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    Opera sells Fastmail to......

    ...Fastmail.

    Got this letter in my email today:
    Dear FastMail User

    We're writing to you to let you know some exciting news. In 2010, FastMail was bought by Opera Software. The developers and staff of FastMail have now bought back the company. This means that FastMail is once again an independent company, dedicated to building the best possible email experience for our users. We have big plans for the future, and we will continue to roll out new features and enhancements over the coming months.

    There are no configuration changes or any other changes you need to make. All existing accounts will continue to run as they do now with the same billing cycle, pricing, features, reliability, security, etc.

    In case you have any questions, we've tried to address the main issues below.


    Why has Opera sold you? Are you in trouble?

    Not at all. Opera has undergone an internal change of strategic direction and an email service no longer fits within their long term vision. With Opera's investment in development and infrastructure over the last 3 years, FastMail has continued to increase its rate of growth and profitability. We came to the mutual conclusion that FastMail's future would be better served as a separate company.


    How will this affect future development work?

    FastMail is keeping all existing FastMail related staff. We believe we have all the resources and talent needed to keep developing and growing FastMail now and going forward into the future.


    What sort of things do you have planned?

    A hugely improved mobile interface, CardDAV support to allow synchronisation of contacts between devices, a calendaring service including CalDAV support for synchronisation of events between devices, improved backend and searching performance. All these things are currently in active development and slated for release within the next year.

    etc....
    Ive been using Fastmail for a couple years now and love it. The interface is great, customer support is helpful and relatively fast, and their privacy policy is excellent and surprisingly easy to read. Ill post the most important bits...
    We do not participate in, or co-operate with, any kind of blanket surveillance or monitoring. (We also point out that Australia does not have any equivalent to the US National Security Letter, so we cannot be forced to do something without being allowed to disclose it.)

    We also take technical measures where feasible to prevent surveillance of our users occurring without our co-operation, such as:
    using encrypted SMTP for sending your mail when the receiving server supports it.
    mandating encrypted access for webmail, IMAP and POP.
    using Perfect Forward Secrecy where possible for all encrypted connections.
    encrypting communications between our data centres.

    ...

    We do not sell or give information about our users to any third parties. Payments are securely handled via Pin, Global Collect or PayPal; your credit card details are never transmitted to our servers.

    ...

    Incoming messages are scanned for the purpose of spam detection unless you disable spam protection for your account. We may also scan some outgoing messages with the same software to prevent people using our service to send spam. ... No information from any of these activities is used for any other purpose, or to compile any kind of profile on our users.

    ...

    Should you close your account, all data will be permanently deleted 7 days after closing. It may take a further 2 weeks to purge from all our backups.
    None of this scanning for advertising BS or stealing the rights of things you send or forever storing your information to make a file about you.

    I just thought Id share this with all you. If youre in the market for a great email provider, I give them 5 stars.

    #2
    Looks real good. I do find it curious that their website does not show any images to get a feel for the interface. Also it is a paid service.
    Linux because it works. No social or political motives in my decision to use it.
    Always consider Occam's Razor
    Rich

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      #3
      Originally posted by richb View Post
      Looks real good. I do find it curious that their website does not show any images to get a feel for the interface. Also it is a paid service.
      Theres a free service as well. The only problem with it is the 25 MB mailbox space limit. All of these internet email services have to make money some how. Most of them do it by advertising to you and selling data about you. I really dislike this so to me a small yearly fee is more than worth it.

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        #4
        Originally posted by whatthefunk View Post
        If youre in the market for a great email provider, I give them 5 stars.
        I used FastMail for several years but gave up my account during the period they were owned by Opera but I have been thinking about using them again.

        I see that FastMail is now owned by the staff but is this the original FastMail founders Rob Mueller and Jeremy Howard or some or all of the staff who look after the business on a day to day basis?

        I have a feeling that the FastMail of tomorrow may turn out to be not the same FastMail that I was so enthusiastic about several years ago especially if Rob and Jeremy are no longer involved with the company.
        Last edited by Guest; Oct 04, 2013, 09:16 AM. Reason: Re-worded to make more sense!

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