Proton Mail says it’s “politically neutral” while praising Republican Party
1y 4mon ago by lemmy.world/u/MicroWave in news from theintercept.com
Summary
Proton Mail, known for its privacy-first email services, faced backlash after CEO Andy Yen praised the Republican Party and its antitrust stance.
The company initially posted and deleted a statement supporting Yen’s comments, later claiming an “internal miscommunication” and reiterating its political neutrality.
Critics question Proton’s impartiality, particularly as it cooperates with Swiss authorities on legal data requests.
Privacy advocates warn that political alignments could undermine trust, especially for Proton’s users—journalists and activists wary of government surveillance under administrations like Trump’s.
Just when I'm done migrating all my email shit to Proton, the CEO turns out to be a nazi. A classic.
Same. Considered getting a domain for my email, but ended up just switching directly to the protonmail domain. Regretting that now.
Getting your own domain is the best thing you can do, regardless of provider - it means they can't lock you in anymore.
I gotta get a personal domain just for email, I don't really want my personal life mixed in with our small business domain; both due to the nature of the products and because I don't want to dox myself on either side of the work/life gulf. It's a shame too, because I am actually proud of our garage business.
I totally get that; I have three domains (work, personal, and one only for online services / aliases)
They’re relatively cheap. I’ve had one for years, though I don’t use it for email forwarding.
Weird shit also happens if send mail isn’t coming from a big provider :(
Yeah, I have no desire to try to host smtp. I'm thinking I could run my own imap and pull mail from various accounts and then just send mail through proton or tula or whoever. Someone already trusted.
And the main reason I didn't get a domain? Because I couldn't come up with a good domain name. Naming stuff is always hard.
It is hard. I made up a name that sounds like it would be a webmail provider (it has "mail" in the name).
Surely the point of your own domain is to personalise it? Why would you go for something generic?
I use it with aliases for online signups, so the genericness is a feature, not a bug.
But it’s awful for privacy, because everything is on one domain.
Email is already bad for privacy, and WHOIS protection solves most of the rest. And obviously don't buy a personally-identifiable domain if that's a concern.
Only way to make sure your email isn’t run by a Nazi is to run it yourself.
Unless you’re a Nazi in which case FUCK OFF
Even for the technically literate, running a mail server is an ongoing nightmare. If you think it's easy, you're not doing it right.
Which is why I let my email be run by Nazis.
Seriously I wish I could quit them but it’s too damn hard.
Dagnabbit - I went all in on Proton as well. Why is it so hard to find an email provider that respects privacy and isn't run by people with 'problematic' views (i.e. people who wish people like me didn't exist)
I guess I'm lucky he came out with this shit just as I was about to migrate.
I did some more research and this is no joke:
Globalism is bad, being fair is bad, Europe-first, huh I wonder where we've heard this kind of rhetoric before.
The EU was initially a good idea, but it got too involved in national politics (anyone remembers the banana guideline that reads like a meme?). I still think, the EU is fine and we should keep it, but it should be a defensive alliance first and foremost and not some fucking merger that is advocating for the rich. Sadly, it's the rich that have the influence because, well, money and they are going to abuse it.
A call for isolation and autarky is a massive red flag and nothing good will ever happen after that, it always leads to exploitation and violence. The reason CEOs don't like globalism is because it's harder to create a monopoly on a global market than regional and capitalism strives for those because it hates competition.
Ar eyou saying Proton's CEO is a Nazi? Far as I can tell he isn't
Edit: your message is confusing which is why I ask
#BigSame Friend.
I was looking at Tutanota for a bit. Guess I'm need to bust open that research again.
Signed up last month because I had something to protect. Looking into Tuta. Anyone know a comparable free vpn?
I switched to Mullvad, works pretty well so far, for my needs.
I am aware of mullvad, and it sounds very good. However, I was looking for a free vpn, as I use vpn service very rarely.
I was at a similar crossroads when trying to de-google and pulled the trigger on Tuta Mail instead of Proton. Very happy with my decision now after reading this.
They usually are. Unfortunately.
While the comments were not welcome and left a sour taste, we are blowing it a bit out of proportion here.
You don’t get to decide how other people feel and respond to the issue.
Person A has an opinion, that is allowed. Person B has opinion, that is not allowed.
Lol I read this thread first, then went to the article and his comments were supportive of the potential for anti-trust legislation under the new administration? That makes him a Nazi? Wtf 😂
This is a huge reason why Lemmy faces an uphill battle in terms of growth, these absolutely batshit insane political takes pollute most threads about newsworthy events, which are in many ways the lifeblood of a content aggregator.
I can't even count the number of times I've seen people say they tried Lemmy for a little while but eventually stopped because they got sick of every thread and community being constantly flooded with Nazi comparisons, accusations of genocide denial, and guillotine the rich stuff.
Like I get it, I really do, but maybe direct some of that righteous anger into some kind of real world activism instead of constantly bitching at anonymous strangers on Lemmy. These people are so outraged and the situation is so dire, and yet they continue to scroll online forums and farm upvotes? Have some ideological consistency ffs, if it's a matter of life and death, go out there and do something to help.
Doomposting on Lemmy accomplishes nothing, and in fact continues to marginalize one of the few tools that we could potentially have to fight back. If Lemmy were to grow significantly and become a place where people could organize and communicate without being subject to corporate control or censorship, that could potentially do a great deal of good for people IRL. But constantly whining Nazi this, Nazi that is preventing that growth from happening.
Which is why this platform will never have a meaningful growth. But 90% of the user base is happy with that because they enjoy having their opinions validated and not challenged a.k.a. echo chamber.
Well, never say never. It happened once already, in June/July 2023 the userbase grew more than 10x.
And we have seen a nice bump of 2k users in the past week or so as the fediverse has gotten some publicity. Reddit is not an option so we have no choice but to try to make Lemmy better, and I genuinely believe that the federated, decentralized concept can be the solution in so many ways.
Piefed and Mbin are also huge boons to our chances of success. Lemmy may not ever take off, but I expect one of the fediverse content aggregators eventually will. Reddit is simply too shitty of a user experience, they are guaranteed to fail.
Reminds me of another site. It's why upvotes/downvotes will never work.
That other site is the 6th most visited website in the world, so clearly having upvotes/downvotes doesn't preclude growth.
Does mbin only have upvotes or am I misremembering? And boosts I guess. That's not my personal preference but the beauty is we can still access the same content from different platforms.
I was responding more to the echo chamber part, which is what a karma system causes pretty quickly. Obviously likes and dislikes arent stopping growth.
We just need more users. Simple as that.
They're just expressing an opinion. Cool it.
I guess their username speaks for itself XD
Yeah this is a masks off moment for them and people better be paying attention!
