Email is needed for modern communication and it's here to stay.

Some people might believe email is old and outdated but it still remains a vital form of communication globally for private and business use - here’s why!

2024-05-08
Unlike the telephone and post which have had their day and faded out of fashion, email has no expiry date! Sending emails will remain the constant form of online communication.
In a time of fads and fastly changing trends, it’s easy for things to slip away and fall out of use, especially in terms of tech. Over the past ten years, there have been many trends in tech that have had quick successes and sometimes failures followed just as quickly. But over the years, one form of online communication has been a constant companion since its invention: e-mail.

With that being said, the rise of instant messaging platforms like Whatsapp and Signal might make email seem too formal, old, and outdated – but this is far from true. Today, we need an email account for many things like applying for jobs, opening bank accounts, registering with online services, and even getting food delivered to our homes. So it should be no surprise that it’s still a very much used, and important means of modern communication and for this reason demands a high level of security.

Table of contents

Email Origins

In 1971, Ray Tomlinson sent the first email, but it wasn’t until the 90s when the internet globally became more widely accessible in homes that it really took off. Before then, email was a very limited form of communication used within a specific network. Most people were quite happy with telephones, putting pen to paper and sending letters. In 1988, Microsoft brought out MSMail, the very first commercially available mail service. Fast forward to the mid-90s, webmail clients had just been released, and Hotmail (now Outlook) and RocketMail (now Yahoo! Mail) came on the market as the first free webmail services.

Who would've thought that the first email sent in 1971 would revolutionize electronic communications and lead to the birth of one of the most common forms of being in touch with others online. With an estimated 347.3 billion emails sent around the world daily, email has become the go-to form of sending digital “letters” for businesses and individuals.

The importance of email

Email is more than a way to send an electronic message. It now acts as an anchor point for our digital lives. It’s a form of communication you can’t avoid, and in a way having a personal email account is a requirement of being an adult.

There are two main reasons why email is so important to modern communication: First, email lets you exchange messages quickly with any person or organization across the whole world, no matter the location. Second, email in contrast to instant messages can’t be deleted and, thus, create a record of the conversation, including exchanged documents.

For some, email is a way to communicate formally, for others, it is like an online PO box; but often email is also used to communicate about private and personal matters. The mailbox is a place to store bank documents, letters from doctors, and more. We also can’t forget that today, you need an email address to apply for jobs, and it’s almost impossible to create an online account or order something online without providing a personal email address.

In a way, your email address is like an online ID card that you’ll need for life.

With that being said, choosing an email provider is like choosing a bank. Sure email providers are very different in terms of what they should hold and protect for you, but ultimately they should both be a private vault to protect your personal goods. The bank holds your hard-earned money and your mailbox holds the key to your private matters. With both the bank and your email you should always invest some research into choosing a provider that suits your needs, and most of all – protects you and your valuables.

Big tech email providers today

Unfortunately today, the original email pioneers like Yahoo, Microsoft’s Outlook and Google’s Gmail are not nearly as great as they were when they got released. These big tech mail providers have grown, expanded, and along the way dropped their ethics and given in to greed.

The sad truth is that big tech providers like Gmail, are masters at selling themselves as being the best, most secure, and most private options - and sure they have a great range of productivity tools that all work together, but through using their free email service and products, you in fact become the product. In reality, big tech companies value your data much more than you could ever imagine. They offer free services, because they can profit off of you by tracking you via their apps and by selling your data. The exact same thing happens with social media sites like Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, or Google’s range of other services.

If you use Google products, you might be asking yourself how much does Google know about me? In short, they know more about you than you could ever imagine! But luckily, there are great privacy-focused alternatives you can easily use today and deleting your Gmail account is relatively straightforward.

Often we might think a service like Outlook or Gmail is perfect and amazing because it’s free, but what happens behind the scenes is really scary when you think about it. Knowing that a mail provider like Gmail scans your emails is a major privacy concern – the service might be easy to use and convenient but imagine keeping them as your mail provider for many years… Google would have created a full track record of you and your private life; Gmail can even track everything you buy. So one could say Gmail doesn’t offer that private vault you need for life.

Choose the best email provider for life

Since we need an email for so many things, like applying for jobs, private communications, and creating accounts, our email does become our online ID card which gives us freedom and access not just to online communication, but to so much more. Our email account is also needed for a lot of private things, and as mentioned before our mailbox holds the key to our personal lives.

Many of us keep our mailbox for life. Technically it would be good security advice to change our email addresses every now and then, but of course many people simply can’t be bothered. When it comes to choosing the perfect mailbox for life, you should choose one that is secure, private, offers a great service, and of course, actually keeps your personal matters private.

Tuta Mail is the perfect solution to your life long email. Why is it the best email service you might be thinking? Well first of all, Tuta is not a greedy big tech corporation hungry for your data, in fact, it’s the complete opposite!

At Tuta, the user and user privacy always come before profits. Tuta is a privacy-focused email, calendar, and contacts service based in Germany, fully operational under strict GDPR and privacy regulations.

When you choose your mailbox for life, Tuta should be your go-to solution as it protects all your messages with quantum-safe encryption. Thus, in terms of privacy and security, Tuta is the gold standard for email. Tuta uses end-to-end encryption to protect as much of your data as possible. Beyond that Tuta, is fully open source, and it owns its servers and its infrastructure. Tuta’s dedicated team of privacy experts have created the perfect mail solution that’s secure, has zero links to Google, and is available on the device of your choice for free.

Make a wise choice when creating your email account for life: Sign up for a free private mailbox with Tuta Mail!