I would love if Mozilla started an email service under the Firefox brand. The biggest email providers that aren’t Gmail are also privacy invading. As far as big enough privacy respecting email services are concerned, there are but a few alternatives.

ProtonMail is good for privacy, but has limited IMAP support and not so great mobile apps. Plus I think they went too restrictive with the free features in trying to find a sustainable business model. iCloud is great too, but needs one-time access to an Apple device to create a mail id, which of course is not ideal for a universal solution.

That leaves room for a well known privacy oriented brand like Mozilla to step in. They are decently funded to offer a pro-privacy email service that’s also easy to use. Basic features can be free and cover normal use cases, allowing more signups. Riding on the Firefox brand is never a bad idea. Imagine having a cool yourname@firefox.com ID or something.

Fire a mail.

In fact, we can go a step further. Unify all Firefox services under one account for user convenience. Mozilla already does this for Firefox sync, Pocket and Firefox Send. The idea can be extended to offer a Sign in with Firefox option across web services, a privacy-respecting alternative to the convenient but invasive “Sign in with Google/Facebook/Twitter” options.

Sign in with Firefox is already available for Pocket.

Update on Jun 16, 2019: Note that Apple recently introduced “Sign in with Apple“, for which the general consensus has been that it’s well thought out and a great option to have. Purely because of their business model, one is more likely to trust Apple than Google. With Firefox entering the game, the choice is straightforward, being an open source organization at its core.

Article published under the freedom-respecting Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0, minus any media file(s) credited independently.