"If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality."
-Desmond Tutu
"If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, but your CEO and official company social media accounts are publically praising the policies of the elephant, the mouse will not appreciate your alleged neutrality."
-iAmTheTot
I migrated literally everything from Gmail around 2021. Gotta tell ya, I feel just about dumb as shit right now. I kind of understand people with those "I bought this before he sieg heiled" bumper stickers on their Teslas.
I was planning to transition everything to proton this month. Now I don't know what to do.
Tuta for mail, bitwarden for passwords, mullvad for vpn. You lose port forwarding.
I migrated last week. I dont miss proton.
There are other good VPN options that provide port forwarding but it's usually at an extra cost or absolutely tedious to set up.
AirVPN, Windscribe, and another one I can't remember. Personally I prefer the security and privacy of Mullvad but I use proton's port forwarding and proton mail for quite a bit so the transition is gonna be annyoing...
EDIT: Removed PIA due to dubious behavior.
PrivateVPN is what I use. No ties to the big VPN corporations known, pretty open about their stuff, decent price, small company, port forwarding over OVPN (not wireguard) and no-log policy.
The problem is I don't think they have ever been audited but also because they are obscure enough, I don't know if there are any watchdogs for them turning over info to authorities.
Is PrivateVPN the same as PrivateVPNAccess?
No%
Oof I forgot about that, you also reminfed me about a post that I can't seem to find anymore of a user fiscovering that they were connected to a US military base.
Honestly the lesson I took away from this is to not vendor-lock myself if I can help it. Maybe it'd be better to have a domain through which you can route incoming emails to any inbox? That way you can just hotswap email services if their CEO turns out to be a cannibal or something.
yeah, I myself was already getting a little uncomfortable with how far proton was branching out. It's a good thing that I was already making a transition to using my own domain using aliases through eforw.com
Or I guess just self host an email server
That actually doesn't work. Most large email providers will put you into the spam folder unless you are a well known server. Microsoft doesn't even bother with that and outright throws the emails away entirely. Plus, most ISPs block sending emails from residential IPs and cloud providers block sending them from cloud.
It is not that bad. I have been running my own mail server for 20 years and i generally don't have more problems with it than users of 'big and known' mail server do (it is not like GMail is perfect). And when there are problems I am usually able to tell what happened.
But this does not mean I would recommend self-hosting mail server to everybody. I am an expert, have been doing this professionaly for years. And it is an ongoing fight. It is not like I set it up in 2000 and it has been working since then without changes or incidents.
I was doing it for a while and it usually worked, but the thing is you need email to always work. I've since moved to paying Migadu to host my email.
Do you send mail directly from your server, or do you use some intermediary?
I will admit I did not try it myself but I was under the impression it was pretty bad with the spam filters.
I send mail directly. I have a public IP address. I had to remove it (a few times) from a list of 'dynamically residential address space'. I have configured the server carefully and implemented SPF, DKIM and DMARC. I have proper revDNS records. Currently my mail doesn't seem to be considered SPAM by Google or others more often than other mails.
When filters consider some mail spam there usually is a reason. The trick is to find the reason and understand how to mitigate it. Some anti-spam measures are not fair (like blanket blocking whole countries or ISPs), but I was lucky enough not to be bothered by those.
Thanks for the info. Now I may have to try it.
That's actually a lot more effort than most self hosting tasks. And it's an ongoing effort at that.
Personally I signed up for web hosting at the same company where my VPS is hoted, hetzner. The cheapest tier web hosting costs a couple of euros a month and gives you multiple inboxes on your custom domain, whereas proton and gmail wanted something like 6 or 7 euros per inbox per month
Tbh I think proton is solid. What the CEO said is just stating a fact of the situation 10 years ago and linking it to now. I don't believe that's right but he posted the message 4th of December which (if I'm not mistaken) was before it was clear all the tech CEOs were sucking his dick like we saw around his in inauguration.
I'd still recommend it, the other stuff the CEO says on twitter is all very logical and positive for privacy and against big tech. Unfortunately someone says something that is remotely questionable (not like this guy has outright praised Trump far as I can tell) and sudetly Proton is a dead service not considering all the good they have done and will (probably) continue to do
I'll be as weird as I want. My trust in them has been eroded and that is a major concern to me when picking a company to keep my data private. In the future consider staying out of the conversation if you have nothing of value to add.
Why do you feel stupid? None of this could have been predicted. If you switched to any other privacy focused provider it might as well have been them this was about. You did a logical thing at the time, as many others here did. I don't see how any of this isn't obvious.
I see how moving out of the Google ecosystem could be a pain, but moving out of proton probably shouldn't be that big of a deal?
Switching to another services for calendar, storage, or VPN should be simple. I kind of see how going to another email provider and not wanting to lose old conversations could be a pain though. In fact, that pain is what largely made me try to avoid using email for communicating with people in my life.
Either way, much less of a pain than buying a semi-luxury car only to see it lose basically all of its value because Elon is a nazi.
I understand the concern but it's not like the CEO is sieg heiling... He is stating how things used to be and his hope that Trump will continue that trend. He posted 4th of December which was far before Trump got all his big tech chronies to sit Infront of US allies at his inauguration
Check out the comment on this post by pulsewidth, it provides some interesting perspective on this.
Rescinded! Thanks for the context folks
Mmmhm, Republicans are more likely to tackle Big Tech issues by funding them with a cold hard 500 billion smackaroos for AI research, right? /s
Gimme a fuckin' break. D being trash doesn't excuse this blatant endorsement of R. Never entertain the whims of the far right, no matter how sweetly they sing to you. History has taught us better.
Can't really argue with any of that
No, make sure you read the top response to that comment. Pulsewidth omitted the original post by the CEO. Not only that, this was Pulsewidth's first post. Not concrete proof of astroturfing, but it's pretty sus
Swiss company says "Nazi's aren't so bad."
The more things change the more they stay the same.
When they say they're "neutral" lets not forget what "neutral" meant during World War II. It meant making a fucking shitload of money at the expense of the rest of Europe.
Also, the geography of Switzerland is how they were able to convince Germany to not invade. A few US Nukes dropped from the sky make their geography a moot fucking point this time around.
That escalated quickly
You should open an history book or at least a good one.
Geography didn't do anything. Switzerland would collapse in a day and many there were not against Nazi.
Nazi didn't invade because they needed Switzerland to finance their regime. It was an economical decision.
Myth about WWII are legion like Austria being a victim (Austria was actually happy to be part of the Reich).
Yep, I moved to tuta the day Andy decided to out himself as a MAGA dipshit. The only way I’d go back is if he resigns or gets forced out. At the absolute minimum Andy Yen has shown extremely poor judgement in claiming Republicans are the party concerned with people’s digital rights. That tells me he fundamentally does not know what he’s talking about, and I do not trust Proton under his leadership anymore.
