Fastmail offers EU data region

158

ggroomlake about 4 hours ago 80 commentsRead Article on fastmail.com

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Discussion (80 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

jacquesm•about 2 hours ago

EU data regions are a reflexive action by companies that try to hold on to their EU customers (and more and more are leaving, surprisingly the larger ones seem to be leading here). Realize that as long as you are still hosted on US owned infrastructure or that if there are US (or: five-eyes) owned companies anywhere in the stack your data can still be forcibly pulled and often without you being aware that this happened. There are only very few such stacks that are 100% owned by EU entities.

ffsm8•about 2 hours ago

> your data can still be forcibly pulled and often without you being aware that this happened

as a german i feel the urge to point out that this technically also applies to european companies... With more hurdles for the US, but still technically applicable

jacquesm•13 minutes ago

That's true but the EU still has a - mostly - functioning legal system. See 'Schrems' and other lawsuits that came out as they should have.

usernomdeguerre•about 1 hour ago

True, I think the calculus is more about who you think is more trustworthy than what tools they have to damage you.

slow_typist•29 minutes ago

Especially if European companies have an office and significant share of customers in the US.

V__•about 2 hours ago

For anyone curious, it's the CLOUD act:

> The CLOUD Act primarily amends the Stored Communications Act (SCA) of 1986 to allow federal law enforcement to compel U.S.-based technology companies via warrant or subpoena to provide requested data stored on servers regardless of whether the data are stored in the U.S. or on foreign soil.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act

samudrijan•about 1 hour ago

The point of control is Congress, until we stop electing corpratist politicians, we will continue to get bad legislation.

braiamp•about 2 hours ago

Which wouldn't matter where the data is located, so I don't think that this is the reason Fastmail is doing it, because a savvy enough company would know that the problem is that the company is US based.

kid64•about 2 hours ago

They're Australian

microtonal•about 1 hour ago

Yeah, this does absolutely not solve the CLOUD Act issues. However, it is good to look at what the ramifications of the CLOUD Act is for e-mail:

- The US could request your data. You probably shouldn't use e-mail for anything sensitive anyway for many reasons. E-Mail was traditionally not encrypted and I think that many servers still allow plain-text communication. The protocols are old and there are all kinds of downgrade attacks. Aside from that, even if your service does not fall under the CLOUD Act, you are probably f*cked anyway, because most people you communicate with are using services that fall under the CLOUD Act.

- The US can force the provider to block your account. The workarounds are: regularly backup your e-mail (easy for services that offer IMAP) and, most importantly, use a domain with an extension that is not under the control of a US (or probably five eyes) registrar.

Use an E2E-encrypted messenger with perfect forward secrecy, etc. for most personal communication.

kisamoto•37 minutes ago

Does this still apply if there are separate legal entities for US & EU operations? Take Hetzner as an example. They have a separate US company to deal with their US data center. Would their EU servers be vulnerable to the CLOUD Act?

jacquesm•12 minutes ago

Well, for sure they can pressure them but I highly doubt Hetzner would break the law in Europe to satisfy the US government, they are a lot more to lose here than there. I realize that that is not proof.

atmosx•about 1 hour ago

That’s true and Fastmail runs on AWS. But it’s a start and a “feature” many have requested for years. It’s funny because the HQ and I believe their workforce is located in Australia.

chrismorgan•about 1 hour ago

Fastmail has never used AWS, and this article is pretty clear about how they have always used their own hardware and traditional colocation.

Fastmail used to be based in Melbourne only, but after the Pobox merger it ended up with an office in Philadelphia too. No idea how the balance of things is between the offices now.

atmosx•40 minutes ago

That’s interesting, I thought they were hosted on AWS. Thanks for sharing.

preisschild•27 minutes ago

But how is it actually "a start" or improves anything at all? It doesnt matter where the "physical location" of the data is. It matters who has access to it.

calvinmorrison•42 minutes ago

Fastmail runs on its own infra.

rufasterisco•about 1 hour ago

Can you point me towards some resources that show EU customers moving?

Not that I don’t trust the statement, I just would like to know more.

jacquesm•9 minutes ago

I hope Airbus is large enough for you?

https://thenextweb.com/news/airbus-scaleway-aws-sovereign-cl...

