Free email is paid for with your data instead of money, and that costs more than most people think.
Where a free service gets its money
Without a subscription, the money usually comes from targeted advertising and profiling, which means analyzing what you receive.
Your purchases, travel, subscriptions and contacts are used to build an advertising profile, and that profile is what gets sold.
What it means for you
- A profile that follows you. What arrives in your inbox shapes what you're shown elsewhere on the web.
- More damage if there's a leak, since your data is centralized and analyzed.
- You're no longer the customer. The advertiser is.
Paying for the service, and nothing else
A service can also charge for a subscription, and nothing more: no ads, no commercial analysis of your content, no reselling. That's MedLiam's model.
Assistant features (summaries, sorting, scam detection) run on our servers, on the email in question, only to provide the service you asked for and never to profile you.
How to check any service
- Look for the line "we don't sell your data," then read the policy to see whether it holds up.
- Look at the business model: with no ads and no subscription, ask yourself how the service pays for itself.
- Check where the servers are hosted and which laws apply (in Québec: Law 25).
Your email is probably your most sensitive account, since it's used to reset all the others. It's worth knowing who reads it.