`CTemplar said they were “actively refusing investments, donations or grants from governments and corporations.” This clearly turned out not to be viable, at least in this case.`[0]
FYI that website is hijacked by a hostile ad (ironically for an ad blocker) when accessing it from my iOS device, making the page inaccessible due to HTTP redirects and whatnot.
To be honest, my question would be why this wouldn't have happened. Their cheapest plan was more than Fastmail Professional - while delivering less product than Fastmail Basic and not having anything approaching the Fastmail brand. I have a hard time understanding why anyone would have used their service.
Unfortunately not, it isn't. Tried to do it when migrating from Google to Mailfence, but gave up since it missed some messages, randomly timed out and couldn't continue.
In the end I had to remove all messages, and process them using Claws client, which gives much better control and a feedback which messages were transferred and which failed. The only issue I had is that some messages were transferred multiple times, but Claws even has a solution for that by using "delete duplicate messages".
Installed Claws and configured both old Gmail and new IMAP account locally.
Basically, I did it semi-manual, since it was the only way it worked.
Clicked to "get all messages" on the Gmail account. This is important. Otherwise, it would need to first fetch messages before doing the copy.
For smaller labels / folders, I was just right-clicking label and choosing copy. It would then create a folder in the new account and copy all messages. For labels with a lot of messages, I would create a folder manually, open a label by clicking on it, select manually let's say 500 messages, and calling copy. If copy is successful, I'll mark copied messages in another colour, and proceed copying the next bunch.
In case of any error, and there will be errors, I would just retry copying. That way, I ended up with duplicated messages in the target folder, but that was easy to clean up using Claws option to remove duplicated messages in the folder. The errors may be due to network timeouts, rate limiting on both Gmail and new provider side.
It may be tedious if you have many folders with many messages. I wanted to avoid using any external tools for the purpose, and was too lazy to try to program something. YMMV.
I also took the chance to actually clean and reorganize my mail archive as a part of the process, and ended up not transferring / deleting two thirds of my mail archive during the process.
I'm a (paying) Mailfence customer as well, and use it as a destination sync backup of my primary domain using imapsync, encountered a similar problem so opened a ticket to Support.
The general problem is that Mailfence has what I guess you could call DDoS protections in place and opening too many simultaneous IMAP threads trips their defenses. I have my ~/.mbsyncrc set to only use one thread when writing to Mailfence to avoid tripping the trigger and it runs like clockwork now (cron timer doing IMAP sync writes from the primary). $0.02, hope this helps.
Thanks for the confirmation. I supposed it was some kind of rate limiting. I guess Claws worked for me since its IMAP operations are single threaded, and with Thunderbird, it was easy to trigger multiple parallel connections, e.g., by opening an IMAP folder while copying of messages is running.
Seconded, though it may have been a decade since I tried. I recall the GUI locking up and probably didn't complete the operation. Even ~2 years ago, I had similar issues just trying to move a few hundred messages between folders on the same IMAP server. IIRC it worked, but takes a lot of patience. That time, I also didn't really care if it ate those messages instead of moving them.
I wouldn't trust Thunderbird for more than a few dozen messages I could hand-verify. For anything more, use a dedicated tool that provides logs and can gracefully restart.
I moved a couple domains over to Zoho recently and they have a really nice tool to import mail from other accounts - only relevant if you're planning on going to Zoho though.
CTemplar as a service has no integration with standard protocols (SMTP, IMAP, CardDav, CalDav, etc.) even if you paid. It is/was a walled garden solution that can only be used with it's web portal or mobile client; when I was evaluating non-GMail solutions to de-Google it was an instant "nope" in my evaluations. It does not fit in the same category as other general purpose email solution providers.
Yeah, but it's the case with all of them. ProtonMail, Tutanota, etc, all of them are walled gardens that try to shove you into their proprietary lands.
I created EteSync[1] a contacts, calendars and tasks sync solution that's e2ee and privacy respecting but people kept on asking us to integrate with one of the above email solutions. Though they are all closed and don't interoperate. :(
Protonmail has a bridge for IMAP and SMTP for paying customers as well as an import/export tool.
