You don't have to pay cash to search the internet or send email messages, but you're still paying—with your privacy.
The best-known search and email providers make no bones about the fact that they track your online activities.
If that sounds bad, consider searching privately using ixquick or StartPage and keeping your email activity totally private using StartMail, reviewed here.
All three of these services come from the same privacy-focused Dutch company.
Your StartMail subscription comes with 10GB of email storage, and there's no limit on the number of messages you can send.
You can choose any username that's not already taken, and you can create temporary or permanent aliases—alternate email addresses for use when you don't want to give your real address.
Pricing and Alternatives
A StartMail subscription costs $59.95 per year, which is on the high side.
ProtonMail is a virtual twin of StartMail feature-wise, and it costs $48 per year.
In addition, you can use ProtonMail for free if you can accept limits of 150 messages per day and 500MB of storage.
If you're more interested in email aliases (also called Disposable Email Addresses, or DEAs) than in encryption, you might prefer Burner Mail, which costs $29.99 per year, or ManyMe, which is totally free.
Continuing the theme of masking your personal data, for $39 per year Abine Blur Premium can hide email addresses, credit cards, and phone numbers, manage your passwords, block online trackers, and more.
When you start using StartMail, ProtonMail, or a similar encrypting email service, you're initiating a brand-new email address with no spam baggage.
Adding a disposable email address service lets you keep that pristine address from ever hitting the spam lists.
If your regular email address has already been smeared all over the internet, you can still get some benefit from using DEAs, but not as much.
That's where Abine DeleteMe(129.00 20% Discount on any DeleteMe subscription with code PCMAG at DeleteMe) comes in.
This service looks for your email and other private information on many dozens of legitimate data-aggregating sites and sends opt-out requests for you, following up as needed.
Because the service requires human monitoring, it's relatively expensive, $129 per year.
Isn't Gmail Encrypted?
A while ago Google tweaked Gmail so it always uses a secure HTTPS connection.
When it sends your messages, it uses the standard encrypted Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).
As of a couple years ago, Google states that it no longer reads your mail.
However, it's easy to accidentally give mail-reading permission to third-party apps.
And Google does read your messages sufficiently to do things like automatically put airline flight notifications in your calendar.
Google has a policy for when it releases your email to government entities, clearly indicating that it can do so if compelled.
StartMail naturally uses HTTPS and SSL, but it doesn't stop there.
Before it securely sends your messages, it actively encrypts them using public key cryptography.
It stores your messages in zero-access encrypted form, meaning that the company can't give your messages to a government entity even if subpoenaed, and a sneaky employee can't weasel into your private message stash.
When you communicate with another StartMail user, the connection is encrypted from end to end.
StartMail's New Look
I reviewed StartMail some years ago.
It had a dated appearance, but it did everything it promised.
I didn't update the review until now, because the product hadn't change appreciably.
The service now has a streamlined, modern look, matching what you expect from a web-based email service.
If you know how to use Gmail or Yahoo mail, you know how to use the new StartMail.
You get WYSIWYG editing, with the ability to organize messages into folders, add a signature, drop in pictures, and so on.
Like ProtonMail(Free at ProtonMail), it leans toward security more than the typical webmail service.
For example, using default settings it doesn't display received images unless you ask it to, and it warns if you click a link from an email message.
Advanced features like setting up IMAP don't appear in the new interface, though.
And I couldn't make automatic encryption between StartMail accounts work until I switched to the classic interface and configured it.
The need to guess which interface to use proved confusing, especially because the online help remains focused on the classic interface.
Getting Started With StartMail
Setting up your subscription is a snap.
You start by choosing a username that isn't already in use; the signup page lets you know quickly when you've chosen an available name.
You also supply an ordinary email account for activation and account recovery.
Once you respond to the activation message, StartMail prompts to create a password for your account.
As you enter your password, it rates what you've typed.
Don't stop until you get to a strong password.
After creating your account, StartMail clarifies what you get for your free 30-day trial.
You can access your account from any device and send up to five emails per day.
In addition, you get 10GB of encrypted online storage.
The welcome screen does point out that by default, StartMail uses your account password for its PGP encryption, but you can (and should) change to a separate PGP passphrase.
In testing, I found that PGP encryption didn't work until I switched to the classic interface and went through setup.
I do recommend taking advantage of the 30-day trial, to see how you like the service.
You don't even have to enter a credit card number for the trial.
If you find yourself chafing at the five-message daily limit, that's a sign you should upgrade to the full, paid product, for $59.95 per year.
Like ProtonMail, StartMail encrypts your messages locally and transmits them using secure HTTPS.
The company has no access to the text of your messages and couldn't decrypt them even if enjoined to do so by law enforcement.
ProtonMail also lets you set messages to expire after a specific time, something StartMail doesn't do.
What's an email system without contacts? You can, of course, type in each friend's email address, but it's probably easier to import your existing contacts.
StartMail can import from Apple Mail, Gmail, Outlook, Thunderbird, and Yahoo.
In the classic interface, you can click to add the sender of an email to your contacts, but not in the modern interface.
Password Protected Email
As soon as your account is configured, you can start sending secure messages, and your recipients don't have to know a thing about StartMail.
