if I'm talking to my mailserver over HTTPS/IMAP TLS, I don't mind where the traffic is routed.
It's still not ideal (they can still see who you're talking to), but you'll never have 100% privacy. Just make as much of the data useless as possible.
> if I'm talking to my mailserver over HTTPS/IMAP TLS, I don't mind where the traffic is routed.
You do unless you're using PGP for all your emails, because SMTP can be easily intercepted in plan-text.
Of course, if you're using full end-to-end encryption (like PGP) for all your emails, you don't care so much about using HTTPS to fetch them, because you're using end-to-end encryption.
Not useful. You may be talking to your mail server using TLS, but it's highly unlikely that your mail server is talking to every other mail server (and vice versa) using TLS.
And then, even if all of the servers involved in delivering your mail communicate securely, the reciepent is going to reply in plain text, quoting your entire message...
It's still not ideal (they can still see who you're talking to), but you'll never have 100% privacy. Just make as much of the data useless as possible.