with European cloud company to decrease U.S. tech reliance</i> - <a href="https://nltimes.nl/2026/04/24/netherlands-reaches-deal-european-cloud-company-decrease-us-tech-reliance" rel="nofollow">https://nltimes.nl/2026/04/24/netherlands-reaches-deal-europ...</a> - April 24th, 2026<p><i>Wary of US Big Tech, the EU looks to build its “EuroStack”</i> - <a href="https://sherwood.news/world/wary-of-us-big-tech-the-eu-looks-to-build-its-eurostack/" rel="nofollow">https://sherwood.news/world/wary-of-us-big-tech-the-eu-looks...</a> - March 18th, 2026<p><i>Why European Companies Are Leaving US Cloud Providers in 2026 — And Where They're Going</i> - <a href="https://massivegrid.com/blog/european-companies-leaving-us-cloud/" rel="nofollow">https://massivegrid.com/blog/european-companies-leaving-us-c...</a> - March 12th, 2026<p><i>Europe gets serious about cutting digital umbilical cord with Uncle Sam's big tech</i> - <a href="https://www.theregister.com/off-prem/2025/12/22/europe-gets-serious-about-cutting-us-digital-umbilical-cord/2654348" rel="nofollow">https://www.theregister.com/off-prem/2025/12/22/europe-gets-...</a> - December 22nd, 2025<p><i>Schleswig-Holstein waves auf Wiedersehen to Microsoft stack</i> - <a href="https://www.theregister.com/software/2025/10/15/schleswig-holstein-waves-auf-wiedersehen-to-microsoft-stack/1543638" rel="nofollow">https://www.theregister.com/software/2025/10/15/schleswig-ho...</a> - October 15th, 2025<p><i>EU Banks Launch Wero Payments to Dislodge Visa, Mastercard</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41666833">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41666833</a> - September 2024 (88 comments)<p><a href="https://european-alternatives.eu/" rel="nofollow">https://european-alternatives.eu/</a><p><a href="https://euro-stack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://euro-stack.com/</a>
What about the 9-eyes and the 14-eyes?<p>All the added eyes are European (Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Norway; Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and Sweden)
Does this still apply if there are separate legal entities for US & EU operations? Take Hetzner as an example. They have a separate US company to deal with their US data center. Would their EU servers be vulnerable to the CLOUD Act?
> Take Hetzner as an example.<p>Similar happened already with OVH Canada vs France.<p>> In an affidavit, Xavier Barriere, corporate counsel at OVH in Paris, describes the dramatic situation: If the important proponent of European data sovereignty were to comply with the Canadian order, those responsible in France would be committing a criminal offense. They face up to six months in prison and fines of up to 90,000 euros per violation. However, if OVH ignores the Canadian court, it faces contempt of court proceedings in Ontario, which can also lead to severe sanctions.<p><a href="https://www.heise.de/en/news/Canadian-Court-OVHcloud-from-France-must-hand-over-user-data-11092029.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.heise.de/en/news/Canadian-Court-OVHcloud-from-Fr...</a><p>And one comment here: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46060903">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46060903</a>
Well, for sure they can pressure them but I highly doubt Hetzner would break the law in Europe to satisfy the US government, they are a lot more to lose here than there. I realize that that is not proof.
The relevant fact about Hetzner is that it's an EU company with US branch, not a US company with an EU branch.
I just try hard to pick e2e or encrypted at rest then I guess it doesn't matter to some extent if there's a breach or where it's hosted... I hope
The French head of Microsoft ctor not, under oath, say that Microsoft can guarantee sovereignty. This is the evidence that until you have a EU company, under EU rules <i>and not present in the US at all</i>, you cannot have sovereignty.
Ok, but Fastmail is an Australian company based in Melbourne.
Australia and the US entered into a bilateral agreement in 2024 which made Australian companies subject to the US CLOUD Act.<p><a href="https://www.justice.gov/criminal/criminal-oia/cloud-act-agreement-between-governments-us-and-australia" rel="nofollow">https://www.justice.gov/criminal/criminal-oia/cloud-act-agre...</a>
As a FastMail customer who spends a portion of the year in the US, I am happy to pay to move my data to the EU region, even if they cannot yet fully guarantee all my data will remain outside of US access at this time. Defense and mitigations in depth, over time. We must always start somewhere, and perfect is never the target (as it does not exist).
