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.
> 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
It stops just short of saying that you must do thispreemptively, but is pretty clear that you must do it if they ask you to.
sph 2 hours ago [-]
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?
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.
jacquesm 2 hours ago [-]
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.
eastbound 17 minutes ago [-]
Because it's a criteria for choosing Fastmail.
girvo 3 hours ago [-]
And you can’t tell anyone if you do, on pain of jail.
ffsm8 12 hours ago [-]
> your data can still be forcibly pulled and often without you being aware that this happened
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
jacquesm 11 hours ago [-]
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.
perks_12 10 hours ago [-]
Take a look at how they play with regards to chat control. The EU is just the same corrupt BS like D.C., only with a lot more virtue signaling.
Sorry, I don't agree with that. The amount of corruption in the USA right now is simply off the scale.
sneak 8 hours ago [-]
Nah, it’s just more visible. It’s not that much of a sea change. And it’s ridiculously naive to pretend that the major countries in Europe don’t have their own mechanisms to regularly and effectively bypass any democratic inconveniences when necessary. They regularly push through things that no constituent would ever want or vote for.
FireBeyond 4 hours ago [-]
Meanwhile the President sits in the Oval Office and says, in a televised interview, with absolutely no shame, that all of his kids and family are insider trading, all the time.
ffsm8 2 hours ago [-]
Meanwhile in Germany insider trading is completely legal for politicians. Well, not insider trading - but it's definition supposedly doesn't extend beyond internal business information.
(At least that's what people keep telling me, im not a lawyer)
dubbel 1 hours ago [-]
Insider trading is it course not legal for politicians in Germany, as you could have found out without being a lawyer.
That being said, transparency/reporting duties for members of parliament/ministers can and should definitely be improved.
LastTrain 7 hours ago [-]
Nah, it’s worse now than ever.
jacquesm 7 hours ago [-]
You're right, just the other day our MP lined his pockets to the tune of a couple of billion, pumped his shitcoin, tipped off his friends about about the stock market movements he was going to cause, sent a couple of good deals to his kids and threatened war on a couple of countries just to please his buddies. And that's just the last couple of months... /s
FireBeyond 4 hours ago [-]
Oh, and will sell you access to his market-moving tweets for $100K a month, so you know and can get your stock trades set before the plebes do.
drnick1 4 hours ago [-]
It's not, you're just watching CNN too much.
usernomdeguerre 3 hours ago [-]
or maybe you're watching Fox News too much?
inigyou 4 hours ago [-]
Chat control 1 or 2?
izacus 6 hours ago [-]
A parliamentary process where a law is being proposed, amended and voted upon isn't "corruption".
Just because you disagree with a law, that doesn't make it "corruption" - it does make you an authoritarian that attacks democracy as soon as other people don't vote like you want.
inigyou 4 hours ago [-]
Chat control 1 was rejected by the parliament and then passed anyway because parliament doesn't matter. Hardly democratic.
izacus 3 hours ago [-]
That's a lie - chat control was amended and then passed via parliament vote.
Please stop spreading fabrications - even when you dislike the result. That's fascist behaviour.
sscaryterry 9 hours ago [-]
Not nearly the same thing. Trump and his family have made billions. I cannot say the same of von der Leyen.
carlosjobim 6 hours ago [-]
Which of those two leaders were elected by the people?
beezlewax 4 hours ago [-]
The European Parliament is elected by vote and has to ratify the chosen members of the EU council. The president of the council included.
Barrin92 3 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure what that's supposed to imply because if Ursula von der Leyen manages to be less corrupt without being elected by the people that has some uncharitable consequences for the quality of the American electorate, I think HL Mencken had something to say on this
jacquesm 2 hours ago [-]
Technically, the US president is also not elected by the people but by the electors, which in many ways is comparable to how the EU elected the EU Commission President.
izacus 6 hours ago [-]
Certainly Van Der Leyen.
I suggest you show up for next EU election if you don't like the option.
Silhouette 2 hours ago [-]
How should EU citizens vote at that next election if they are unhappy with von der Leyen's actions as President of the European Commission in order to remove her if enough other voters agree?
dubbel 1 hours ago [-]
They should vote for parties that are not organized in the EPP (European people's party). The exact party options depend on the country you're voting in.
Silhouette 22 minutes ago [-]
And what would happen next to ensure that von der Leyen was removed from office?