As a side note, If anyone’s looking for a VPN alternative, I highly recommend Mullvad.
What are your thoughts on Tuta so far?
If your goal is basic mail, with standard features, Tuta is great. The free option is more than enough for an anonymous email.
If you want to pay a little you can move your domain over and get a bunch more features.
If you appreciate a simple interface, Tuta will be perfect. They have apps for desktops and phones as well as web.
I appreciate the response!
It seems like a good alternative but I honestly haven’t used it enough over the last two weeks to feel comfortable recommending it to people yet. Sorry I can’t be more helpful, but there’s a free tier so there’s no downside in giving Tuta a shot for a bit.
Thank you for the response. I’ll probably give it a try since my needs are simple
Been running my own domain from Tuta for about a year now. Had no issues so far.
Commenting so I can come back to this because hell if I'm going to remember to check it if I just save the comment.
Thank you for your assistance on the matter.
Been using the free tier of Tuta for years now with zero issues. The only thing is they delete your account after 6 months of not logging in (the timer resets every time you log in). Pretty sure that only applies to the free tier, though.
Awesome. Thanks for the insight!
Same. It's little more difficult to say goodbye to simplelogin when my partner and I have like 150+ aliases and the subdomain use is SO convenient. Trying to eventually move the family to Addy.IO
I just signed up for the cheapest paid Addy plan and so far I'm very impressed, especially since it seems to be a one-man show. The docs are good which has been a huge help, and the user dashboard website is easy to grok.
What are the political alignments of the Tuta CEO?
He didn't say that though, he thinks Republicans are the party more likely to fight for "small tech" against big tech in the antitrust space. You can still consider this bad judgment but it's purely an opinion that he motivated from his point of view with a few data points.
Digital rights are an indirect benefit that may derive for breaking big tech monopolies, but nothing was mentioned.
Edit: for those downvoting, this is factual. Just go check the tweet and the reddit comments he did. If you want to be pissed at someone at least choose what that person did or said.
The sort of Swiss neutrality that doesn't care whose teeth the gold is from.
Reason n1 why I never use Swiss services.
Wow. There's a whole lot of people here reacting to the headline, and not actually reading the story. That's important, because the journalist's headline is (shocker) a huge overstatement.
I was concerned as I'm a Proton user and have been for years, and hard left politically, and despise Trump. But maybe lets just read it before reacting?
Here's what the CEO posted on Xitter:
10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned.
Yep. That's a bad look. Doesn't make a lot of sense either because the Republicans are very much the party of big business and corporate handouts and deregulation in oil, gas, energy, mining, manufacture, industrial farming etc.
Then here's what Proton's team said on Reddit as an explanation and expansion of the CEO's post (and then later deleted):
Here is our official response, also available on the Mastodon post in the screenshot:
Corporate capture of Dems is real. In 2022, we campaigned extensively in the US for anti-trust legislation.
Two bills were ready, with bipartisan support. Chuck Schumer (who coincidentally has two daughters working as big tech lobbyists) refused to bring the bills for a vote.
At a 2024 event covering antitrust remedies, out of all the invited senators, just a single one showed up - JD Vance.
By working on the front lines of many policy issues, we have seen the shift between Dems and Republicans over the past decade first hand.
Dems had a choice between the progressive wing (Bernie Sanders, etc), versus corporate Dems, but in the end money won and constituents lost.
Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.
First off, I feel like I've read from hundreds of Lemmy users total agreement that the Democratic party is captured by corporate interests, so I really doubt any disagreement with that section of Proton's post. My reaction to the remainder is that it's not at all praise for the Republican party, just the factual statement of the sad reality that Republicans with their very hard-on-Silicon-Valley rhetoric are more likely to actually reign in the big tech companies than the Democratic party - and Proton is in a good position to have seen this first hand. Zero of the statement praises Trump or praises Republicans, and there is in fact lament that the Democrats didn't stick harder with their left-wing candidates, even highlighting Bernie. I can see why they deleted it though, it's office chatter than never should have left the cubicle.
TL;DR: storm in a teacup, I'll be keeping my Proton mail account.
p.s. yes this is my first Lemmy post. I'm a longtime lurker though. I felt strongly enough about this to make an account to post, as nobody seemed to be actually posting the content of the article - just reacting. Edit: typos & formatting of the quote.
If by reigning in big tech you mean a cartel style system where companies need to provide funds to Trump to continue existing, sure. But there is no chance that the Republicans will reign in big tech : they are big tech.
You are leaving out the part where Andy Yen said that the tables have turned and the Republicans are now the party of the small people.
Andy Yen's statement is downright pathetic and misleading. People are right to stir up shit because that's the only thing corpos understand.
This isn't a storm in a tea cup, this is the CEO of a company telling us who he really is and people choosing to tell him to get fucked.
Your post reeks of astroturfing.
the Republicans are now the party of the small people
He didn't. He clearly meant small tech in that context, opposed to big tech\monopolies. Not only this is the only interpretation that makes sense, but he said this himself in a clarifying (personal) reddit comment.
Stop bootlicking
From Andy Yen directly:
"[...]10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today, the tables have completely turned."
There is no place for interpretation here, the message is clear. If he wants to back pedal because he got slinged shit, so be it, but it doesn't detract from the fact that he said that the Republicans are now the party of the small guys.
Stop spreading misinformation
I will quote his own words:
Unfortunately that was misinterpreted. If you go back to the original tweet in question, it is clear from the context that that is about "little tech" vs "big tech
I know we are in the internet in 2025, and nobody has the right to clarify their opinion anymore, one strike and you are out, but still.
To me it was obvious from the context to be honest, without even needing his own explanation (that you call backpedaling because good faith is never assumed). But then again, I was not looking for reasons to be outraged.
It's hilarious though that reporting the authors own thoughts you call misinformation. Instead drawing your own conclusions that are explicitly denied by that person is supposedly objective. If there are no more rules of logic then everything goes.
Also this is not bootlicking, it's just a timid defense of rationality in the face of people building castles in the air.
Yeah because cozying up buddy buddy with Trump is a castle in the air.
It's not like the guy was cooked on the spot and spouted an incohenrent sentence.
The guy took the time to tag Donald Trump to show him how he's not like the other girls , wrote out his message and thought that this was good enough to press send.
There is a lot of deliberate actions that leads to this and takebacksies are a lot more difficult to justify.
In that case, there is a little space for interpretation and Andy Yen is clearly in damage control.
It is not little joe from Arkansas owning a potato farm tweeting that shit, it's the CEO of a supposedly "neutral" company, that deals in privacy, tagging his buddy Trump. Shit like that can't get a pass.
