Your Email Provider Can Read Your Mail
When you send a letter, you seal it in an envelope. You hand it to the postman. He carries it. He delivers it. He does not open it. He does not read it.
Email does not work like this.
The postcard problem
Most email is like a postcard. Not a sealed letter. The content is visible to anyone handling it.
Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo. They have the technical ability to read your emails. Right now, Google says they do not use email content for advertising. But policies change. Terms of service get updated. What is true today may not be true tomorrow.
But this is not even the main problem.
The real problem is everything in one place
Think about what is connected to your Gmail.
Your bank sends OTPs there. Your domain registrar sends renewal notices there. Your payment processor. Your cloud storage. Your social media. Dozens of websites where you clicked "Sign in with Google."
Now imagine you lose access.
Google does not have a customer service number. If you get locked out, there is no human to call. Forgot password? Suspicious activity flag? Some random glitch? No exception process. No appeal.
People have lost years of emails. Photos. Documents. Access to every connected service. Not because they were hacked. Because they got locked out of one account.
This is a single point of failure problem.
You should read this if you want to know more about what happens if you lose access to your Gmail account: https://gmailaccountrecovery.blogspot.com/
The solution is not to leave Gmail
I am not saying delete your Gmail. Everyone has it. It is everywhere. Changing it would be impractical.
What I am saying is: do not keep all eggs in one basket.
Build a second email
Get a Proton Mail or Tuta account. These providers cannot read your emails even if they wanted to. The content is scrambled on your device before it is sent. Like a sealed envelope that only the recipient can open.
Forward your Gmail to this new address. Everything arriving at Gmail also lands in Proton. You miss nothing.
Now slowly, for important accounts like bank, domain registrar, payment processor, update to the new email. One account at a time. No rush.
If something happens to Gmail tomorrow, you have a backup. You have not lost everything.
Even better: own your domain
The best setup is having your own domain.
yourname@somename.com
Why? If one email provider blocks you tomorrow, you take that domain to another provider. Gmail, Zoho, Fastmail, anyone. Your email address stays the same. You control it. The provider is just the postman. You can change postmen.
Why paying makes sense
Proton costs a few hundred rupees a month.
What do you get? An email provider whose business is subscriptions, not data. Actual customer support when things go wrong. A backup system.
You also get features like private spreadsheets and docs. It's end-to-end encrypted, unlike Google Sheets. When you use Proton Sheets, your data cannot be read by Proton in any way as it's encrypted.
Think of it this way. The postman who works for free might have reasons you do not fully understand. The postman you pay has one job: deliver your letter.
What to do now
- Create a Proton Mail account
- Forward your Gmail to it
- Update your most critical accounts to the new email
- Consider buying a domain for personal email. Make sure you buy for 3 years minimum and turn on Auto Renew.
Simple. Small. Gradual.
Your email is the master key to your digital life. A backup is not paranoia. It is common sense.