But whose cloud infrastructure do they use? (I don't know, but it might likely be AWS, GCP, or Azure.)
That it described in the linked post:<p><i>We’ve installed our own servers, co-located in a secure facility in Amsterdam, set up by our own engineers.</i>
None. It's racked and stacked old school
I wonder how much a European company would care?<p>I mean to say, perhaps this is more about customer sentiment and image than something maybe benign to their profits like five eyes involvement.
pCloud is an example.<p>Swiss corporation with data centers in Luxembourg.
How does Apple handle it?
Fastmail is an Australian company
[dead]
That’s true and Fastmail runs on AWS. But it’s a start and a “feature” many have requested for years. It’s funny because the HQ and I believe their workforce is located in Australia.
Not only is that not true, but in fact FastMail predates AWS by some years.<p>Source: I founded FastMail.
Fastmail has never used AWS, and this article is pretty clear about how they have always used their own hardware and traditional colocation.<p>Fastmail used to be based in Melbourne only, but after the Pobox merger it ended up with an office in Philadelphia too. No idea how the balance of things is between the offices now.
But how is it actually "a start" or improves anything at all? It doesnt matter where the "physical location" of the data is. It matters who has access to it.
Fastmail runs on its own infra.
EU folks, note the warnings threaded throughout this post: this is not currently any sort of panacea against US or AU data hosting risks, but it will make your data noticeably closer to home. Fastmail (Australia) merged with Pobox (Philadelphia) resulting in a complex tri-national law/risk surface when the EU is involved, so go in eyes wide open having read this in full. That everyone will overinterpret “EU data region” to mean “for privacy” here until reading the article is completely understandable; I empathize, having done the same.
I think it's not unreasonable to see this as a first, positive, step.<p>It's certainly giving them some benefit of the doubt, but it doesn't seem unreasonable that, say, the EU server and the US backup will in some time be an EU server and an EU backup.
It's either a positive step or it's a deceptive step. It could be to actually improve data security, or it could be to make it look like they're improving data security.
Indeed; see also the top thread discussing that, as I don’t have anything to add to the ground already covered: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49223931">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49223931</a>
Posted on the previous submission for this: it’s a good start, but from the article:<p><i>If what you need is a guarantee that your data remains only in the EU, we don’t have that, and we’d rather tell you directly than let you assume otherwise.</i>
Wow they completely missed the ball on why people want reassurances that their data stays in the EU
For me this is already a better value proposition, as less value add happens in the US. With the US being a perpetrator in trade war against the EU, even this matters. Everything counts, in large amounts...
I think they just know what they can and can't guarantee.
They found a cheap way to please the kind of customers who care much about their activism and not much about reality. A good business decision with little risk and a potential upside.<p>To believe your data is any better protected here or there is already unrealistic, and the admiration for the European Union for data privacy among hacker circles is unfounded. But if many people believe something false, you as a business should give them what they ask for and not try to educate them.
Yeah this I think captures my initial feelings in my post better than I could have put it.<p>Any business that has strict guidelines won't touch this. As there's no real guarantee, and more importantly they have given themselves an out.<p>Whilst I like fastmail as a product, personally I would have waited to get everything in the EU before I launched this, as you've now got to relaunch it once you solve that last mile problem. Which is hard and costly.
Absolutely spot on.<p>To think that your data is safe in the EU while the EU is actively pursuing ID checks for social media and pushing Chat control every 6 months is delusional. No, your data is not safe here. If the EU wants it, it will get it.<p>This cult of the EU privacy needs to stop. The EU wants the same access that the US intelligence has but for some reason, some people don't believe it and defend tooth an nail this idea that things are better here.<p>Just so you are aware, Europol was lobbying to have access to all text messages/emails in the EU at will without a warrant as part of Chat Control V2. Say what you want about the 5 eyes countries, this is no better.<p>If tomorrow the EU wants access to your data, Fastmail will give it just like it will give it to the US, to the UK or to Australia.
they also said in the article it is dependent on them standing up a second EU region. this is simply an announcement of their first.