Lucky for him, there are enlightened people like you that loves the smell of fresh polish directly from the boot.
Oh no, he tagged trump (did he? Or did he reply to the tweet in which trump announced the antitrust pick?). This 1 second action changes everything. I am glad we have already moved the goalpost. Why tagging trump would change the context of his message it's really a mystery to me.
Look, for me it's simple. He has expressed himself in a way that was easy to misinterpret. He clarified his thoughts, I judge him for his thoughts.
You want to judge him for what you think he meant? By no means, go ahead. Just don't pretend it's a fact, because it's literally an opinion. A legitimate one, but still an opinion. The fact is that he said something and clarified that he meant something. Whether he is sincere or not is an opinion, but it doesn't change the fact.
For the rest I don't care to convince you or anybody else, I don't care of Andy Yen either. What I do care is people damaging one of the very few tech companies out there that are positive exceptions to a shitty industry. I think this is way worse than a tweet - even if it praised republicans in a general sense.
Besides this, I also hate this aesthetic of purity. MacCartysm in modern sauce.
He has expressed himself in a way that was easy to misinterpret
Absolutely not. There wasn't a nuance hard to grasp in Andy Yen's message. It is a pretty straightforward message.
Look if you want to continue using the service, by all means do, but stop acting like other people telling Proton and Andy Yen to get fucked that they are exaggerating.
Corporations are fucking us over and being outright evil, and when one of their CEO comes out and spout absolute dogshit takes, people like you come out of the woodwork to tell people that it's fine and people are overreacting. You gain nothing from sucking up to millionaire CEOs that don't give two shit about you.
What's the saying, "When someone shows you who they are, trust them the first time"?
Andy Yen showed us who he was and lots of people told him to get fucked.
I disagree. I for sure will keep using the service, this has nothing to do with it.
I genuinely can't see any issue with his statements, I read them in context and - while I don't have an opinion on the subject - I think they are totally reasonable personal opinions.
Also lumping together "tech CEOs" is another (in my opinion) completely wrong generalization.
- proton is a company with a healthy business model that doesn't harm users
- the CEO decided to give control of the company to a nonprofit to ensure the values will be followed with no pressure.
- the company is not a social media nor a company that controls what you can see, which is a big difference because alignment with one or other political view can have a huge impact in those cases (which is why zuck alignment is a much much bigger deal than Andy Yen supposed alignment).
- the company is not american, it's not part of big tech.
So yeah, I disagree even with this part of your interpretation of the situation.
I don't think there is any way to find a common ground. Personally I find your interpretation really forced and therefore exaggerated. Context, track record and most importantly the words of this guy do not seem to point out at all to a "mask off situation" in my opinion.
Edit: I really dislike meta-comments. I am commenting based on what interests me, whether other people do other stuff is not something I can do anything about. Please refrain to use the "people like you..." type of statements. You have no idea who I am or what I think besides this conversation.
Then by all means, continue using Proton. But if you can't understand why people are pissed about what Andy Yen, then there is nothing more to say.
The context and the message are pretty simple and clear and you try to make it nuanced for whatever reason. The guy sucked it up to Trump and people told him to get fucked.
CEO all over the world have been fucking people over for a dollar more and it is not hard to see why Andy Yen's message was received as it was.
My interpretation is reading the tweet from Andy Yen as it was written. It wasn't a nuanced position, it wasn't a long text with many points and the context is pretty straightforward. But you try to make it seems like it was an intricate and nuanced position.
The post on Reddit following the backlash is simple damage control 101 as we see every week when a CEO does a dumb thing.
But you try to make it seems like it was an intricate and nuanced position.
No, I integrate it with the thoughts he expressed. He didn't back down from his opinion (on reddit), he simply elaborated more. Quite common for a tweet that due to the idiotic limitation on characters is very easy to write in ways that don't fully express what you want to say.
I understand why some people are pissed. But some people see politics in the same way football fans see the sport. So even a tiny, indirect praise for an action that Trump does that might be actually positive (even for the wrong reason) is seen as a capital sin, because you can't be nuanced, you can't have specific opinions, either you are against or you are a supporter, like in football. And I fully, wholeheartedly, disagree with this attitude, at least for external observers (in this case, non US citizens), and especially once the elections are over (my judgment on this tweet would have been different if the election didn't happen yet).
Then here’s what Proton’s team said on Reddit
are you REALLY asking us to care about their PR damage control? They can literally cherry pick anything and say anything that's true and try to tie it back into their argument. What stands is his initial heartfelt public statement.
Zero of the statement praises Trump or praises Republicans
Great pick by
@realDonaldTrump
. 10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned. People forget that the current antitrust actions against Big Tech were started under the first Trump admin.
On Twitter (your know, the fascist communication network)
Tagging Trump directly (ohh look at me, I'm a good boy, give me contracts, invite me over)
your definition of Zero and mine are WILDLY different.
I feel like I’ve read from hundreds of Lemmy users total agreement that the Democratic party
Yes, the standard far right argument, no no they're both bad so this isn't bad.
of the sad reality that Republicans with their very hard-on-Silicon-Valley rhetoric are more likely to actually
There it is, you're not even going to sugar coat it, No no, the Republicans WHO ARE DISMANTLING DEI AND MEDIA FACT CHECKING
are going to
ctually reign in the big tech companies (more )than the Democratic party
GTFO, or at least come up with a half reasonable argument. That's serious not even worth the time to post on..
TL;DR: storm in a teacup, I’ll be keeping my Proton mail account.
If you're for real, (and I expect you're just more damage control), sounds like you're in a good place with like minded friends not worried at all about their safety.
p.s. yes this is my first Lemmy post.
Ahh so more damage control. Gotcha!
Their PR Department can do better
"Tagging Trump" because it was an answer (quote? Not sure what is the xitter term) to the tweer where Trump announced the pick for antitrust.
I do disagree with the person you are answering to, he did praise republicans. He did in a very narrow context and for specific (although opinable) reasons and he praised Trump for having made that specific pick.
Personally, I don't see what the big deal is.
Good first post
Good catch. Someone else here in the comments detected a hint of astroturfing... perhaps they were onto something
Edit: they opened a Lemmy acct to make that post, fwiw
Yep, a complete drama over nothing that got many people start a witch hunt. We already reached the point in which the guy is now a Nazi for having chosen a username with 88 in it, despite the fact that he is Taiwanese AND born in that year. Basically this is the well-meaning, internet vigilantes version of "bill gates injects 5g microchips with vaccines".
It's what happens when politics becomes faith.
Same for me. Was it kind of stupid what the CEO said? Yes, sure, but who the fuck does not do that from time to time?
