Some of us would prefer to not participate in google's data collection, and would also like to avoid microsoft/hotmail/yahoo.

Any new email entities out there that are reliable and have some repsect for a user's privacy?

Facebook? Oh...hang on a minute...privacy issues

Anything on the internet is fair game for a whole host of companies and governments; at least 5 governments in the world will have this post passed through their system in a nanosecond. No hiding no matter what anyone tells you especially in a place like Thailand. I agree with the sentiment, but have decided to stick with gmail for the reason that when taking into account all of the aforementioned, I would prefer my stuff to be handled by one of the biggest and in my mind more ethical businesses. You could get an URL yourself, then host yourself as well. But it's a lot of hard work. The one I had that I got no spam in though is a mail.com email address. I would not use them for anything other than messing around though.