I'm still moving my stuff to mailbox.org now though, I'm getting increasingly annoyed at having to use proton's mail app in addition to my main mail app.
But not for ProtonCalendar, and definitely not on Android.
Proton doesn't interact at all with the rest of the ecosystem. I'm not a Proton customer myself, I just hear it from our many customers that are frustrated by their closeness.
Yet another reason why I use mainstream email providers. I cannot mess with my emails and have only few days to migrate when providers (developers) decide to ditch the project.
(I discovered the other day I can't just login to Gmail anymore; I have to have a device with me I've logged on with before. E.g. right now I'm outside w/ my computer and phone -- if someone came by and stealthily stole both, I think I'd lose my gmail account!)
37 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 86.0 ms ] threadThis sounds like as good an explanation as any.
[0]https://reclaimthenet.org/private-email-provider-ctemplar-is...
In addition to that, their pricing was very expensive with a sub-par experience compared to Protonmail, which has improved massively in the last year.
https://cyber-privacy.net/ctemplar-catastrophic-incident-wit...
Blasts the user with one of the sketchiest examples of ad malware I've seen in years.
In the end I had to remove all messages, and process them using Claws client, which gives much better control and a feedback which messages were transferred and which failed. The only issue I had is that some messages were transferred multiple times, but Claws even has a solution for that by using "delete duplicate messages".
Basically, I did it semi-manual, since it was the only way it worked.
Clicked to "get all messages" on the Gmail account. This is important. Otherwise, it would need to first fetch messages before doing the copy.
For smaller labels / folders, I was just right-clicking label and choosing copy. It would then create a folder in the new account and copy all messages. For labels with a lot of messages, I would create a folder manually, open a label by clicking on it, select manually let's say 500 messages, and calling copy. If copy is successful, I'll mark copied messages in another colour, and proceed copying the next bunch.
In case of any error, and there will be errors, I would just retry copying. That way, I ended up with duplicated messages in the target folder, but that was easy to clean up using Claws option to remove duplicated messages in the folder. The errors may be due to network timeouts, rate limiting on both Gmail and new provider side.
It may be tedious if you have many folders with many messages. I wanted to avoid using any external tools for the purpose, and was too lazy to try to program something. YMMV.
I also took the chance to actually clean and reorganize my mail archive as a part of the process, and ended up not transferring / deleting two thirds of my mail archive during the process.
The general problem is that Mailfence has what I guess you could call DDoS protections in place and opening too many simultaneous IMAP threads trips their defenses. I have my ~/.mbsyncrc set to only use one thread when writing to Mailfence to avoid tripping the trigger and it runs like clockwork now (cron timer doing IMAP sync writes from the primary). $0.02, hope this helps.
I wouldn't trust Thunderbird for more than a few dozen messages I could hand-verify. For anything more, use a dedicated tool that provides logs and can gracefully restart.
There's just so much abuse going on, and when you are privacy first you limit your ability to fight abuse which makes things much worse. :(
I created EteSync[1] a contacts, calendars and tasks sync solution that's e2ee and privacy respecting but people kept on asking us to integrate with one of the above email solutions. Though they are all closed and don't interoperate. :(
[1] https://www.etesync.com
I'm still moving my stuff to mailbox.org now though, I'm getting increasingly annoyed at having to use proton's mail app in addition to my main mail app.
Proton doesn't interact at all with the rest of the ecosystem. I'm not a Proton customer myself, I just hear it from our many customers that are frustrated by their closeness.
Niche provider: Eventually they'll go out of business and you'll lose your account.
Solution? Web3 somehow? Urbit maybe?? Something else?
(I discovered the other day I can't just login to Gmail anymore; I have to have a device with me I've logged on with before. E.g. right now I'm outside w/ my computer and phone -- if someone came by and stealthily stole both, I think I'd lose my gmail account!)
And an address in Iceland.
Interesting. I wonder what was going on here and who leaned on them to force them to pull a Lavabit.