For each message, you set a password, and transmit the password to the recipient under separate cover, perhaps in a secure messaging app.
StartMail encrypts the message, puts it in secure storage, and sends a notification to the recipient.
All the recipient sees is the message subject, your contact info, and a link to read the message.
Access to the message requires entering the password.
The recipient can reply via the StartMail website.
No evidence of your communication remains except the original notification message, and it comes from StartMail, not from you.
Using ProtonMail with outside contacts works in much the same way.
Pretty Good Privacy
Sending passwords for individual messages is fine as a one-off experience, but for ongoing private conversations you'll want to use StartMail's public-key cryptography.
StartMail defaults to using your account password for your PGP passphrase, but for better security you should dig in and set a different passphrase.
Do this before you send any messages, as you'll lose access to messages encrypted with the old key.
As noted, automatic PGP encryption between StartMail users didn't work for me until I went into the classic interface to set up PGP.
If you're tech-savvy, you can use StartMail's PGP encryption to communicate outside the StartMail network.
You'll need to import public keys from your intended recipients and transmit your public key to them.
Most users will probably stick with automatic encryption between StartMail users.
An encrypted message from another StartMail user (or a PGP user outside the StartMail network) initially just displays "This message is encrypted," followed by a block of random-looking characters.
Just click the View Message link to decrypt.
You'll have to enter your PGP passphrase, but you can tell StartMail to remember the passphrase until you log out.
Email Aliases
Like the masked email addresses generated by Abine Blur(39.00 Per Year at Abine, Inc.), Burner Mail, and ManyMe, StartMail's aliases let you communicate without giving away your actual email address.
Aliases come in two flavors: generated and custom.
The auto-generated email address looks something like this: [email protected]
Custom aliases don't have the weird random appearance that disposable ones do.
You create them yourself, limited only by the need to choose an address that isn't already in use.
Pick a nickname, a joke name, anything you want.
If it's already taken, you'll get a warning.
When you create an alias, you can optionally set it to expire in anywhere from 15 minutes to two weeks.
You can have as many of these temporary aliases as you like, but there's a limit of 10 for permanent aliases, those without expiry defined.
If you hit that limit, you'll have to disable one to activate another.
Naturally if one of your aliases starts getting spam, you just trash it.
Burner Mail also offers both random DEAs (which it calls burner addresses) and custom ones, though only paying customers can create custom burner addresses.
ManyMe is unusual in that you don't have to pre-register your DEAs (which it calls FlyBy addresses).
Every FlyBy includes your unique account name, so you can make one up even when you're not online.
Say you meet a company rep at a trade show.
You could offer a FlyBy like this: [email protected]
Two Factor Authentication
Like ProtonMail and Burner Mail, StartMail supports two-factor authentication.
You do need Google Authenticator or another authenticator that supports standard Time-based One-Time Password (TOTP) authentication.
In Account Settings, click the button to enable two-factor authentication.
StartMail will display a QR code.
Snap the QR code with your app and enter the returned code back in StartMail.
That's it.
Now each time you log in you'll need both your password and the latest code from your authentication app.
More importantly, a hacker who stole your password couldn't use it to log in without that code.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMOtB7XkTT4[/embed]
IMAP and Mobile Access
Email clients like Outlook and Thunderbird typically manage email accounts using POP3 or IMAP, as do mobile email apps.
You can configure StartMail to make your messages available via IMAP but doing so is a serious pain.
Really, just use webmail.
ProtonMail offers apps for iOS and Android; StartMail does not.
I went through the tedious process of adding StartMail as an account on my test iPad.
This involved filling in details of the IMAP and SMTP servers, along with a 16-character device-specific password generated by StartMail.
When I did manage to make the connection, I found that I couldn't read encrypted messages using the Mail app.
Indeed, the option to add a device using IMAP doesn't even appear in StartMail's modern interface.
I had to dig into the classic interface to accomplish that.
My contact at the company explained that they don't recommend using this feature, and that the modern UI's responsive design means you can use it on any device.
I found it worked just fine both on my test iPad and on an Android phone.
Stuck in the Middle
StartMail's new user interface is slick, modern, and responsive, and it works on any platform.
However, in testing we found that some important features could only be configured using the classic interface.
The online help system is almost entirely devoted to the classic UI.
The need to use both interfaces is awkward.
Until StartMail moves completely to the modern UI, it's not a great experience.
ProtonMail encrypts mail just as StartMail does for a lower price and offers the mobile apps that StartMail lacks.
You can even use it for free, if you can accept some limits on messages and storage.
Why would you pay for one of these products when you can get a totally free account from Gmail, Yahoo, and others? It's all about privacy.
You can pay dollars up front, or you can pay by letting internet giants paw through your mail and use what they learn in targeting ads.
How to pay is your choice.
Neither StartMail nor ProtonMail provides the comprehensive privacy protection that you get from Abine Blur Premium.
Blur doesn't encrypt email, but it handles password management and actively blocks web trackers.
In addition to disposable email addresses, it gives you disposable credit card and phone number.
In the varied field of privacy products, Blur remains our Editors' Choice.
The Bottom Line
Using a free webmail account can cost you in privacy.
With the simple StartMail service, you can send encrypted mail to anyone.