It is worth remembering at this point how von der Leyen first became Commission President. She was controversially nominated by the European Council - who are not directly elected representatives within the EU system - deviating from the spitzenkandidat convention in a way that surprised and angered many MEPs - who are. Her own national government (Germany) did not support her in the Council voting because one of the parties in the governing coalition opposed her. She was eventually confirmed by a narrow majority in a secret ballot of the European Parliament from which little can therefore be determined about who did or didn't vote for her except that quite a lot of MEPs who were expected to support her candidacy based on public statements did not in fact do so in the secret vote.
So she was essentially proposed by a group of people who aren't directly elected at EU level and in some cases aren't even directly elected by the nations they represent - in violation of the normal convention expected by the only people who are directly elected at EU level - and was then narrowly confirmed by that directly elected group only in a secret ballot from which the vote of each individual representative was not recorded and there is therefore no possibility for their own electorates to hold those representatives to account personally for how they voted. Given that we are talking about the most influential political post in the EU this is not exactly a powerful demonstration of democratic legitimacy and a clear popular mandate no matter how you look at it.
krick 5 hours ago [-]
Clearly you have no idea how the head of EC is chosen. Because of the two only Trump was actually elected by the people.
izacus 3 hours ago [-]
Remember that Chat control has gone through vote through directly elected parliament like any other legislation.
The next election is in 2029. I suggest you show up instead of spreading fabrications online.
ywain 4 hours ago [-]
What's your point? You'd rather have a democratically elected but corrupt leader than an appointed but honest one?
usernomdeguerre 12 hours ago [-]
True, I think the calculus is more about who you think is more trustworthy than what tools they have to damage you.
throwawayffffas 10 hours ago [-]
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.
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.
slow_typist 11 hours ago [-]
Especially if European companies have an office and significant share of customers in the US.
yieldcrv 2 hours ago [-]
europeans like it more when just european governments are doing it
MYEUHD 18 minutes ago [-]
What about the 9-eyes and the 14-eyes?
All the added eyes are European (Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Norway; Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and Sweden)
V__ 13 hours ago [-]
For anyone curious, it's the CLOUD act:
> 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.
The point of control is Congress, until we stop electing corpratist politicians, we will continue to get bad legislation.
redserk 9 hours ago [-]
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.
It's unfortunate for us, but we very rarely isolate individual government systems for other nations.
tzs 7 hours ago [-]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
The reason pretty much every country has something like that, going back well before online documents, is because not 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Civil rights groups and many others were not impressed with those safeguards.
braiamp 13 hours ago [-]
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.
kid64 12 hours ago [-]
They're Australian
petcat 12 hours ago [-]
Australian companies are also subject to the USA Cloud Act. As is the UK, with Canada coming on board soon too.
Even the entire EU is in the process of negotiating the same agreement.
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.
The same agreement is in place with the UK. Canada and EU are currently in the process of negotiating it.
yborg 12 hours ago [-]
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.
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.
> The latter states that negotiation with the EU on this topic was suspended in 2019.
Dated 2023:
> Justice Department and European Commission Announces Resumption of U.S. and EU Negotiations on Electronic Evidence in Criminal Investigations
The negotiations are still ongoing. Canada is further along than the EU.
perpetuallunch 10 hours ago [-]
That’s not going to help anyone.
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.
Even being stored in EU doesn't preclude your data from being targeted by signals intelligence. Which is different than requiring US based companies to provide non-US data to American government.
Does fastmail have a US presence? If no - then they're not bound at all by US jurisdiction.
defrost 6 hours ago [-]
Meanwhile, in realPolitik, they are Australian, they are subject to AU government pressure, and the AU government is deeply intertwined with and compliant to US government wishes, AUKUS, Pine Gap, Harold Holt Sub communications, Over the horizon radar on China, etc.
The question isn’t whether a service has a presence in the sense of employees or regional office, or headquarters.
The question is: do they office services to residents of said country / state.
If so they may well be subject to certain laws that, if broken, could result in penalties up to an including extradition of the responsible officers.
wolfi1 12 hours ago [-]
isn't there this five eyes thingy?
microtonal 12 hours ago [-]
Yeah, this does absolutely not solve the CLOUD Act issues. However, it is good to look at what the ramifications of the CLOUD Act is for e-mail:
- The US could request your data. You probably shouldn't use e-mail for anything sensitive anyway for many 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.