Anyone who cares about security won't accept "reassurance" anyway. They would use end to end encryption like PGP or similar and not worry about the middlemen.
One needs multiple data centers in europe for backup and DR, sounds like they have one
Unfortunately, even if all data lives in the European Union, as long as a company is conducting business in the US, the Cloud Act makes it possible to compel them to hand over any information. This can include making administrative personnel sign NDAs or face heavy repercussions. Conducting business in the US includes advertising to US citizens e.g through maintaining a website in English.<p>At this point it’s unclear what a future digitally sovereign infrastructure should look like. Even if a company or a European state somehow manages to store data that is out of reach for the US Government, an amendment to FISA or the Cloud Act is something that any Congress should be able to put together.
I am pretty sure that European states are already storing data that is out of reach for the US government, and I don't understand how Congress could legislate against this, short of an act of war.
Or you can just use any of the actual European companies (I’m using Tuta).<p><a href="https://european-alternatives.eu/category/email-providers" rel="nofollow">https://european-alternatives.eu/category/email-providers</a>
Any providers that don't provide SMTP/IMAP/JMAP are just a boring way of giving away control over your mail and the client software you use.<p>I don't know about Tuta specifically, but Protonmail is practically intentionally hostile against anyone using their own keys. Which is the biggest sign that their marketing and actual intent do not align.
I started using tuta until I realised they don't support IMAP. Something to do with not guaranteeing encryption (which isn't even enabled by default) but has the convenient effect of locking you into their apps
<a href="https://mailbox.org/" rel="nofollow">https://mailbox.org/</a> is great. It's the only provider recommended by privacyguides.org that supports IMAP/SMTP.
IMAP can do TLS though (IMAPS).<p>Did they say what's stopping them from using that (and requiring the encryption!)?
They didn't need to. When you start denying IAMP to your customer in the name of "encryption" at that point it becomes privacy theatre, instead of privacy, irrespective of how nobly activist their intensions are. It is probably slightly worse than a mail provider assuming they can't trust their users with encrypting their emails when needed.
Tuta is always encrypted I don't know where you got the impression that it was optional or that they could somehow magically make it work over IMAP without a bridge like proton.
Infomaniak is another one <a href="https://www.infomaniak.com/en/ksuite" rel="nofollow">https://www.infomaniak.com/en/ksuite</a>
> Resilient replicas of your data will live in the US (for now). As we only have one location in Europe so far, the geographically separate copy will remain on servers in one of our US locations.<p>Wow, it's nothing. How about writing your PR after the data is not going to the US at all?
I call this "sovereignty washing": American companies pretending they can magically free themselves from the U.S. CLOUD Act by setting up a paper European presence.<p>Anyone who falls for this is a fool wanting to be fooled.
Nice, as a European customer, I appreciate this.<p>Side note, I moved to Fastmail a couple years ago, and so far I’ve been very happy with it! The Gmail migrator works great, too.
Love them, but I wish they had a way to upload new sieve rules via an API. I'm probably going to try them with my own domain at some point since I think they have an option to just deliver all mail bound for that domain, which makes setting up random emails for dodgy sites really easy.
Yep, you can enable a catch-all for anything that’s not a predefined alias.<p>I’m using that setup and have no issues with it, for exactly the use-case you mentioned.
I assume they support this part of JMAP <a href="https://jmap.io/spec/rfc9661/" rel="nofollow">https://jmap.io/spec/rfc9661/</a>
Seeing a lot of detail in the comments about the CLOUD act which applies as they(fastmail) themselves have an equivalent that was signed between USgov and Australia.<p>The more concerning issue as far as Australian based tech is The Assistance and Access Act 2018 which<p>"...permits government enforcement agencies to force businesses to hand over user info and data even though it’s protected by cryptography.<p>If firms don’t have the power to intercept encrypted data for authorities, they will be forced to create tools to allow law enforcement or government to have access to their users’ data."<p>As far as i know this has not been challenged or walked back and with the rise of ChatControl like laws doesnt seem it will.