I also hate this mentality, that if you agree with a decision a party / person made, then that means you agree with everything they stand for. Bitch, no!
Nicely said.
I had my doubts, I mailed Proton and they responded with a statement Yen his opinion isn't that of Proton, his comment while using the Proton account was a mistake which has been deleted and Proton changed to a foundation so no one, including a CEO like Yen, can change what Proton stands for.
Lololololololololol, bad look.
How about literally right wing propaganda
Due respect, your take is obtuse at best or you're a shill. The company, with current leadership in place, just cannot come back from the first statement, it illustrates a fundamental detachment from objective reality, to the point that you've lost any and all credibility, permanently.
In a business based on trust, this is just so clear. Poop
Thank you for the summary.
I knew interacting on Lemmy would be hard but... Common people! Downvoting for a "Thank You"? Reasonable doubt for pulsewidth?
Anyway, pulsewidth PMed me (and probably the other commenters under him) and I think he wanted to point out his good faith. He comes back on the praise point and admits his fault. He is a bit disappointed to have been straight up banned from news@lemmy.world .
Thank you for clarifying!
Nice try, fed.
Sir, this is Lemmy's. We don't allow reason here.
Reason is fine, doesn't mean everyone has to agree.
Look, reason my ass
I don’t get why anyone would stay on a site they thought reason wasn’t allowed at.
I’ve been frustrated several times at what I perceive as Lemmy bias that borders extremism, but on the whole it’s perfectly reasonable. Essentially every response to the parent comment agreed with it (I have yet to see someone disagree but perhaps I haven’t scrolled enough).
Lemmy isn’t big enough to feel you need to stay, as Reddit was when comments like this were plentiful.
It’s just an old lame internet joke.
My renewal of proton VPN is entirely dependent on who the ceo is when it's time for me to renew.
If fuckface is still there, I'll move on.
I'm fickle that way.
The number of places I can do business with is dropping drastically. I'm going to have to start making my own clothes in the near future.
I strongly recommend Mullvad. Exceptional performance, wireguard support and if you're really paranoid about anonymity you can literally send them money via post.
Same at this point. I just paid for the year in November.
Same plan here, bought Mail Plus for a year back in May. Although if they decide to enshittify everything before May I'll just bail early.
Yeah Proton already burned that bridge. "Politically Neutral" is no longer an option for them.
Good news for them, I’m “financially neutral”
Curious how so many people decided to ditch them and switch (vocally on Lemmy at least) and now they back pedal/clarify/whatever. Turns out we have power and using it works. Sorry not sorry. Edited: pedal instead of petal.
I am currently entrenched in Google. Slowly digging my way out so I could transfer to proton. I was probably within about a month maybe two or pulling the trigger. Zero chance that happens now. I don't like Google But I know what they're going to do. If I'm going to put the effort into move that critical data it's got to be with some place I can trust or I'm going to have to host it myself.
I'm researching the suggestions that people have made here: tuta, bitwarden, and mullvad.
yap I'm exactly on the same boat. I am testing the waters with proton to leave google... and then I see this... Can't find an alternative
Personally going with option 2 on an old PC, learning a lot about docker lol
Personally going with option 2 on an old PC, learning a lot about docker lol
Have to be careful in planning, a lot of ISP's block common ports needed to host dns/web/email
Getting DKIM and SPIF running locally has a bit of a learning curve.
The real pain is SMTP. Even if you set up everything perfectly, a lot of mail providers won't accept SMTP traffic from a home IP.
I think my longterm plan is to just keep a free gmail and try like hell to never use it.
Was looking into https://mailcow.email/
Haven't gone past the cursory look tho
At first glance, they check all the boxes for me.
Im so sorry. I tried not to, but the pull was to strong. Ignore me please...
But...
The saying is "back pedal", not "back petal". "Back pedal" as in trying to pedal backwards on a bike. Not "back petal" as in trying to pick flowers at the back of a bush, maybe? Trying to not lie down on a bed of roses? Unsure.
I think at this point in the USA it's very clear:
If you're "politically neutral", you're Republican.
I (and very many others) may not agree with the democrats, but since we only got two parties there, it's damage-control. And any sane person (that would like to have a non-dystopian future) votes against Trump...
they're Swiss
Yes, I know, I'm also not from the USA from a "neutral" state (Austria)...
Actually, especially if you're European, even the democrats are more right-leaning, i.e. comparable with the conservative parties here.
No one is actually politically neutral...
Neutrality only ever helps the aggressors. Hitlers Europe strategy was predicated on the Swiss doing nothing in response to the annexation of Austria and occupation of France.
Ok Trumper.
What did he mean by this
Imagine being so fucking brainwashed you believe Republicans are for "the little guy"
Okay, can someone help me, a tech illiterate, choose a new vpn, email provider, and password manager? I'd really prefer open source.
Vpn: Mullvad
Email: Tuta / tutanota
Password manager: Bitwarden or 1password
DEFINITELY do not go 1password. They took a massive VC investment and it is only a matter of time before they find a way to monetize it. Ignoring the fact they absolutely destroyed the app.
Bitwarden (you can host yourself with vaultwarden) or KeepassXC.
They took a massive VC investment and it is only a matter of time before they find a way to monetize it.
Can you explain this? I've been using the app for over 10 years and it's only gotten better. I haven't seen any evidence yet that it would suddenly change
Yes, in 2021 they took a $100M investment for a password manager. There's no planet on which they can justify that valuation without doing things to significantly increase their revenue. https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/27/1password-raises-100m-at-a-2b-valuation/
If you've used the product for 10 years like you claim, then you should know very well the many ways in which they've gotten worse. A couple obvious ones off the top of my head because I dropped them like a bad habit after I saw that VC "investment":
- they killed off any ability to purchase a permanent license key and forced people into subscriptions.
- the app has only improved? How are those nested tags working for you? A feature they had 10 years ago that they broke and never brought back.
- Performance on windows has continually gotten worse with every release for the last 8 years.
- they killed off any ability to purchase a permanent license key and forced people into subscriptions.
For I think $75 I used an excellent password manager for literally like 7 years on multiple platforms. As a software engineer I know that wasn't a small effort to make that happen. I think I got my money's worth... and out of every digital service I pay for, I find password management most critical and worth paying for
- the app has only improved? How are those nested tags working for you? A feature they had 10 years ago that they broke and never brought back.
Yes it certainly has gotten better on every platform. I don't know anything about nested tags. I don't even use non nested tags. But sure the whole company sucks because they removed a feature you liked. Features that get less use get removed, that's how products work...How has it improved? Well, it's weird you ask it all aggro like that but yeah, the search, UI, watchtower, browser extensions, ease of adding a new device, cli tool, and many tiny details have improved over the years.