- 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.
Use an E2E-encrypted messenger with perfect forward secrecy, etc. for most personal communication.
1over137 8 hours ago [-]
Something like 99% of email is now done over TLS.
SoftTalker 7 hours ago [-]
Yes but it will almost always work with self signed or expired certificates, or downgrades to clear text if that's what it takes to deliver the message.
DarrenDev 11 hours ago [-]
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.
AWS, Azure, GCP, Oracle, Schwarz Digits, SAP
easton 11 hours ago [-]
Requiring that you believe those companies that they won’t hand the keys over to the US at the first ask.
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.
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.
jacquesm 11 hours ago [-]
The harder problem here is that any real EU sovereign platform would have to come with ironclad guarantees that it isn't going to be directly or indirectly sold to a US party. And when enough customers move that marketshare is affected the bags with money tempting shareholders will get larger and larger.
rufasterisco 4 hours ago [-]
Isn’t that counterbalanced by the fact that the reason they exist in the first place is to be a sovereign platform?
I am assuming the reason companies switch to them is not price or tech. US cloud providers have the advantage on both.
Selling EU companies data would mean destroying trust over their main selling point, not to mention incur on EU wrath.
Feels like living one whistleblower away from doom.
I refer to fully EU clouds, parent list includes US clouds that do not need bags of money, Clouds Act in enough.
jacquesm 11 hours ago [-]
You can strike at least four of those.
martin_a 9 hours ago [-]
> AWS, Azure, GCP, Oracle
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.
everfrustrated 7 hours ago [-]
> Only Schwarz and SAP are free from that by being German companies.
Not true. You also have to be sure that the company directors will never travel to the US even for a holiday or any third party country that would uphold an extradition request from the US.
It's just email. Nobody is going to jail to protect your email.
If you care that much run your own email server.
kisamoto 11 hours ago [-]
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?
kvemkon 9 hours ago [-]
> Take Hetzner as an example.
Similar happened already with OVH Canada vs France.
> 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.
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.
inigyou 4 hours ago [-]
The relevant fact about Hetzner is that it's an EU company with US branch, not a US company with an EU branch.
rufasterisco 12 hours ago [-]
Can you point me towards some resources that show EU customers moving?
Not that I don’t trust the statement, I just would like to know more.
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.
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).
tmgldn 11 hours ago [-]
Agree - small steps always positive here
OJFord 12 hours ago [-]
But whose cloud infrastructure do they use? (I don't know, but it might likely be AWS, GCP, or Azure.)
microtonal 12 hours ago [-]
That it described in the linked post:
We’ve installed our own servers, co-located in a secure facility in Amsterdam, set up by our own engineers.
calvinmorrison 11 hours ago [-]
None. It's racked and stacked old school
BrandoElFollito 10 hours ago [-]
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 and not present in the US at all, you cannot have sovereignty.
realo 10 hours ago [-]
pCloud is an example.
Swiss corporation with data centers in Luxembourg.
amelius 12 hours ago [-]
How does Apple handle it?
xnickb 12 hours ago [-]
Why would apple care? Eu is what a quarter of their business? And where exactly will those people move? They're locked into the Apple infra.
calvinmorrison 11 hours ago [-]
Fastmail is an Australian company
gib444 11 hours ago [-]
And hosted on US infrastructure, satisfying the "or" clause in their post
sodapopcan 10 hours ago [-]
The article says they installed their own servers, though. What am I missing here?
selectively 13 hours ago [-]
[dead]
atmosx 12 hours ago [-]
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.
jph00 10 hours ago [-]
Not only is that not true, but in fact FastMail predates AWS by some years.
Source: I founded FastMail.
jph 9 hours ago [-]
Great username :-) I'm a happy longtime Fastmail customer and I'm migrating to the new EU area.
chrismorgan 12 hours ago [-]
Fastmail has never used AWS, and this article is pretty clear about how they have always used their own hardware and traditional colocation.
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.
atmosx 11 hours ago [-]
That’s interesting, I thought they were hosted on AWS. Thanks for sharing.
preisschild 11 hours ago [-]
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.
calvinmorrison 11 hours ago [-]
Fastmail runs on its own infra.
altairprime 13 hours ago [-]
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.
usernomdeguerre 3 hours ago [-]
I think it's not unreasonable to see this as a first, positive, step.
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.