The Assistance and Access Act is completely irrelevant to Fastmail, because Fastmail doesn’t offer end-to-end encryption. Fastmail was always subject to the Telecommunications Act, which allows Australian police access with warrants, and Fastmail has always made it clear that it complies with legal warrants.
The article you're quoting [1] concerns itself with the creation of systemic "encryption-breaking" capabilities and exploits which said law bends over backwards to expressly prohibit [2].<p>[1] <a href="https://fee.org/articles/australia-s-unprecedented-encryption-law-is-a-threat-to-global-privacy/" rel="nofollow">https://fee.org/articles/australia-s-unprecedented-encryptio...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ta1997214/s317zg.html" rel="nofollow">https://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ta199...</a>
The local government cannot get access to the servers in Amsterdam?<p>I use Fastmail but just consider it safe from third party advertisers. If I wanted safety from governments I would use something else, or at least encrypt my email contents.
Five Eyes country are subject to local data disclosure orders and gag clauses, forcing them to hand over user data that may then enter the shared intelligence pool
There are no Five Eyes country in the EU.
the company is based in Australia, which is part of FVEY
Is fastmail not australian?
No, but there are nine eyes and fourteen eyes with EU countries.
they offer services in the EU
Not sure Five Eyes will outlast Trump, the UK has reportedly stopped sharing some intelligence with the US:<p><a href="https://www.courthousenews.com/uk-faces-questions-on-complicity-in-us-boat-strikes-after-pausing-intel-sharing/" rel="nofollow">https://www.courthousenews.com/uk-faces-questions-on-complic...</a>
Actually thrilled that I can choose US data residency. Apparently, it was always that way? Happy that I can choose it though as I would prefer my data not be stored somewhere else.
Australian company so: lol. Snowden triggered a few narrow real wins but the broader surveillance apparatus adapted, survived, and in some ways grew. Things were just legalised.
As long as the company's legal headquarters are in the U.S., U.S. agencies have access to the data under the Cloud Act—and non-U.S. citizens have absolutely no legal recourse when it comes to U.S. services
Its not only a question of five eyes access. There is also the concern of being subject to the whims of a regime that might decide you shouldn't have access to services hosted in their country.
The article states that they do not offer any guarantee that my data will stay in the EU!<p>I feel that that's the whole point. And the whole point of them making this article/advertisement.
<i>If what you need is a guarantee that your data remains only in the EU, we don’t have that, and we’d rather tell you directly than let you assume otherwise.</i><p>Is there an alternative that really keeps data in the EU? (And not only in the sense it serves a sales promotion)
<a href="https://mailbox.org/" rel="nofollow">https://mailbox.org/</a> Germany
<a href="https://posteo.de/" rel="nofollow">https://posteo.de/</a> Germany
<a href="https://runbox.com/" rel="nofollow">https://runbox.com/</a> Norway
<a href="https://www.migadu.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.migadu.com/</a> Switzerland<p>more: <a href="https://european-alternatives.eu/category/email-providers" rel="nofollow">https://european-alternatives.eu/category/email-providers</a>
Among these runbox is quite good and my friend has used migadu for a few years and likes it even though he says the "soft" limits still make him uncomfortable even though so far he has never hit them; so I guess that should be fine. Posteo doesn't support custom domains (I've used them and otherwise they are good). I wouldn't go with Proton ever. Mailo seems new - never heard of them. Would love to get a review.<p>mailbox.org can be avoided if you need to send and receive emails from domains where the mail admins might not be email admin savants and/or privacy activists (sometimes that's not a choice in case of Govt services etc and you may not live in a country when you can get those changes done). Also, if you ever face an issue and send them an email, expect the reply to come in weeks (if you are lucky) and that too a flippant (sometimes even terse) nothing-mail and then if you respond the cycle repeats until you give up.