- Performance on windows has continually gotten worse with every release for the last 8 years.
Funny you say that, the app went from barely usable on windows (which I rarely use) to almost as good as Mac. Then right when I switched to Linux they released a very good client on that platform, which was something I didn't even expect.
I am not quite sure what the motivation is implying I'm lying about how long I've used software or my experience with it, but I'm not. Be mad I guess.
It might get worse eventually but I disagree with your condescending assertions that it already is. Later.
Just moved to Proxmox. Vaultwarden as an LXC from helper-scripts is so easy.
Keepass is superior in my experience for passwords
They asked as a "tech illiterate" so I answered what I'd answer a tech illiterate person.
Keepass is good, but it's not tech illiterate friendly.
Oh I must have missed that sorry. Then yes it's a bit more difficult for the tech illiterate until they've been using it for a while
Thank you for respecting my literacy level! Lol
From a UX perspective I disagree. 1password wins at UX hands down but Bitwarden is a very close second and IMO has better privacy guarantees.
Security is useless if it's too difficult. Despite liking Bitwarden I am a 1Password subscriber and happy with my choice.
Really? I really dislike the UI of one password. I have to use it for work and it's a pain.
Never tried bit Warden could be good who knows not me that's for sure.
I don't think keepass is to difficult as to make it useless. I think it really depends on the platform there are some amazing Android apps that will autofill directly from your keyboard no real work necessary it recognizes everything. Now if you're on Windows... Yeah things start to fall off the wagon
VPN: Mullvad
Password manager: Bitwarden
(or if you are advanced user, KeePassXC + Syncthing for full control of your DB)
Email: I use Tuta, but I am honestly not that confident in it to recommend it, unlike the above.
Airvpn has port forward i believe.
I guess if you really really need port forwarding, you need to look at dodgy choices like that.
But unless you absolutely need port forwarding, stick to Mullvad. If it is only about torrents, consider getting a seedbox instead of or in addition to VPN.
I've had a good experience with AirVPN. I mean, I only use it for torrenting, but... Is there a good reason not to go with them for torrents?
I don't think there is particular problem with torrents. The problem is, when your VPN is active, you probably send all your other data through it. That is why dodgy seedbox is much less of an issue compared to dodgy VPN. A seedbox only has access to your torrents, a VPN probably has access to all of your communications.
While AirVPN claims no logging, with prices that cheap and already having to skirt the law to be able to provide port forwarding, it's not very credible. There is a good chance your data is being sold to someone and/or getting stolen since good security costs money.
Now there is no guarantee AirVPN has these issues or that Mullvad doesn't, but Mullvad goes to great lengths to build their trustworthines, e.g. 3d-party audits, not even having disks in their servers to ensure logs can't be stored, etc.
Oh, okay, I understand what you're saying now.
Yeah, I don't trust any of the VPN providers. There's just no evidence that they're trustworthy. I reach for Tor (or i2p sometimes).
I typically run all the torrenting stuff in a container, I've never actually used that VPN to browse. I just spin the container up and down when I want my bandwidth back.
Nice. Good to see you know what you are doing. I see no issue with this setup.
That said, most people will use VPNs for their whole system. So when you nominate AirVPN without additional context, that is what most people would use it for. Please take care in making clear what you recommend it for going forward :)
You might want to have a look at this site to study-up on available/recommended tools: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/ I use Mullvad VPN myself and am happy w/it. Ditto Bitwarden which works well and is cheap. I have a Tuta account but detest the UI and the fact that they don't support IMAP/SMTP clients, or PGP, so I do my own PGP encryption/decryption using Thunderbird Mail on desktop which has built-in support for it. Also I use Fastmail as a (paid) provider (no built in PGP but tons of other bells & whistles) though mailbox.org looks interesting and is well-priced. Finally I use addy.io for anonymous aliases/forwarding and they have good PGP support.
Bitwarden is a good password manager. Can't help with the rest.
Keepass with rsync / unison or a local git server works pretty well too.
I would highly recommend 1password
I already switched from Proton Mail to Tuta. No regrets
I really don't understand why smart people put their eggs in the proton basket.
Big (shady) money rule Switzerland. A Swiss server or company isn't safer or more trustworthy. Quite the opposite.
Excluding Switzerland from the equation, most in the US don't have + or - for Switzerland unless it's banking.
You can never trust any company to put your needs first. A good moral company has at least its founders, private funders, employees, and vendors to look after before they worry about your wants and needs.
Proton was kinda small. 500 employees for a communications company isn't bad.
Good start.
Proton made a name for itself. WE ARE PRIVACY FIRST and they mostly delivered on that in technical capabilities.
So far, so good.
Then they doxed someone's IP (french?) due to a remote government order.
Not great, but anyone would do that. There have to be limits. That said, they now clearly play ball with governments.
All the other providers would do the same. They're now on par with most, but less likely to sell all my data down the river. But my needs are to keep my secrets state secret level. (or so I think)
Then he crawls up Trumps ass.
Now, I'm doing nothing illegal. Nothing immoral. Nothing questionable by the previous administrations standards, but what happens If I start to protest? If I subscribe to democratic news sources, is this jackass going to train an AI on my and hand my name address and phone number to the neo facists running my country now?
We put our eggs wherever we think they can best be served conveniently and for the best price.
You can also choose to not put your eggs anywhere. You can secure your email but not sending any.
we were trying to choose price+convenience+security.
knock one of those legs out, it's not a table anymore.
This comment needs more upvotes inmho. This is exactly right. It’s how I followed this history myself. They built on Privacy first. Now there are red flags which were not clear before.
On the hacker news thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42837181
They discuss the topic and there is only a single reply from ProtonPrivacy, saying it’s miscommunication and blah blah.
It was not enough to dispel my sense of unease and concern and a single comment isn’t exactly ‘fighting to set the record straight’.
My 2¢.
They've done a lot of damage control. They were on Reddit too, They spin it that the pick he made was actually a reasonable pick, (1/50 even if they're right on this one and I don't think they are) but they don't address that he went on to Twitter and tagged Trump to try to gain favor.
One can't reach out to the man trying to dismantle democracy and say "hey buddy, you're doing great! Can I get in on some of that?" and still try to claim centrist.
I mean, "spin it", that's literally what the tweet said, in a response to a tweet (from trump, hence the tag) that announced that pick. He praised the pick and generalized on the fact that republicans are more likely than democrats to fight big tech. Good or wrong that's everything that was said and a perfectly legitimate opinion, even if I may disagree.
This also happened in December, not yesterday.
Thank you! I was also very confused how all these privacy-conscious people warned against big corporations, and then starting using a product.... By a big corporation. Just because they say they're privacy conscious and nice and safe and whatever doesn't mean it's true. I mean, they might be substantially better, but there's no proof of that. Every company always makes promises, at first. I guess people really like to believe in an underdog.
