We can't ever have 100% safety online. So, knowing this I use a risk reduction approach.
In my view, highest risk:
- ANYHTING from M3ta: Fac*book, What*app, Inst*gram, Mess*nger. There's a lot of evidence Z*berg is a psychopath. Do we need to recap all the times they violated people's trust, apologized, and then violated it again?
- G**gle. They partner with the NSA and are guaranteed to be combing through all your emails, location data, things you watch on Y0uT*be, everything. And now we've learned all those CAPTCHA things we fill out over and over and over again aren't to protect us from bots but to track us -- and they have made BILLIONS doing so.
- M*cr0s*ft uses their OS to spy on everything you do on your computer. To what extent they monitor, I'm not sure.
- All those "we'll give you 15GB free" email accounts? Yahoo, Hotmail (M*cros*ft), Gm*il (G**gle), etc, are all essentially spyware. You think they're going to give you that kind of storage and not want anything in return? You're their product, and they will look through all your emails to find out things about you, to share with the authorities and to sell to data mining corporations.
Yahoo admitted to it. I could go on talking about different entities online, some of which I know more about than others, but I'll skip to what I see as one of the safer options: Pr*ton email. They have end-to-end encryption and don't log you by default.
Can't we be 100% sure they are safe? No, but I've read various tech experts discuss that they are or appear to be what they say they are. So, it's probably the best option for secure email. I'm sure there are other encrypted email providers who are also good. Just make sure they offer end-to-end.
I hate to say it, but I think a lot of Dommes AND our clients don't really understand data security -- and it shows.