Splendid, thank you. the european-alternatives.eu is exactly what helped! Appreciate it!
Depends on the definition and your threat model but to make a very large story short; it’s email, others have copies (your gmail friends?). Metadata is public by default the body can be encrypted and encrypted at rest (comes with many limitations) and that’s the highest level of security you can realistically achieve.<p>If that works fine if not, use another method of comm. Email wasn’t designed to be secure.
Thank you. Sure. In Europe the "euro stack" approach becomes more and more relevant. So, the issue is more a compliance topic in the way of making use of service provides, who are best-case "eu-headquartered", but at least with a guarantee that processing on my side stays within the european realm. Doesn't mean very little in a technical understanding of security, I agree.
I do not know any EU-only, but ProtonMail is in Switzerland.
Proton is leaving Switzerland because of surveillance and privacy issues.<p>> Because of legal uncertainty around Swiss government proposals to introduce mass surveillance — proposals that have been outlawed in the EU — Proton is moving most of its physical infrastructure out of Switzerland.<p><a href="https://proton.me/blog/lumo-ai" rel="nofollow">https://proton.me/blog/lumo-ai</a><p>They are moving to Germany, but will quickly find that they are going to face the same surveillance and privacy issues since the EU is in the process of negotiating a data sharing agreement under the US Cloud Act.<p><a href="https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-and-european-commission-announces-resumption-us-and-eu-negotiations" rel="nofollow">https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-a...</a>
Can't wait to verify my age before reading emails!<p>In all seriousness though, what are the chances Fastmail won't require KYC at some point? I have sent them a support request with that question and got a non-answer.<p>PS: Am a paying customer for like a decade
No one would know that other than Fastmail and regulators. But what I can say is keeping different emails for different purposes might be the way. Unless your domain also has none of your PII attached to you, neither is any of your email interactions. It's not ideal but I finally stopped fighting it and use few emails that offers both privacy and anonymity if I ever need that.
This may not have much practical consequence, but still there's some symbolic value which is welcomed in today's geopolitical climate.
Jurisdiction is an outdated way of looking at things. End-to-end encryption is what actually matters. Of course, people are stupid, so it continues.
I have never understood their 50+10 GB storage as the starting plan. Anyone storing a lot of emails, please don't come at me screaming, but know that not everyone keeps every email and every attachment ever received right there in that email account (especially the attachments). For me, email is just communication i.e timed information, not data storage, except for very personal emails, and very very rare, some non-personal important emails. So some people do like to simply delete the emails they no longer need. Also their pricing almost feels like "unlimited storage" backup solutions mass pricing strategy.
> Emergency backups for everybody are stored in our Philadelphia location. As well as the live replicas of your data, we also keep a separate set of encrypted backups taken every few hours for every account. These are in Philadelphia for all users at the moment.<p>So all of this is pointless.
Maybe it’s a silly question, but how much of those “EU Region” makeups that were seeing are enforceable in reality?<p>In extreme cases the US DoJ can reach, let’s say the CEO/CTO arrest them or pick up family members in case of some sort of non-compliance in some criminal investigation.<p>I can imagine something like
> US DoJ has some PoI with some account in Fastmail “EU region”
> Fastmail says “sorry we’re GDPR”
> US DoJ says “now” or…
> Fastmail refuses<p>Then what?
then it becomes a political issue between the EU and the US?<p>mind you, prior to this administration the EU was more then happy to help the US DOJ in such cases.<p>considering the stuff that happened in the past year or so, i doubt that would happen again.
Actually calling bluff on the US is the only way to play this properly, because it gives the EU a mandate to strike back geopolitically if the US wants to retaliate for non-compliance by fastmail.
As a customer, thank you, Fastmail. I recall reading a few months back that this was rumored to be in the works, glad it panned out.
As a European and Fastmail user, this is great news.
And which company hosts the data? An American company like Aws, Azure, Google or a European company like OVH, Stackit?
