If I use this as an American do I still get the privacy benefits or gdpr?
I don’t know the specifics, but American companies have to turn over data if the government asks. The government can still ask foreign companies to hand over, but a company like this will ask for a warrant or a legal order which they might only get by successfully arguing youre a terrorist or a child porn producer or something like that. So in general your data is much safer with a European company, especially when it comes to privacy.
BUT that data has to go through a physical cable through the ocean to get to you and they can’t keep you safe once the data leaves their service. So you’ll still need security on your end, like encryption and a VPN. I think keeping the government out of your data is a very good thing, and a safe mailbox is very important but if it is your only safeguard you still can get compromised. As far as I know there are things you can do to keep your data from being ‘fished’ with a broad net and things you can do to prevent someone from fishing your data with a spear (like a targeted hack), start defending your data against being fished with a broad net. For that I’d say avoid services offered by US companies. So yes, by all means get that mailbox.org account.
I believe the encryption nerds would recommend this company because of PGP, but I don’t know enough about law or tech to tell you more.
To add to that, they are very open about inquiries from legal authorities, see their yearly Transparency Reports:
Not all the enquiries we receive are legal, and our data protection officer will critically assess every single request in order to make sure it is in line with the requirements of the law. If there are any doubts about the legality of a request, our specialised lawyers will be consulted. If a request is formally and legally correct, we will service it, otherwise it will be rejected.
…BUT E-Mail is an insecure form of communication by default, so you should definitely look into PGP encryption, see Privacy Guides - Email Security.