And many others besides, pretty much every company I've looked at in the last year is either acutely aware of the problem or they are already executing on it. With Trump and his merry band of criminals repeatedly stating they're going to take Greenland by force you can't blame them either, that would effectively put the EU on a war footing with the United States (I still can't believe I'm writing this sort of thing and it is not entirely fiction), the end result of that would be that there would be an absolute run on EU hosted capacity. They're just trying to beat the rush and hope they'll never be proven to be right.

toomuchtodo•5 minutes ago

HN Search: airbus critical apps scaleway - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Dutch Government moves cloud services to EU provider from US tech firms:

https://brusselssignal.eu/2026/04/dutch-government-moves-clo...

https://nltimes.nl/2026/04/24/netherlands-reaches-deal-europ...

Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48415217 - June 2026 (235 comments)

EU Banks Launch Wero Payments to Dislodge Visa, Mastercard - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41666833 - September 2024 (88 comments)

calvinmorrison•42 minutes ago

Fastmail is an Australian company

gib444•16 minutes ago

And hosted on US infrastructure, satisfying the "or" clause in their post

amelius•about 1 hour ago

How does Apple handle it?

xnickb•about 1 hour ago

Why would apple care? Eu is what a quarter of their business? And where exactly will those people move? They're locked into the Apple infra.

mrtesthah•about 2 hours ago

Ok, but Fastmail is an Australian company based in Melbourne.

petcat•about 2 hours ago

Australia and the US entered into a bilateral agreement in 2024 which made Australian companies subject to the US CLOUD Act.

https://www.justice.gov/criminal/criminal-oia/cloud-act-agre...

toomuchtodo•about 2 hours ago

As a FastMail customer who spends a portion of the year in the US, I am happy to pay to move my data to the EU region, even if they cannot yet fully guarantee all my data will remain outside of US access at this time. Defense and mitigations in depth, over time. We must always start somewhere, and perfect is never the target (as it does not exist).

OJFord•about 2 hours ago

But whose cloud infrastructure do they use? (I don't know, but it might likely be AWS, GCP, or Azure.)

microtonal•about 1 hour ago

That it described in the linked post:

We’ve installed our own servers, co-located in a secure facility in Amsterdam, set up by our own engineers.

calvinmorrison•41 minutes ago

None. It's racked and stacked old school

robin_reala•about 2 hours ago

Posted on the previous submission for this: it’s a good start, but from the article:

If what you need is a guarantee that your data remains only in the EU, we don’t have that, and we’d rather tell you directly than let you assume otherwise.

intothemild•about 2 hours ago

Wow they completely missed the ball on why people want reassurances that their data stays in the EU

fodkodrasz•about 1 hour ago

For me this is already a better value proposition, as less value add happens in the US. With the US being a perpetrator in trade war against the EU, even this matters. Everything counts, in large amounts...

xnickb•about 1 hour ago

I think they just know what they can and can't guarantee.

linux2647•about 1 hour ago

Agreed. I imagine they’ll announce an EU-only option later once they get more EU infrastructure in place

calvinmorrison•40 minutes ago

One needs multiple data centers in europe for backup and DR, sounds like they have one

altairprime•about 2 hours ago

EU folks, note the warnings threaded throughout this post: this is not currently any sort of panacea against US or AU data hosting risks, but it will make your data noticeably closer to home. Fastmail (Australia) merged with Pobox (Philadelphia) resulting in a complex tri-national law/risk surface when the EU is involved, so go in eyes wide open having read this in full. That everyone will overinterpret “EU data region” to mean “for privacy” here until reading the article is completely understandable; I empathize, having done the same.

superq•about 1 hour ago

EU data regions are based on the insanely flawed idea that data is:

* a physical thing that can only live in one place

* not copyable

* can be 'contained'.

The whole thing reeks of bureaucratic 'best practices' that just aren't.

Even worse than that, trying to keep email restricted to the EU (or anywhere else) means that you effectively wouldn't be able to communicate with anyone in a different region, which is kinda the whole point.

Why not just make your own internet next? and then you can disconnect from everyone else who is trying to hack you. Just pull your network plug.

Email itself is hopelessly insecure by design anyway. Not just metadata when you are E2EE everything inside the envelope, but even basic vulns like downgrade attacks are simple because it's literally a violation of the RFCs (so you're not spec-compliant) to require TLS or any other encryption.. Why? because requiring modern crypto might interfere with deliverability and backwards compatibility. The real, deeper reason is that email is from a kinder, simpler time (well, at least simpler) and the design goals were never updated to keep up with the times.

