StartMail

France and Germany have abandoned their relationships with Palantir and vowed to develop "a European sovereign digital backbone": https://www.politico.eu/article/france-germany-want-to-develop-a-palantir-rival/

Starting in September 2027, new cars sold in the U.S. will be required to have surveillance technology that monitors whether you are impaired or distracted: https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/federal-car-surveillance-mandate-2027-nhtsa-dadss-privacy-2026/

The U.S. House of Representatives has fast tracked and passed the KIDS Act, "a Privacy and Free Speech Disaster" that stitches together over a dozen failed bills that seek to age-gate the Internet: https://reclaimthenet.org/the-house-just-voted-for-kosa

Countries and regions across the globe are passing Age Verification laws that mandate certain websites and users to check that all users are over a certain age. While advocates claim that these laws "protect children", they put EVERYONE at risk: https://www.startmail.com/age-verification

All new cars in the EU must now be equipped with driver cameras and emergency auto-brakes according to new regulations implemented this year: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/nya-regeln-obligatorisk-kamera-pa-bilforaren

AI advocates keep trying to tell us that the technology is "inevitable". The truth is, no technology is inevitable...especially one that poses SUCH a huge privacy risk. Do YOU trust it with your private data?

A county in the US with 37 data centers (and plans for more) is warning schools and county agencies to expect a 25% increase in energy costs and asks employees to "conserve electricity" accordingly: https://www.404media.co/henrico-virginia-datacenter-energy-cost-email/

You need to stop giving out your real email address. Seriously. It's not just about spam...your email address itself is a tracker that companies and bad actors can use to track you. Learn more about the risks here: https://www.startmail.com/stop-giving-your-real-email

The European Commission was set to eliminate cookie banners for their constituents, but now Google has lobbied enough commissioners to kill the proposal: https://cybernews.com/tech/cookie-banner-france-germany/

When other email providers advertise end-to-end encryption, they're only talking about messages sent to OTHER people with encrypted email. So what happens when you need to send an encrypted message to someone without a private email account? We have a feature for that!

Nowadays, we hear companies and governments use the "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" argument all the time. But did you know that the phrase predates social media, the internet, or computers? Read all about this slogan's history and how to counter it: https://startmail.com/nothing-to-hide-nothing-to-fear

According to inside sources, the European Commission's president is expected to announce a proposal to ban children from social media apps in September: https://www.euractiv.com/news/eu-plans-to-announce-social-media-ban-for-kids-in-september/

Apple has failed to fix a vulnerability with their "Hide My Email" tool that can expose a user's real email address, according to cybersecurity researchers and journalists: https://www.404media.co/apple-hide-my-email-vulnerability-reveals-peoples-real-email-addresses/

The FBI's director has admitted publicly what digital privacy advocates have warned about for years: law enforcement agencies are buying your data from brokers to circumvent the need to obtain subpoenas: https://gizmodo.com/kash-patel-admits-the-fbi-is-buying-private-data-on-americans-2000735317

When other email providers advertise end-to-end encryption, they're only talking about messages sent to OTHER people with encrypted email. So what happens when you need to send an encrypted message to someone without a private email account? We have a feature for that!

The U.S. Congress is headed for a showdown as it decides whether to renew FISA, a controversial surveillance program that allows intelligence agencies to perform large amounts of surveillance and data collection without a warrant: https://apnews.com/article/congress-foreign-surveillance-fisa-spy-agencies-3dc3e84c3b9b03f52b84dfb3b01fc770

We're always proud whenever happy users talk about why they like being StartMail subscribers. But when one of those users also happens to be a YouTube channel that teaches users how to protect their digital privacy, we truly could not be happier to do what we do!

