Forward Email vs iCloud Mail: privacy compared

Forward Email and iCloud Mail are both rated in email providers against the same 21 public criteria. Forward Email is based in the United States (Five Eyes); iCloud Mail is based in the United States (Five Eyes).

Forward Email compared with iCloud Mail
Criterion	Forward Email Our pick	iCloud Mail
Grade	Grade A A (98/100)	Grade D D (44/100)
Jurisdiction	United States Five Eyes	United States Five Eyes
Open source Is all the source code needed to run the product public?	Yes source	No
No trackers or telemetry Are the website and apps free of third-party trackers, with any analytics anonymous and any telemetry off by default?	Yes source	Yes source
No ads or data sales Is the product funded without advertising, ad targeting or selling user data?	Yes source	Yes source
Independent audit Has an independent security or privacy audit been published within the last three years?	Yes source	No
Transparency report Does the provider regularly publish how many government and legal requests it receives and how it responds?	Partial source	Yes source
Tells users about requests Does the provider promise to tell users about requests for their data, unless a court forbids it?	Yes source	Yes source
TLS configuration Does the website pass the Qualys SSL Labs test with a grade of A or better?	Yes source	Yes source
Security headers Does the website pass the Mozilla HTTP Observatory test with a grade of A or better?	Yes source	Yes source
Modern web standards Does the website score 90% or higher on the Internet.nl website test?	Yes source	No source
End-to-end encryption Can mail be end-to-end encrypted so that the provider cannot read message contents?	Yes source	No source
Encrypted mailbox storage Is stored mail encrypted with a key the provider does not hold?	Yes source	Partial source
Open protocols Can any standard app connect over IMAP, POP3, SMTP, CalDAV or CardDAV, without extra software?	Yes source	Yes source
Custom domains Can mail be sent and received with your own domain?	Yes source	Yes source
Sign up without personal data Can an account be created without a phone number or another email address?	Yes source	No source
Email security standards Does the mail domain score 90% or higher on the Internet.nl email test?	Yes source	No source
IMAP support Does the IMAP server accept connections over implicit TLS on port 993 and advertise IMAP4rev1 or IMAP4rev2 with IDLE push?	Yes	Partial
POP3 support Does the POP3 server accept connections over implicit TLS on port 995 and answer CAPA with UIDL?	Yes	No
SMTP submission Does mail submission work over implicit TLS on port 465 with SMTPUTF8, 8BITMIME, PIPELINING and AUTH?	Yes	Partial
Mail transport security Does the mail domain enforce encrypted, authenticated delivery with MTA-STS, DANE, DNSSEC, TLS-RPT and an enforced DMARC policy?	Yes	No
Sender Rewriting Scheme Is the envelope sender rewritten with SRS when mail is forwarded, so forwarded mail keeps passing SPF?	Yes source	No
ARC sealing Does the provider validate and add ARC (RFC 8617) signatures, so authentication results survive forwarding?	Yes source	No

Which is more private, Forward Email or iCloud Mail?

Forward Email scores higher on the public criteria: 98 out of 100, against 44 for iCloud Mail. Forward Email does better on open source, independent audit, modern web standards, end-to-end encryption, encrypted mailbox storage, sign up without personal data, email security standards, IMAP support, POP3 support, SMTP submission, mail transport security, Sender Rewriting Scheme and ARC sealing. iCloud Mail does better on transparency report. Disclosure. Privacy Ratings is maintained by the team behind Forward Email. This entry is scored by the same criteria as every other email provider, and changes to it are reviewed under the published conflict-of-interest rules. How scoring works

Summaries

Forward Email. Forward Email scores 98 out of 100 (grade A) on the email providers criteria. It meets 20 of 21 criteria: open source, no trackers or telemetry, no ads or data sales, independent audit, tells users about requests, TLS configuration, security headers, modern web standards, end-to-end encryption, encrypted mailbox storage, open protocols, custom domains, sign up without personal data, email security standards, IMAP support, POP3 support, SMTP submission, mail transport security, Sender Rewriting Scheme and ARC sealing. It partly meets transparency report. It is based in the United States: Five Eyes member; subject to the US CLOUD Act. Automated tests: SSL Labs grade A+, Mozilla HTTP Observatory grade A+, Internet.nl website score 100% and Internet.nl email score 100%.

iCloud Mail. iCloud Mail scores 44 out of 100 (grade D) on the email providers criteria. It meets 8 of 21 criteria: no trackers or telemetry, no ads or data sales, transparency report, tells users about requests, TLS configuration, security headers, open protocols and custom domains. It partly meets encrypted mailbox storage, IMAP support and SMTP submission. It does not meet open source, independent audit, modern web standards, end-to-end encryption, sign up without personal data, email security standards, POP3 support, mail transport security, Sender Rewriting Scheme and ARC sealing. It is based in the United States: Five Eyes member; subject to the US CLOUD Act. Automated tests: SSL Labs grade A+, Mozilla HTTP Observatory grade A+, Internet.nl website score 64% and Internet.nl email score 49%.

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Forward Email vs iCloud Mail: privacy compared

Which is more private, Forward Email or iCloud Mail?

Summaries

Comparisons

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