Email is what we have. Just understand its flaws and then use other tools where you can. And who cares where your email lives - it's too easy to break anyway.

preisschild•19 minutes ago

This is not an EU law anyways, this is snakeoil companies acting like having their data located in the EU will change who has access to it and will make it "GDPR compliant" (it wont since the CLOUD ACT still applies)

egorfine•about 1 hour ago

Can't wait to verify my age before reading emails!

In all seriousness though, what are the chances Fastmail won't require KYC at some point? I have sent them a support request with that question and got a non-answer.

PS: Am a paying customer for like a decade

rzerowan•about 1 hour ago

Seeing a lot of detail in the comments about the CLOUD act which applies as they(fastmail) themselves have an equivalent that was signed between USgov and Australia.

The more concerning issue as far as Australian based tech is The Assistance and Access Act 2018 which

"...permits government enforcement agencies to force businesses to hand over user info and data even though it’s protected by cryptography.

If firms don’t have the power to intercept encrypted data for authorities, they will be forced to create tools to allow law enforcement or government to have access to their users’ data."

As far as i know this has not been challenged or walked back and with the rise of ChatControl like laws doesnt seem it will.

chrismorgan•about 1 hour ago

The Assistance and Access Act is completely irrelevant to Fastmail, because Fastmail doesn’t offer end-to-end encryption. Fastmail was always subject to the Telecommunications Act, which allows Australian police access with warrants, and Fastmail has always made it clear that it complies with legal warrants.

cube2222•about 2 hours ago

Nice, as a European customer, I appreciate this.

Side note, I moved to Fastmail a couple years ago, and so far I’ve been very happy with it! The Gmail migrator works great, too.

crossroadsguy•about 1 hour ago

I have never understood their 50+10 GB storage as the starting plan. Anyone storing a lot of emails, please don't come at me screaming, but know that not everyone keeps every email and every attachment ever received right there in that email account (especially the attachments). For me, email is just communication i.e timed information, not data storage, except for very personal emails, and very very rare, some non-personal important emails. So some people do like to simply delete the emails they no longer need. Also their pricing almost feels like "unlimited storage" backup solutions mass pricing strategy.

tene80i•about 1 hour ago

You mean why isn’t there a cheaper tier than $5/mo? Not much to be gained by offering it, I would think.

rb666•37 minutes ago

Finally! I have been asking for this since the US started to lose its mind. Great they are listening.

greenleafone7•about 1 hour ago

The article states that they do not offer any guarantee that my data will stay in the EU!

I feel that that's the whole point. And the whole point of them making this article/advertisement.

petcat•about 1 hour ago

How could they possibly guarantee such a thing?

Do you only send and receive emails with people in the EU?

monsieurbanana•10 minutes ago

At the moment all your data is still replicated in the US (they say it will change in the future, sure) and all the logs are also stored there, with no plans to change it or more details into what they contain.

As of now there's no guarantee of... anything, really.

Obviously if you decide to send an email to the US you're choosing to send your data there, that's a strawman.

PeterStuer•about 2 hours ago

Five Eyes country are subject to local data disclosure orders and gag clauses, forcing them to hand over user data that may then enter the shared intelligence pool

skywal_l•about 2 hours ago

There are no Five Eyes country in the EU.

r_lee•about 2 hours ago

the company is based in Australia, which is part of FVEY

anon48293•about 2 hours ago

No, but there are nine eyes and fourteen eyes with EU countries.

PeterStuer•about 2 hours ago

Is fastmail not australian?

throw1234567891•about 2 hours ago

they offer services in the EU

senderista•about 2 hours ago

Not sure Five Eyes will outlast Trump, the UK has reportedly stopped sharing some intelligence with the US:

https://www.courthousenews.com/uk-faces-questions-on-complic...

lschueller•about 1 hour ago

If what you need is a guarantee that your data remains only in the EU, we don’t have that, and we’d rather tell you directly than let you assume otherwise.

Is there an alternative that really keeps data in the EU? (And not only in the sense it serves a sales promotion)

atmosx•about 1 hour ago

Depends on the definition and your threat model but to make a very large story short; it’s email, others have copies (your gmail friends?). Metadata is public by default the body can be encrypted and encrypted at rest (comes with many limitations) and that’s the highest level of security you can realistically achieve.

