> Self hosting means you stand out and can be pinpointed which is actually > worse than something like gmail.
Self hosting is still infinitely better than using Gmail, for a number of reasons: you need to actually have a warrant issued to search your own machines, as opposed to Gmail being all to happy to hand over your data (of which Google will have collected a lot more) to the NSA on the slimmest of pretexts. Secondly, despite the fact that intelligence agencies sweep e-mails during transmission and so will get their hands on all e-mails anyway, at least you won't be creating profiles of yourself to sell yourself out to other corporations, unlike Google. You also have complete control over your own data, which allows you to implement full encryption of all stored e-mails, unlike Google's services. Though Google actively abuses its users, people are unlikely to abuse themselves in the same way. This concept of one being 'pinpointed' out of the crowd by intelligence agencies doesn't really carry much weight, because you will just have all your information handed over to the NSA anyway if you use Google and one can just use head-to-toe encryption on servers you actually control. You don't need to run your own mail server for the NSA to be able to find you, because they already have everyone who uses Gmail from day one.