Posted on the previous submission for this: it’s a good start, but from the article:
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.
intothemild 13 hours ago [-]
Wow they completely missed the ball on why people want reassurances that their data stays in the EU
fodkodrasz 12 hours ago [-]
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...
xnickb 12 hours ago [-]
I think they just know what they can and can't guarantee.
linux2647 12 hours ago [-]
Agreed. I imagine they’ll announce an EU-only option later once they get more EU infrastructure in place
nektro 9 hours ago [-]
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.
calvinmorrison 11 hours ago [-]
One needs multiple data centers in europe for backup and DR, sounds like they have one
tumdum_ 10 hours ago [-]
Or you can just use any of the actual European companies (I’m using Tuta).
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
justinclift 5 hours ago [-]
IMAP can do TLS though (IMAPS).
Did they say what's stopping them from using that (and requiring the encryption!)?
crossroadsguy 3 hours ago [-]
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.
gertop 8 hours ago [-]
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.
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.
EPWN3D 5 hours ago [-]
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.
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.
The more concerning issue as far as Australian based tech is The Assistance and Access Act 2018 which
"...permits government enforcement agencies to force businesses to hand over user info and data even though it’s protected by cryptography.
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."
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.
chrismorgan 11 hours ago [-]
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.
denismi 5 hours ago [-]
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].
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.
greenleafone7 12 hours ago [-]
The article states that they do not offer any guarantee that my data will stay in the EU!
I feel that that's the whole point. And the whole point of them making this article/advertisement.
petcat 12 hours ago [-]
How could they possibly guarantee such a thing?
Do you only send and receive emails with people in the EU?
greenleafone7 8 hours ago [-]
Your reply is dishonest. I obviously couldn't replicate the entire article, but I'm assuming everyone that reads my comment also has read the article. And so you know very well what I meant.
If you advertise foolproof safes, but they end up not in fact being exactly that very thing you advertised then I'm sure you will have a great reason as to why actually your 'foolproof' safe can not be foolproof and you never guaranteed such a thing in your tos.
But at the end of the day, you promised foolproof safes, and you did not deliver.
Your argument is "well if you leave the lock open then...". And the reply to that argument is that "yes, we all know". The fact that I the user can make a mistake, does not excuse the company from saying "well, anyway, he would have made a mistake anyway so why bother"
monsieurbanana 11 hours ago [-]
At the moment all your data is still replicated in the US (they say it will change in the future, sure) and all the logs are also stored there, with no plans to change it or more details into what they contain.
As of now there's no guarantee of... anything, really.
Obviously if you decide to send an email to the US you're choosing to send your data there, that's a strawman.
preisschild 11 hours ago [-]
Its not about the people you send emails to, its about who has access to your entire mailbox.
In the moment that would be the Trump Administration for example.
user00005 7 hours ago [-]
The local government cannot get access to the servers in Amsterdam?
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.
igl 6 hours ago [-]
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.
PeterStuer 13 hours ago [-]
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
skywal_l 13 hours ago [-]
There are no Five Eyes country in the EU.
r_lee 12 hours ago [-]
the company is based in Australia, which is part of FVEY
PeterStuer 12 hours ago [-]
Is fastmail not australian?
anon48293 12 hours ago [-]
No, but there are nine eyes and fourteen eyes with EU countries.
throw1234567891 13 hours ago [-]
they offer services in the EU
senderista 12 hours ago [-]
Not sure Five Eyes will outlast Trump, the UK has reportedly stopped sharing some intelligence with the US:
This may not have much practical consequence, but still there's some symbolic value which is welcomed in today's geopolitical climate.
doener 9 hours ago [-]
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
hinata08 9 hours ago [-]
their HQ is supposed to be in Melbourne, Australia
They mention it only briefly in their publication.
Their about page is clearer about that.
inigyou 4 hours ago [-]
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.
hellcow 3 hours ago [-]
Fastmail is an Australian company.
13 hours ago [-]
lschueller 12 hours ago [-]
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.
Is there an alternative that really keeps data in the EU? (And not only in the sense it serves a sales promotion)
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.
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.
lschueller 9 hours ago [-]
Splendid, thank you. the european-alternatives.eu is exactly what helped! Appreciate it!
atmosx 12 hours ago [-]
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.
If that works fine if not, use another method of comm. Email wasn’t designed to be secure.
lschueller 12 hours ago [-]
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.
