You've Got Mail! We know, we read it
Everyone has a free-email account these days. Ever stop to think why they are free? Becuase the tech giants really like you? Or so the tech giants behind the email services can then read the messages. That information then goes into the behavior modification algorithms.
Back when people used the postal service, would they have thought it was a good trade to get free postage so long as each letter was opened and read by a market research company? Or back when long distance calls were expensive, would people have signed up for free calls if in some seedy basement a chain-smoking guy wearing a pair of earphones monitored every phone call and took notes on a clip board? Of course not, but with email…well it is free! Free, but very expensive.
Think of the tech giants as dependent on a four-legged table: read your search engine queries, read your email, monitor your social media, and track your video consumption. Some may also use a browser to spy on you. Remove as many of those legs as possible.
This page is not about privacy per se. The assumption is that any government that wants to will be able to read your emails and analyze the “meta data” (i.e., from, to, date, and subject line). There may be some service that does truly keep out the government, but hard to say what that would be other than an email server one sets up for themselves. If there is anything you do not want the whole world to know, and know forever, then keep it off the internet to begin with. The internet was originally made so the military would have a robust network of communications—it was never designed for privacy. The focus of these suggested email services is to keep the text out of the hands of big-tech.
A common objection may be that one has had that same email account for years and it would be too hard to change. Well, been there, done that, and it is not as bad as one might think. First, go through your collection of accounts and passwords, and if see what needs to be carried over. Second, start changing them one at a time. Third, notify the friends and family of your new email. Then monitor your old account once a week for a few months. Eventually there will be nothing coming in other than spam. At that point, you can pull the plug on it if you wish.
Based in Switzerland. The emails are encrypted on their servers. There are allegations that they can decrypt emails and will do so and provide them to law enforcement upon request, but whether or not that is true, they do not read your emails themselves to gain information to then try to modify your behavior. One can set up a free account, but for a yearly fee one can get more space, additional addresses, etc.
Based in Germany. For a modest fee, both email and some cloud storage. Again, they do not read your emails for behavior modification algorithms.