Is there a free Canadian webmail provider out there?

[etan]

I mean one that's actually Canadian. I've found two that are hosted in the US (via everywhere.net) and there's Hushmail (which is hosted in BC but kind of funky), everyone else seems to charge money... Canoe.ca apparently used to do email but stopped.

[mapboy]

Just out of curiosity, why don't you want to use gmail, yahoo mail etc?

[gzink]

Go to a registrar like baremetal.com and pay 13$ a year to register yourname.ca. Go to hostignition.com or any inexpensive hosting company..$20 year. And for $33 per year you have your own email which never changes even when you change ISP's.
Not free but almost and you are in control.

[mellaby]

I agree with mapboy. I use gmail on multiple ISP's.

[Dwayne Gorniak]

Yeah , why don't you just use Yahoo and have it set up as a yahoo.ca email account. Just make sure sure you pick .ca and not .com if you want it to be Canadian EH! Nothin wrong with anything that is followed by .ca

Oh yeah, and it's free!

[Jase88]

I can understand that some people...for various reasons...may not want to use a US-hosted email service due to the Patriot Act.

[North_of_Calgary]

Jase88:

1) Why are you so worried about the Patriot Act? This PA is way way way blown out of proportion. How many Americans even have had their email privacy unjustly breached due to the PA! You have some reason to think your emails will justify a US federal investigation? There's why too much panic over the PA and too little actual understanding of it.

2) Even if your email is hosted in Canada it may be subject to the PA if it could have possibly traveled through the US. Given the interconnectivity of most Canadian backbones, that's a definite possibility so even by having it "hosted" in the Canada you're not immune.

Back to the OP, etan doesn't state why he/she is looking for this. But I concur with the recommendations of some of the others: I would recommend registering your own domain using hover (which is Canadian) and then take your domain to Gmail. I think gmail is by far the best mail service out there. They do the most to protect privacy and their customers (compared to Yahoo, MS, etc). And if you ever change your mind about them, just take your domain and email elsewhere. You can do that anytime you like.

Sure you'll pay $10/year for the domain but that's all. Google will let you bring over your domain to Gmail for free.

[Jase88]

Originally Posted by North_of_Calgary

Jase88:

1) Why are you so worried about the Patriot Act?

I'm not speaking for myself. I'm simply suggesting this could be a reason for some people, and/or their employers.

[North_of_Calgary]

Yeah I've heard that and usually what they say is something like:

Some foreign hacker could compromise my account without me knowing it, send mischievous emails using my account without me knowing. The US government will pick up on these in flight, ruin my life, embarrass me, and haul my butt off to Gitmo!

However like most things there's a huge difference between perception and reality. As I mentioned the perception of the PA is usually far different than reality. But also the perception of how secure Gmail is.

Implement Google Authenticator (with two-step authentication and one-use passwords) and there's zero-point-zero chance of your account being compromised by someone. Two-Step authentication with Google Authenticator is the number one way to protect yourself. No other free service offers anything close.

Add to that the Google Account activity tracking, Google Device Policy Management and remote wipes and you're rock solid. Oh yeah and the mandatory SSL option.

All that's from a technical front. Then compare Google's non-technical actions such as disclosure in China to the actions of Yahoo. Or their reaction to the Bush administration's URL collecting vs. MS, Yahoo, or Facebook's reaction.

Have Google accounts been hacked: sure. But the people who were hacked didn't follow any of those recommendations and had weak passwords & password recovery options. Google is giving you multiple levels of security - you just have to choose to implement them. All while the other guys hardly give you anything (except maybe the SSL).

And if you think that your Canadian ISP mail means that it's all hosted in Canada, think again. Most will have local servers/data centers, but many also use (maybe just in a backup/DR capacity) AWS or S3. And where is Amazon: two data centers on the east coast, one on the west coast, all in the US of course. So there's no guarantee that your Canadian ISP's email is only hosted in Canada.

Summary: if you want to minimize your chance of your email being subjected to and you victimized by the PA, move all of your email to Gmail hosted in the US. Unless you do actually have something to hide

And as I said earlier, do it through your own domain so you can move it if you need to in the future without ever having to change your email address.

[Jase88]

^^^^
We're getting way off topic here. I don't want to debate the pros/cons of US policy/laws. We don't know the OP's reasoning...it could be as simple as wanting to support Canadian enterprise.

[mhill37]

I wouldn't know how to tell where a webmail service is hosted, but I know of several services based on Canadian domains (although several of them use Gmail-hosted services, so they are probably based in the US).

Alternately, there are the web interfaces of local ISPs, or alumni services of several universities (did you go to university? If so, perhaps the school offers alumni email addresses with a web interface).

As yet another alternative, if you are open to a non-Canadian and non-American service, there are several German webmail services (e.g. - gmx.de), Indian webmail services (e.g. - rediff.com), and several others.

[Tim Cake]

If you are paranoid try

https://www.hushmail.com

[North_of_Calgary]

Originally Posted by mhill37

I wouldn't know how to tell where a webmail service is hosted, but I know of several services based on Canadian domains (although several of them use Gmail-hosted services, so they are probably based in the US)...

It doesn't matter what the TLD is - they could still be hosted anywhere.

[99semaj]

How about one of the freenets, such as http://www.ncf.ca/ ?? You could sign up for a donation-based dialup account.

NCF's most popular services are internet access and email. NCF's email is popular because it's located in Canada (and therefore is protected by Canadian privacy laws, unlike email servers located in the United States -- eg., Google, Yahoo, Microsoft -- more info), and it has great spam control features, including disposable addresses. Having your own email address at NCF is better than using an employer's email system for your personal mail. NCF email is accessible by web or using mail readers.

[ohms51]

you can try this one.https://www.guerrillamail.com/.I think it's from Denmark.