12 hours ago [-]
vzaliva 12 hours ago [-]
I do not know any EU-only, but ProtonMail is in Switzerland.
petcat 12 hours ago [-]
Proton is leaving Switzerland because of surveillance and privacy issues.
> 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.
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.
That was 2023 before the 2nd Trump Admin and before the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board that was supposed to be independent and protect against abuse has resigned.
egorfine 12 hours ago [-]
Can't wait to verify my age before reading emails!
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.
PS: Am a paying customer for like a decade
crossroadsguy 3 hours ago [-]
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.
Cider9986 10 hours ago [-]
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.
crossroadsguy 12 hours ago [-]
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.
tene80i 12 hours ago [-]
You mean why isn’t there a cheaper tier than $5/mo? Not much to be gained by offering it, I would think.
3eb7988a1663 10 hours ago [-]
Even at cloud prices, 50GB of storage is ~$1/month. Offering an additional tier with pathetic storage to save $0.80 or whatever is muddling the offering.
I guess they could offer a 0GB storage option that only operated as a relay?
plqbfbv 11 hours ago [-]
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.
kmfrk 12 hours ago [-]
As a European and Fastmail user, this is great news.
rb666 11 hours ago [-]
Finally! I have been asking for this since the US started to lose its mind. Great they are listening.
preisschild 10 hours ago [-]
But this is completely worthless, they still fall under the cloud act. Trump Admin still has access to your mailbox.
I_am_tiberius 13 hours ago [-]
And which company hosts the data? An American company like Aws, Azure, Google or a European company like OVH, Stackit?
fhdkweig 13 hours ago [-]
The flagged/dead comment contains a copy of the entire page, but the relevant part is:
> Built by us, not rented from someone else
> 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.
> 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.
techpression 13 hours ago [-]
> 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.
ln809 9 hours ago [-]
Secondary copy not in EU. So how exactly does that help with compliance?
leros 9 hours ago [-]
It sounded like a temporary situation until they get a second EU datacenter.
victorbjorklund 11 hours ago [-]
Not more safe. Only safe way is to use a company not under US regulation.
tamimio 12 hours ago [-]
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.
atmosx 12 hours ago [-]
Okay, that solves two problems for me. Great news.
KingOfCoders 12 hours ago [-]
We offer EU data centers for customers that want their emails to stay in the EU but
"Resilient replicas of your data will live in the US"
?
crossroadsguy 12 hours ago [-]
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".
KingOfCoders 12 hours ago [-]
How is that possible if the OS/drive/vault is backdoored? Could you elaborate?
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.
Or was your comment ironic? Sorry, German, irony impaired.
Night_Thastus 10 hours ago [-]
They're being sarcastic.
sparkling 11 hours ago [-]
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.
varispeed 12 hours ago [-]
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.
ThePowerOfFuet 8 hours ago [-]
Totally irrelevant because of the CLOUD Act.
Aussie law might be even worse than US; I would never use Fastmail.
Marciplan 12 hours ago [-]
using cirrux.me and very happy with an actual EU hosted option (Team is Dutch)
jgeerts 11 hours ago [-]
[dead]
cjs_ac 13 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
honeycrispy 13 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
lrae 12 hours ago [-]
You mean Chat Control 1.0 that was already in place from 2021 to April 2026 and allows for voluntary scanning for CSAM in unecrypted data through hash-matching for existing and indexed CSAM material?
flexagoon 12 hours ago [-]
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 they want to. Nothing changed since then.
superq 12 hours ago [-]
EU data regions are based on the insanely flawed idea that data is:
* a physical thing that can only live in one place
* not copyable
* can be 'contained'.
The whole thing reeks of bureaucratic 'best practices' that just aren't.
Even worse than that, trying to keep email 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.
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.
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.
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.
preisschild 11 hours ago [-]
This is not an EU law anyways, this is snakeoil companies acting like having their data located in the EU will change who has access to it and will make it "GDPR compliant" (it wont since the CLOUD ACT still applies)
plqbfbv 11 hours ago [-]
> The CLOUD Act authorizes bilateral agreements between the United States and trusted foreign partners that will make both nations’ citizens safer, while at the same time ensuring a high level of protection of those citizens’ rights.
I think the keywords are "trusted" and "citizens' rights". US burned a lot of trust in the last few years, and what's happening with ICE doesn't really scream "citizens' rights" either. I can see why many "trusted foreign partners" would now think twice rather than help out the US compared to just 5 years ago.