The flagged/dead comment contains a copy of the entire page, but the relevant part is:<p>> Built by us, not rented from someone else<p>> We’ve installed our own servers, co-located in a secure facility in Amsterdam, set up by our own engineers. This new location is built to the same high standards as our existing infrastructure in Philadelphia and St Louis, with our own hardware and our own software — specified right down to the exact model of disks in each machine.<p>> In all our locations, data is stored encrypted at rest inside locked racks, and managed by our in-house team. We don’t rent computing or management services from a big cloud provider and pass on their assurances. That’s how we’ve approached privacy, reliability, and performance for more than 25 years.
> We’ve installed our own servers, co-located in a secure facility in Amsterdam, set up by our own engineers. This new location is built to the same high standards as our existing infrastructure in Philadelphia and St Louis, with our own hardware and our own software — specified right down to the exact model of disks in each machine.
Finally! I have been asking for this since the US started to lose its mind. Great they are listening.
Secondary copy not in EU. So how exactly does that help with compliance?
Not more safe. Only safe way is to use a company not under US regulation.
Useless. US companies have to get EU citizen's data on request. They can and must do so. Only non-US companies can ignore US data requests.
Does it matter much? From one side, you are still in the 14 eyes countries (in fact, I would trust a Chinese server if i am living in the west and vice versa), on another side, emails as a protocol was never meant to be secure or private, so deal with it as that, if you are after private or secure communication, choose a protocol that provides that, adding more stuff to emails will only complicate it further plus giving false sense of privacy/security, gpg will leak meta data, receiver email server/client might expose you too, among many gaps, so just avoid it. Still, make sure your email spf dkim dmarc etc are set properly and carry on.
Okay, that solves two problems for me. Great news.
We offer EU data centers for customers that want their emails to stay in the EU but<p>"Resilient replicas of your data will live in the US"<p>?
The US data replicas will be resilient, and when the FBI asks your data to reveal things about itself, your data will refuse to reveal anything about itself in the characteristic resilient manner. That's why the mention of "resilient".
How is that possible if the OS/drive/vault is backdoored? Could you elaborate?<p>I think "resilient" just means "backup copy" and I do think (IANAL) it is illegal to destroy emails when asked for them in the US.<p>Or was your comment ironic? Sorry, German, irony impaired.
To me, jurisdiction matters more than physical location. I'd rather be with a EU-operated service that stores data on a non-EU server, than a non-EU operator with a German/french datacenter.
Data is still compellable through US Cloud Act (and other provisions). If you want true EU data region, you should buy from a company without presence in the US.
using cirrux.me and very happy with an actual EU hosted option (Team is Dutch)
Totally irrelevant because of the CLOUD Act.<p>Aussie law might be even worse than US; I would never use Fastmail.
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You mean Chat Control 1.0 that was already in place from 2021 to April 2026 and allows for <i>voluntary</i> scanning for CSAM in unecrypted data through hash-matching for <i>existing and indexed CSAM</i> material?
Chat Control 1.0 is a permanent extension of a temporary law that already existed a year ago, allowing the companies to scan your messages if <i>they</i> want to. Nothing changed since then.
EU data regions are based on the insanely flawed idea that data is:<p>* a physical thing that can only live in one place<p>* not copyable<p>* can be 'contained'.<p>The whole thing reeks of bureaucratic 'best practices' that just aren't.<p>Even worse than that, trying to keep <i>email</i> restricted to the EU (or anywhere else) means that you effectively wouldn't be able to communicate with anyone in a different region, which is kinda the whole point.<p>Why not just make your own internet next? and then you can disconnect from everyone else who is trying to hack you. Just pull your network plug.<p>Email itself is hopelessly insecure by design anyway. Not just metadata when you are E2EE everything inside the envelope, but even basic vulns like downgrade attacks are simple because it's literally a violation of the RFCs (so you're not spec-compliant) to require TLS or any other encryption.. Why? because requiring modern crypto might interfere with deliverability and backwards compatibility. The real, deeper reason is that email is from a kinder, simpler time (well, at least simpler) and the design goals were never updated to keep up with the times.<p>Email is what we have. Just understand its flaws and then use other tools where you can. And who cares where your email lives - it's too easy to break anyway.