Email questions ?

[MathWizard]

I'm sick of using 3rd parties for email, why in the world do I have an email with microsoft (hotmail?) and google.

What's the modern equivalent of a letter ? Sure the post office can open and read it with out permission, and I'm fine with that. But I'm sick of dealing with giant corp's in my private life for no reason.

What are the other options, for getting a free, "trustworthy", email account, and a good windows program for it too ?

[olkipukki]

What are the other options, for getting a free, "trustworthy", email account, and a good windows program for it too ?

Why on earth somebody wants to give you a free and trustworthy email account (include a windows app)?

If you can answer this question, you will find very easy and plenty "other options"... 

[magic]

"The" Windows program for email is Microsoft Outlook. Mozilla Thunderbird is one 3rd party alternative, perhaps there are others, I'm not very familiar with current Windows software.

There are many providers of free email accounts, but guess what, they all are some kind of companies and mostly live off of scanning your mail and showing you ads they think are relevant. There is a few such sites in Poland and they are all mini-Googles

You can use Hotmail on your Android phone and GMail on your Windows system. Or sign up for Yandex or Baidu if you want something more exotic

[Shock]

For perceived privacy and security run your own email server. To do that you may need to register a domain name so you can make an emailaddress@domainname.com and a permanent/static IP address is handy as well. Cost is about $15 a year or free depending how hard to try. You can make as many email names you like.

For hardware you will need an always on networked device and some email server software. A Raspberry Pi or any old PC or laptop will be fine, unless you are doing a huge amount of traffic the hardware requirements are very low.

You can optionally use and enforce encryption for added security but it requires both you and the other party to set it up properly.

[olkipukki]

For perceived privacy and security run your own email server. To do that you may need to register a domain name so you can make an emailaddress@domainname.com and a permanent/static IP address is handy as well. Cost is about $15 a year or free depending how hard to try. You can make as many email names you like.

Well, I would say,  a static IP address must and good a relation with a provider to handle reverse DNS check etc.
Otherwise your emailaddress@domainname.com email goes straight to a spam folder or reject by recipient servers

[Shock]

Which is why I suggested it.

[MathWizard]

I should just make a new 1 with my ISP. I haven't used facebook in years, and if I make a new account, I don't want my name in the email address

[mariush]

Residential IP addresses are often voluntarily submitted to certain blacklists for anti-spam purposes.
This is to prevent people or viruses from installing mail servers on home computers and mass emailing stuff.

So, unless you get a business IP address and unless you get your ISP to set up a reverse DNS on the IP they give you, it's really unlikely to be able to host your own mail server.

If you want to start to be more independent when it comes to email, the first thing is to buy your own domain name.
A com or .net is around 13-15$ a year, and there's other domain extensions that can cost much less, for example 2-3$ for the first year then less than 10$ a year for the following years.

I prefer namecheap.com for my domains, so you can look there for domain names: https://www.namecheap.com/domains/new-tlds/explore/

At the moment, I use fastmail.com for my email ... they cost me 6$ a month, but it's something like 50$ a year if you pay for one year or more.
I used to rent dedicated servers and have my own mail server but I restructured everything a few months ago and decided it's cheaper to use fastmail instead of dealing with domainkeys and spam filters and a lot of mail related crap.

Namecheap also offers email hosting, and it's super cheap at 1$ a month for the smallest plan : https://www.namecheap.com/hosting/email/

You could try it out for a few months and see if it's good enough.  It's low on space and number of mailboxes but should be good enough for start.
If you're happy with it you could upgrade to higher plan or you could always move to fastmail (the 5$ a month plan lets you use your domain name) and has similar limitations to namecheap.

[madires]

You won't get me@my-domain.com for free unless it's included in your ISP's internet package (priced in). If you are proficient with linux and internet services you can rent a cloud VM incl. 10TB traffic and fixed IPv4 plus /64 IPv6 for 3 bucks/month. Register a domain of your choice and you're ready to go.

[Shock]

I should just make a new 1 with my ISP. I haven't used facebook in years, and if I make a new account, I don't want my name in the email address

Problem solved!

[greenpossum]

Have a look at ProtonMail.

[madires]

I'd rather give up my privacy to Google, MSFT and governments behind them than giving it to a poorly maintained home made email server that can get hacked by any script kid.

Understandable, but they get hacked too. And of course, a poorly configured and poorly maintained server is always a bad idea. No matter who runs it.

[rdl]

My Comcast email got hacked last year. The password was discovered somehow. I no longer consider any email to be safe, secure, or private.

[Nusa]

What's the modern equivalent of a letter ?

I believe that's called "texting". Letters are for the older generations.

[Mr. Scram]

Unless you know what you're doing, don't run an email server you intend to use yourself. Pick a trustworthy service provider and pay them for their efforts. Free services are often paid in ways which don't serve your interests.