It's like if someone warned you against eating sweets because they're unhealthy, but then pulls out their own bag of sweets saying "oh no, these sweets are fine because the company that makes them promised they're healthy".
They're not big. 500 people at a communications company that develops their own stuff is relatively tiny.
Team looks great. 14 employees in 2020, I bet they're honestly serious about security
Either due to spectrum or other, I can’t interpret this without questioning if it’s sarcasm 😆
Straight up honest. I can't* argue with 14 people running a 2 million-user service and openly talking about the team on their page.
I like it more if that top tier was about $5, but the probably lack the scale to decrease cost.
edit: missed a 't
Aside from the political stuff, I'm also concerned about proton from a technological standpoint. You can't use a standard mail client with proton, you have to use their own. So, if they wanted to, they could push out a single malicious update which would render all of the end-to-end encryption stuff pointless. You could argue that using Thunderbird + GPG + Gmail is more secure/private.
You can't use a standard mail client with proton, you have to use their own.
Part of the reason is that the protocol that's uses for retrieving emails (IMAP) is pretty old and doesn't support end-to-end encryption. JMAP is supposed to be a modern replacement, but it's not widespread yet, and also intentionally doesn't support E2EE.
E2EE is hard, for example searching has to be done client side rather than having a search index on the server side (since the server is not able to decrypt the data to index it). I haven't tried Proton but I'm curious as to how they solve this... I guess they'd sync the entire mailbox and index it locally, like what (non-mobile) Thunderbird does.
I really question the value of E2EE for emails, though. Communication between servers (e.g. someone on Gmail sending an email to a Proton user) uses TLS but is not, and will likely never be, end-to-end encrypted. Emails you send to other providers are also not likely to be encrypted on the other provider's end.
You can if you use the bridge, which is not perfect but basically does the GPG encryption/decryption for you and exposes IMAP etc. (I think you can also do your own PGP encryption on top, not sure).
The supply chain issue you discuss is the same with any tool, with the exception that with proton you have an automated update system (I.e. every time the page loads js code), while with more traditional tooling you upgrade based on your choice (more or less). You are likely not checking the code in either case, but a malicious update could backdoor or bypass your encryption either way. Technically you can build the proton client yourself but anyway, this is just theoretical stuff, nobody does that.
Gmail + GPG is anyway worse, first of all from a UX perspective, where every device needs to be managed separately (GPG keys need to be available, you need to manage them, managing keys and keeping them secure is hard). Second, you will use GPG only with selected people of whom you have the key. With proton you will use it automatically for all Proton users at the very least and all proton users can use it with you automatically too.
Then there is the problem with metadata. They cannot be encrypted of course, and with gmail you are 100% sure they are using them to profile you and mine whatever data can be mined (e.g., who you talk to), while with proton you can reasonably be confident they don't.
Yep and if you look at some corrupt sports bosses like Sepp Blatter, Gianni Infantino and Rene Fasel, all are Swiss.
What's the alternative in your opinion? Google, or something else, and why?
Tuta has been good for me.
I just set up a bunch of purelymail addresses on a couple domains I own. I bought into proton for 2 years just a couple months ago. So I'll transition away slowly.
Host your own probably isnt a good idea unless youre on the dark webs. Probably not worth it.
If super privacy is a requirement. For normal work/junk mail, sure!
Anything + PGP + Tor + VPN.
There are countless mail servers one can use. I use a mail server hosted by Swedish ISP Bahnhof (which I trust). You can also self host. But then you need to be on the dark webs if you really care about privacy (I dont recommend this).
Or Delta Chat. Or Signal/Matrix/Session/Whatever. This is the preferred choise. EMail is legacy.
My stance on Proton is my stance on GrapheneOS: just because the creator is bad doesn't mean the software is bad. As long as the software is better compared to the alternatives then I seen no reason to stop using it.
Note: better can mean more privacy-friendly, cost-friendly, sustainable, nice to use, open, etc.
Oddly enough, I found the opposite to be true with companies like Nestle: the news of them killing children makes me dislike their chocolates.
I don't know much about the creator of GrapheneOS. What's the bad about them? I know they're a little dogmatic, as security/FOSS folk can sometimes be, but I've not heard anything beyond that.
This reddit thread has a nice summary
To save others a click
From [deleted]
Wow, this is big news. My feelings are very conflicted on this.
I think it is important to recognize both that:
- He has (and hopefully will continue to) contribute greatly and meaningfully to privacy, security, and user control/autonomy over our devices and our data greatly. More than most people ever will. The work he has done with Graphene and with Copperhead before that have benefited us all. He has made great technical contributions to Privacy on Android and is a talented developer and deserves recognition and respect for that, I'm certain it was not always easy and often very thankless job. If he chooses to leave the project, losing his experience, knowledge, and dedication is a huge loss.
- And at the same time, he often behaved in unacceptable ways, is an extremely socially abrasive and often acted in ways that were not stable nor constructive, and saw anyone that wasn't 100% deferential to him as an enemy out to get him and get grapheneOS. Many of us have personal experiences with this, and there are a couple well documented controversies as well. He did a lot for the project technically speaking and its existence is thanks mostly to him, but he also did a lot to push people away and alienate and bully people for the small things, perceived slights, or even technical disagreements, and overall contributed to a toxic and hostile culture in the sub community that harmed both the project and his own mental health. We all struggle in certain regards, and I truly and earnestly hope that he seeks the help he needs, or just takes a breather, and re-engages with the project in a more positive and healthy way. None of us are defined by just one aspect of ourselves, we are the sum of all parts, some good, some bad.
We should be able to acknowledge the good and the bad and not rush to paint a black and white picture in either extreme.
All I could tell from my recent search into FOSS Android OS's is that they shit on competetitors like crazy. It's pretty funny, albiet concerning, to see the official Reddit account bash on the competition.
My stance on Proton is my stance on GrapheneOS: just because the creator is bad doesn’t mean the software is bad. As long as the software is better compared to the alternatives then I seen no reason to stop using it.
I think the major difference is that for a software package or operating system like GrapheneOS, theoretically people can audit the code and verify that it is secure (of course in practice this is not something that 99% of people will ever do). So to some extent, you technically don't have to put a ton of trust into the GrapheneOS devs, especially with features like reproducible builds allowing you to verify that the software you're running is the same software as the repository.
For something like Proton where you're using a service someone else is running, you sort of have to trust the provider by default. You can't guarantee that they're not leaking information about you, since there's no way for you to tell what their servers are doing with your data. Accordingly, to some extent, if you don't trust the team behind the service, it isn't unreasonable to start doubting the service.
