- Why pay for something that you can easily get for free?
That's an excellent question.
The answer is quite simple
because nothing is really free.
In our increasingly interconnected world,
if you care at all about your privacy
in regards to your email,
you're gonna wanna listen very carefully
to what I'm about to say.
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Chances are the email you have right now,
is the one you've been using for years.
And it might even be the one you keep
until you die, who knows?
Side note, stick around here to the end of this video,
because I'm going to explain
to you the important duel email philosophy.
You're watching this video right now
about secure email alternatives
and there could be a number of reasons for that.
For me, I started using an alternative email
provider the same morning that
I woke up to find that my Gmail account had been hacked.
Now I take responsibility for that.
I don't blame Google because I didn't have
two factor authentication enabled at the time.
But I learned things from that experience.
First, because we've been conditioned to archive
and not delete email,
we tend to keep extremely sensitive data
in the care of our email provider.
For me that was my communication with my CPA,
which of course included my social security number
and the hacker used that information
to try to steal my identity.
So my reason for creating a second secure email account was
to use it exclusively for my financial accounts
and to communicate my most sensitive data when necessary.
It's a secret address.
I haven't published it anywhere,
and I don't give it out really to anybody.
Now I realized that's not the only reason
to look for an alternative to Gmail, Yahoo or Microsoft.
You don't trust big tech perhaps,
or you know that real privacy is never free.
I don't know.
Go ahead and leave a comment to let me
and everybody else know your reason
for wanting more secure email.
Oh, and before I jump into my list
of recommended secure email providers,
let me quickly explain my selection criteria.
Things that are important to me include:
the type of encryption used by the service provider
both for data in transit, as well as data that's at rest,
the strength of the privacy policy,
the payment methods available
and I know this may sound petty,
but the design of the user interface
or UI is also important to me.
I always preach that security is rarely convenient
but that doesn't mean that your email dashboard
has to be ugly and difficult to use.
You know what I mean?
Thankfully, there are a few services that
I can confidently recommend based on that criteria.
And we're gonna start with my favorite
and the one that I personally use, ProtonMail.
First launched in 2014 ProtonMail is my go-to
secure email provider for a number of reasons.
For starters, it offers a familiar email interface,
excellent mobile apps, and a name that's relatively easier
to share with somebody if I need to.
Yes, I'm looking at you Tutanota.
And best of all, they allow you
to create a free email account with limits on storage
and emails set per day, but it works.
More importantly however,
ProtonMail gives your email end to end encryption,
using open source cryptographic libraries that have been,
and continue to be publicly reviewed for safety.
They're based in Switzerland, a country that offers
some of the strongest privacy protection in the world.
And they give you full control over your privacy.
That includes how you safely communicate
with those who aren't using secure email providers,
and even giving you the option
to send self-destructing emails.
On top of all this, which again is the reason why
I recommend ProtonMail.
I've been testing out a beta version
of their new secure calendar integration that I really like.
And they also offer
protonVPN, an add on service
that allows you to encrypt, not just your email,
but basically all of your daily internet traffic as well.
Use the link here to sign up for free account,
or to see the paid plans that they offer.
Hushmail is another excellent premium email alternative,
that offers the same easy to use user interface,
great mobile apps, end to end encryption
and account security that you can trust.
There are two primary differences
that I've noticed with Hushmail
and compared to ProtonMail.
First, while they give you one primary account,
you can create as many email aliases that you want,
so that if you have to give out a private email address,
you can give out an alias and not your real address.
Second, Hushmail is designed to be,
HIPAA compliant
for healthcare use, which...
It's not an incredibly
important feature for us individual users,
but it does mean that they give you the ability
to create a couple secure web forms that you can use
instead of something like GoogleForms or SurveyMonkey.
Unfortunately, Hushmail does not offer
a free account at this time,
but when you use this affiliate link,
you can try them for 60 days
and cancel with a full refund if you like.
The final option I'd like to share is Tutanota.
Again, a great option that offers end to end encryption,
familiar desktop and mobile apps,
two factor authentication,
the ability to organize your email
into customizable folders and like ProtonMail,
a free account that you can sign up to use.
Also, similar to ProtonMail,
they have an encrypted calendar feature that I like.
And for business account users,
they allow you to add an encrypted contact form
to your website, similar to what Hushmail gives you.
My only complaints are really petty ones.
I don't like having to spell out the name Tutanota
to people since it's easy to misspell.
And I also wish that the calendar feature
were a separate app on my mobile device.
I don't like doing email and calendar in the same app.
Other than that though, it's a great option
for those who want some of the features of Hushmail,
but aren't quite ready to pay for the service.
Okay, thanks for sticking around.
As a bonus I wanna explain to you,
the dual email philosophy.
Because as we stated at the beginning of this video,
it's not like getting a secure email address means
completely abandoning your former email address altogether.
It's ridiculous.
It is possible to run dual email accounts,
without going insane.
And these are the two options that I'll share with you.
The first dual email philosophy as you,
keep your current public email address
for all regular communication.
And once you set up this secure email address,
you migrate all of your banking investments
and sensitive communication of your CPA
over to that address.
You only need to check this account occasionally,
or just install the app on your phone,
with the notification set on.
The second dual email philosophy
is what I like to call,
the forwarding method.
Let's say that you want to migrate
all of your communications
over to this new secure email address.
You can go into your current Gmail, Yahoo or Outlook
whatever account you use,
and set up a mail forwarding rule.
You can do a blanket forward that forwards all of your mail
or if you're just overwhelmed with spam,
you can create a specific rule
that only forwards mail from certain senders.
When done correctly,
you can now log into only your secure email account,
and reply to those emails using your new email address.
If this video's been helpful,
I would be ecstatic
if you could click on that like button
or use one of the affiliate links mentioned
in this video
or in the description below.
And if online security and privacy is a priority to you,
I have a free online security checklist that you
can download using the link in the description as well.
I'm glad that you've made it in the video this far,
and I hope you continue to make all things secured.