As a EU person, I'd really like to not have ties with US when possible, and I'd really like to foster the economy of non-US alternatives.
It stops just short of saying that you must do thispreemptively, but is pretty clear that you must do it if they ask you to.
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.
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
(At least that's what people keep telling me, im not a lawyer)
Just because you disagree with a law, that doesn't make it "corruption" - it does make you an authoritarian that attacks democracy as soon as other people don't vote like you want.
Please stop spreading fabrications - even when you dislike the result. That's fascist behaviour.
I suggest you show up for next EU election if you don't like the option.
It is worth remembering at this point how von der Leyen first became Commission President. She was controversially nominated by the European Council - who are not directly elected representatives within the EU system - deviating from the spitzenkandidat convention in a way that surprised and angered many MEPs - who are. Her own national government (Germany) did not support her in the Council voting because one of the parties in the governing coalition opposed her. She was eventually confirmed by a narrow majority in a secret ballot of the European Parliament from which little can therefore be determined about who did or didn't vote for her except that quite a lot of MEPs who were expected to support her candidacy based on public statements did not in fact do so in the secret vote.
So she was essentially proposed by a group of people who aren't directly elected at EU level and in some cases aren't even directly elected by the nations they represent - in violation of the normal convention expected by the only people who are directly elected at EU level - and was then narrowly confirmed by that directly elected group only in a secret ballot from which the vote of each individual representative was not recorded and there is therefore no possibility for their own electorates to hold those representatives to account personally for how they voted. Given that we are talking about the most influential political post in the EU this is not exactly a powerful demonstration of democratic legitimacy and a clear popular mandate no matter how you look at it.
The next election is in 2029. I suggest you show up instead of spreading fabrications online.
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.
All the added eyes are European (Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Norway; Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and Sweden)
> 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.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act
It's unfortunate for us, but we very rarely isolate individual government systems for other nations.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
The reason pretty much every country has something like that, going back well before online documents, is because not 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Civil rights groups and many others were not impressed with those safeguards.
Even the entire EU is in the process of negotiating the same agreement.
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/united-states-and-ca...
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-a...
You can read the text right here:
https://www.justice.gov/criminal/criminal-oia/cloud-act-agre...
The same agreement is in place with the UK. Canada and EU are currently in the process of negotiating it.
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.
> The latter states that negotiation with the EU on this topic was suspended in 2019.
Dated 2023:
> Justice Department and European Commission Announces Resumption of U.S. and EU Negotiations on Electronic Evidence in Criminal Investigations
The negotiations are still ongoing. Canada is further along than the EU.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes
Does fastmail have a US presence? If no - then they're not bound at all by US jurisdiction.
See: https://roncobb.net/img/cartoons/aus/k5092-on-Tucker_Box-cuu...
The question is: do they office services to residents of said country / state.
If so they may well be subject to certain laws that, if broken, could result in penalties up to an including extradition of the responsible officers.
- The US could request your data. You probably shouldn't use e-mail for anything sensitive anyway for many 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.
- 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.
Use an E2E-encrypted messenger with perfect forward secrecy, etc. for most personal communication.
AWS, Azure, GCP, Oracle, Schwarz Digits, SAP
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.
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.
I am assuming the reason companies switch to them is not price or tech. US cloud providers have the advantage on both.
Selling EU companies data would mean destroying trust over their main selling point, not to mention incur on EU wrath.
Feels like living one whistleblower away from doom.
I refer to fully EU clouds, parent list includes US clouds that do not need bags of money, Clouds Act in enough.
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.
Not true. You also have to be sure that the company directors will never travel to the US even for a holiday or any third party country that would uphold an extradition request from the US.
It's just email. Nobody is going to jail to protect your email.
If you care that much run your own email server.
Similar happened already with OVH Canada vs France.
> 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.
https://www.heise.de/en/news/Canadian-Court-OVHcloud-from-Fr...
And one comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46060903
Not that I don’t trust the statement, I just would like to know more.
https://thenextweb.com/news/airbus-scaleway-aws-sovereign-cl...
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.
Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48415217 - June 2026 (235 comments)
Netherlands reaches deal with European cloud company to decrease U.S. tech reliance - https://nltimes.nl/2026/04/24/netherlands-reaches-deal-europ... - April 24th, 2026
Wary of US Big Tech, the EU looks to build its “EuroStack” - https://sherwood.news/world/wary-of-us-big-tech-the-eu-looks... - March 18th, 2026
Why European Companies Are Leaving US Cloud Providers in 2026 — And Where They're Going - https://massivegrid.com/blog/european-companies-leaving-us-c... - March 12th, 2026
Europe gets serious about cutting digital umbilical cord with Uncle Sam's big tech - https://www.theregister.com/off-prem/2025/12/22/europe-gets-... - December 22nd, 2025
Schleswig-Holstein waves auf Wiedersehen to Microsoft stack - https://www.theregister.com/software/2025/10/15/schleswig-ho... - October 15th, 2025
EU Banks Launch Wero Payments to Dislodge Visa, Mastercard - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41666833 - September 2024 (88 comments)
https://european-alternatives.eu/
https://euro-stack.com/
EU-US Data Transfers: First Reaction on "Latombe" Case - https://noyb.eu/en/eu-us-data-transfers-first-reaction-latom... (2025-09)
EU-US Data Transfers: Time to prepare for more trouble to come - https://noyb.eu/en/eu-us-data-transfers-time-prepare-more-tr... (2025-12)
US Supreme Court just blew up EU-US Data Transfers - https://noyb.eu/en/us-supreme-court-just-blew-eu-us-data-tra... (2026-06)
I was up to date on noyb, but not aware that actually companies are moving at this speed and size.
Thanks all for some great resources
https://www.justice.gov/criminal/criminal-oia/cloud-act-agre...
We’ve installed our own servers, co-located in a secure facility in Amsterdam, set up by our own engineers.
Swiss corporation with data centers in Luxembourg.
Source: I founded FastMail.
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.
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.
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.
https://european-alternatives.eu/category/email-providers
Did they say what's stopping them from using that (and requiring the encryption!)?
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.
The more concerning issue as far as Australian based tech is The Assistance and Access Act 2018 which
"...permits government enforcement agencies to force businesses to hand over user info and data even though it’s protected by cryptography.
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."
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.
[1] https://fee.org/articles/australia-s-unprecedented-encryptio...
[2] https://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ta199...
I feel that that's the whole point. And the whole point of them making this article/advertisement.
Do you only send and receive emails with people in the EU?
If you advertise foolproof safes, but they end up not in fact being exactly that very thing you advertised then I'm sure you will have a great reason as to why actually your 'foolproof' safe can not be foolproof and you never guaranteed such a thing in your tos.
But at the end of the day, you promised foolproof safes, and you did not deliver.
Your argument is "well if you leave the lock open then...". And the reply to that argument is that "yes, we all know". The fact that I the user can make a mistake, does not excuse the company from saying "well, anyway, he would have made a mistake anyway so why bother"
As of now there's no guarantee of... anything, really.
Obviously if you decide to send an email to the US you're choosing to send your data there, that's a strawman.
In the moment that would be the Trump Administration for example.
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.
https://www.courthousenews.com/uk-faces-questions-on-complic...
They mention it only briefly in their publication. Their about page is clearer about that.
Is there an alternative that really keeps data in the EU? (And not only in the sense it serves a sales promotion)
more: https://european-alternatives.eu/category/email-providers
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.
If that works fine if not, use another method of comm. Email wasn’t designed to be secure.
> 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.
https://proton.me/blog/lumo-ai
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.
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-a...
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.
PS: Am a paying customer for like a decade
I guess they could offer a 0GB storage option that only operated as a relay?
> Built by us, not rented from someone else
> 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.
> 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.
"Resilient replicas of your data will live in the US"
?
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.
Or was your comment ironic? Sorry, German, irony impaired.
Aussie law might be even worse than US; I would never use Fastmail.
* a physical thing that can only live in one place
* not copyable
* can be 'contained'.
The whole thing reeks of bureaucratic 'best practices' that just aren't.
Even worse than that, trying to keep email 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.
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.
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.
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.
I think the keywords are "trusted" and "citizens' rights". US burned a lot of trust in the last few years, and what's happening with ICE doesn't really scream "citizens' rights" either. I can see why many "trusted foreign partners" would now think twice rather than help out the US compared to just 5 years ago.
As a EU person, I'd really like to not have ties with US when possible, and I'd really like to foster the economy of non-US alternatives.