If that works fine if not, use another method of comm. Email wasn’t designed to be secure.

lschueller•about 1 hour ago

Thank you. Sure. In Europe the "euro stack" approach becomes more and more relevant. So, the issue is more a compliance topic in the way of making use of service provides, who are best-case "eu-headquartered", but at least with a guarantee that processing on my side stays within the european realm. Doesn't mean very little in a technical understanding of security, I agree.

vzaliva•about 1 hour ago

I do not know any EU-only, but ProtonMail is in Switzerland.

petcat•about 1 hour ago

Proton is leaving Switzerland because of surveillance and privacy issues.

> Because of legal uncertainty around Swiss government proposals to introduce mass surveillance — proposals that have been outlawed in the EU — Proton is moving most of its physical infrastructure out of Switzerland.

https://proton.me/blog/lumo-ai

They are moving to Germany, but will quickly find that they are going to face the same surveillance and privacy issues since the EU is in the process of negotiating a data sharing agreement under the US Cloud Act.

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-a...

I_am_tiberius•about 2 hours ago

And which company hosts the data? An American company like Aws, Azure, Google or a European company like OVH, Stackit?

fhdkweig•about 2 hours ago

The flagged/dead comment contains a copy of the entire page, but the relevant part is:

> Built by us, not rented from someone else

> We’ve installed our own servers, co-located in a secure facility in Amsterdam, set up by our own engineers. This new location is built to the same high standards as our existing infrastructure in Philadelphia and St Louis, with our own hardware and our own software — specified right down to the exact model of disks in each machine.

> In all our locations, data is stored encrypted at rest inside locked racks, and managed by our in-house team. We don’t rent computing or management services from a big cloud provider and pass on their assurances. That’s how we’ve approached privacy, reliability, and performance for more than 25 years.

techpression•about 2 hours ago

kmfrk•about 1 hour ago

As a European and Fastmail user, this is great news.

atmosx•about 1 hour ago

Okay, that solves two problems for me. Great news.

tamimio•about 1 hour ago

Does it matter much? From one side, you are still in the 14 eyes countries (in fact, I would trust a Chinese server if i am living in the west and vice versa), on another side, emails as a protocol was never meant to be secure or private, so deal with it as that, if you are after private or secure communication, choose a protocol that provides that, adding more stuff to emails will only complicate it further plus giving false sense of privacy/security, gpg will leak meta data, receiver email server/client might expose you too, among many gaps, so just avoid it. Still, make sure your email spf dkim dmarc etc are set properly and carry on.

sparkling•39 minutes ago

To me, jurisdiction matters more than physical location. I'd rather be with a EU-operated service that stores data on a non-EU server, than a non-EU operator with a German/french datacenter.

KingOfCoders•about 2 hours ago

We offer EU data centers for customers that want their emails to stay in the EU but

"Resilient replicas of your data will live in the US"

crossroadsguy•about 1 hour ago

The US data replicas will be resilient, and when the FBI asks your data to reveal things about itself, your data will refuse to reveal anything about itself in the characteristic resilient manner. That's why the mention of "resilient".

KingOfCoders•about 1 hour ago

How is that possible if the OS/drive/vault is backdoored? Could you elaborate?

I think "resilient" just means "backup copy" and I do think (IANAL) it is illegal to destroy emails when asked for them in the US.

Or was your comment ironic? Sorry, German, irony impaired.

varispeed•about 1 hour ago

Data is still compellable through US Cloud Act (and other provisions). If you want true EU data region, you should buy from a company without presence in the US.

honeycrispy•about 2 hours ago

Right in time for Chat Control 1.0. Servers in Europe doesn't have the same privacy implications that it had a year ago.

lrae•about 1 hour ago

You mean Chat Control 1.0 that was already in place from 2021 to April 2026 and allows for voluntary scanning for CSAM in unecrypted data through hash-matching for existing and indexed CSAM material?

flexagoon•about 1 hour ago

Chat Control 1.0 is a permanent extension of a temporary law that already existed a year ago, allowing the companies to scan your messages if they want to. Nothing changed since then.

Marciplan•about 1 hour ago

using cirrux.me and very happy with an actual EU hosted option (Team is Dutch)