DuckDuckGo's AI feature has been telling users that U.S. President Donald Trump has died from a rabies infection...prompting questions about how easily training data can be poisoned: https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/duckduckgo-ai-trump-rabies

U.S. lawmakers have introduced a bill that would ban AI and tech companies from selling users sensitive personal health data: https://www.androidheadlines.com/2026/06/new-privacy-bill-bans-ai-health-data-sales.html

American telehealth company Hims and Hers has suffered a data breach via Zendesk that has exposed the personal information of an undisclosed number of customers: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hims-and-hers-warns-of-data-breach-after-zendesk-support-ticket-breach/

As more and more companies, agencies, and entities make use of facial recognition tech, its errors have vast reaching and severe consequences...and there are a lot more errors than you might think: https://spectrum.ieee.org/facial-recognition-gone-wrong

A jury in Los Angeles has found Meta and YouTube guilty of deliberately designing their platforms to be addictive in a landmark verdict: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c747x7gz249o

While we strive to make privacy simple for our users, it gets highly challenging and technical for us on the back end. Luckily, our talented and dedicated team of devs, designers, and support staff are world class experts at making our products intuitive and accessible for EVERY user!

A Mexican surveillance company has built a billion dollar empire using cameras and AI to monitor the US/Mexico border. Now it's expanding into even more countries, and privacy advocates are worried: https://restofworld.org/2026/mexico-seguritech-government-surveillance-profile/

It seems like staying private these days is impossible for anyone who isn't a hacker or software engineer. But don't fear! Private email can keep some of your most sensitive data out of the wrong hands, and our alias feature can also keep your main email address hidden entirely!

There's a reason we talk about our unlimited email alias feature a lot. Your email address is used to track your accounts and activity, the two go hand in hand!

Citizen Lab has released a report on Webloc, a little known surveillance system that uses data from mobile apps and ad auctions to track the detailed movements of millions of users: https://citizenlab.ca/research/analysis-of-penlinks-ad-based-geolocation-surveillance-tech/

A recent leak of Claude Code's source has experts warning that it can "exercise far more control" and gather more data than previously thought: https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/01/claude_code_source_leak_privacy_nightmare/

Apple has revealed to authorities the identity of a user who utilized their "Hide My Email" feature to generate disposable aliases. https://cyberinsider.com/apple-revealed-hide-my-email-user-identity-in-fbi-investigation/

You may know that our company started as a private search engine. But why did we choose to do email from there? Simple, your email address is the nexus of how you communicate with people on the internet, and we're still leading the charge today with features like unlimited aliases!

Despite promises to empower workers and improve productivity, researchers are finding out that AI agents exhaust and overwhelm workers with a condition called "AI brain fry": https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/13/business/ai-brain-fry-nightcap

We've always strived to introduce and improve features to better our users' experiences. Since our subscribers are our ONLY source of revenue, we work for THEM and only them...not for shareholders, advertisers, or investors.

While some people are excited to implement emerging tech like AI, it's important to recognize that, in its current form, these models and tools create HUGE risks to your data and your privacy...

@Synthyx@social.vivaldi.net Of course! We would love to be able to incorporate everyone's feedback. It's just that we're already a small team that can only focus on a certain number of updates at a time. But hopefully, as we grow. we can expand our team and do more! 🤞

@Synthyx@social.vivaldi.net As far as the open source question goes, you can check our technical white paper on our website to see a detailed explanation for why staying proprietary is more secure for our servers and users. And while our payment processor isn't able to accept XMR, we are able to accept payments in Bitcoin!

RE: @lukalobster@mastodon.social

Any other StartMail users have recommendations?

You may think that the worst part of being served targeted ads is that they're super creepy and specific. In reality, the info that's being used for that scarily accurate targeting is being shown to thousands of companies without your knowledge.

@Synthyx@social.vivaldi.net Unfortunately, none of our payment processors accept Monero and we don't have the ability to redo our entire infrastructure in order to move over to a new one. Sorry 🙃

@rickf@indieweb.social While we are required to answer legally valid requests sent to us from Dutch authorities, our disclosures have never unmasked a user to this extent. You can see precisely how many requests we receive each year and what information we've disclosed (if any) in our annual transparency report: https://www.startmail.com/transparency

Did you know that your smart TV is collecting data on you? From what you watch the the devices you connect to it to when you're standing in front of it. Here's how to minimize the data it collects on you and your family: https://www.popsci.com/diy/how-to-stop-your-smart-tv-from-tracking-you/