This is where audits come into place. Currently Proton only made the result of their security audit public, but you can also get an accounting firm to audit the privacy statement. Not endorsing them or anything, but PureVPN has been audited by iirc Deloitte on their privacy statement. I have verified this a couple year by then sharing the conclusion of the report from Deloitte with signature.
Proton should do something similar and yearly and could have a lot more faith in them. An accountant isn't going to risk his career for something like Proton's privacy statement. At least I would hope not
The Porton Foundation is also the majority owner of the company these days which makes it a bit harder to do whatever you wish with the company
I just cancelled my subscription and moved everything to Tuta. Tuta also seems to have a political stance much more aligned with my own: diversity, privacy oriented, and eco friendly.
gonna quickly post here, since I don't know quite where else would be good, but I noticed sometime last year that the website, https://standardnotes.com/(a product owned by proton) seems to use a massive amount of AI generated imagery.
also: I thought I was a fool for not getting lifetime visionary when I could, now a little less so :)
Standard Notes is owned by Proton? I didn't know it lol
I only found out since I used standard notes before the ownership thing, I suppose I'm gonna have to look for a syncing note taking service again.
Have you considered self hosting a syncing note taking service?
https://awesome-selfhosted.net/tags/note-taking--editors.html
it's worth some consideration I suppose. so long as it's not too resource intensive, it could be good to spin it up on my vps space
Provided you're not in need of fully fledged powerpoints, it would be fine to run them w/ little to no resources allocated to it. It just depends on your use-case, I suggest doing a backup of some sort and try out the various options. Unless you're setup allows you to freely try them all out in which case go nuts
I suppose I'll look for a decent service (maybe with spreadsheet support this time) and try to spin something up next week
Ah in that case you may want to look into paperless-ngx in the Document Management section:
https://awesome-selfhosted.net/tags/document-management.html
thanks! I'll have to set something up when im not so busy, useful resources though :)
I don't actually dislike ai imagery, I think it can produce interesting imagery. However, I must concede that is an excessive use of boilerplate bog-standard AI imagery.
I mostly agree, I think it's good for individuals and small businesses who just need some free copyright-free (though arguably this is debatable) graphics for things. It's not like the have the time/money to do it all themselves or get it commissioned.
But I don't like it when >=medium businesses use it to cut costs or when it's used for something that is directly meant to make money (like an advert or the core of a piece of content your consuming)
I use it a lot when I'm writing my notes (ie joplin/obsidian), I'll use flux or stable diffusion for a few iterations until I can create an image that Is consistent with what I'm writing.
It can be really convenient to be able to recognize an image as you're browsing through notes that are otherwise just filled with code or maybe a recount of the day.
I'm sure most consumers consider excessive use of generative AI to be in bad form. It certainly doesn't exude professionalism.
Already started migrating away. Canceled my paid plan.
Migrating to what? Seriously I'd like to know.
I could see mullvad for VPN. Not sure about mail/cal or password.
Password bitwarden
I cannot fathom being that stupid to believe that Republicans are anti-monoploy when they give huge corporation massive tax breaks and removes barriers for mega mergers
I was considering signing up, any alternatives?
For VPN there's mullvad, for email there's posteo, for storage I recommend signing up with disroot, for password storage I'd recommend KeePass or BitWarden/VaultWarden depending on your threat models and needs
The real pain is going to be having those services split up so much.
Proton was really convenient for packaging those in a really convenient way.
Guess there's a business opportunity here?
Some would say that is actually a pro, not a con. You don't want your entire digital life tied to the whims of a single corporation. Fragmentation trades a bit of inconvenience for a ton more privacy and control over your digital presence.
Yes, it's a pro in my opinion, don't want all my eggs in one basket so to speak. And of course the providers want you to do just that, to use them for everything - mail, vpn, storage, passwords, aliases, docs, digital wallets (yeah proton has one now too!) - because that makes it very difficult to leave their service if their CEO turns out to be a Nazi or if you just find a better offering.
For a bundle I'd probably say look at disroot.org
FYI, if anyone is interested in VPN for torrenting, apparently Mullvad's VPN is no longer good for that. Something to do with port forwarding. Out of the three that are recommended on https://www.privacyguides.org/en/vpn/(IVPN, Mullvad, Proton), only Proton apparently still supports that.
You don't need port-forwading for torrenting. It's more like a nice-to-have. Mullvad works fine without it, so don't let that stop you if you're on the fence.
Good to know, thanks! Is that true even for seeding?
Yeah, it's why I went with Proton over other options. :/
Tuta.com
I went with mailbox.org for mail, contacts, calendar. Keepass+syncthing for passwords. Still looking for VPN and file storage. I've been trying out nextcloud but there is a learning curve to host your own.
Mullvad is great for vpn.
I've tried Proton mail and couldn't get comfortable with their UI. Have been on Fastmail for two years now and it's been excellent.
I'm back with Fastmail too, after having quit to go with Proton a while back. I never ran into a single email where the recipient was encrypted, so I've come to see the whole encrypted email shtick as mostly marketing.
I tried proton and I couldn't get into using their service since it kept asking for personal information. I ended up not using it.
I really like Fastmail's web client - just the right mix of 1990s web and "reactive" eye-candy web. The phone client is OK as far as I can tell, don't use it much. The service itself has always been great and I've been a subscriber for 10-15 years, long before Proton existed.
I'm curious, too. It was the only decent free vpn.
Edit: Why downvote?
For me, the most-used Proton service after email is their calendar. What privacy-friendly calendar alternatives are there that you can recommend?
Both my new service candidates, mailbox.org and posteo, offer calendars. However, I’m in a holding pattern currently since they are German based. Fuckface is meddling in their elections now, which happen at the end of Feb. so I’m holding off to see how much ground the Afd gains.
Self-hosting Nextcloud with Calendar plugin...
Again privacy oriented companies that bend to demagogues and desperate profiteers cannot be trusted to handle sensitive data.
Switched from ProtonVPN to Mullvad and ProtonMail to Posteo. Wiped my ProtonDrive. I sleep pretty soundly at night.
Welp... Just paid them 80€ for a year and was in the process of migrating my gmail accounts to it. I guess I just lost 80€ and I'm migrating to somewhere else then...
You should be able to cancel and get a partial refund. Reach out and ask.
And also during that discussion with their support team, state your reason for leaving. That will get a lot more attention than the rest of us whinging online where we can easily be ignored.
I’m going to do this with all mail domains and account with them.
I don’t care how publicly they state their neutrality, when push comes to shove, that nazi sympathizer is going to side with the enemy and all of us who thought we had a safe haven are at risk. I’d rather cut my losses.
I’m also annoyed with how they pile so much into the service that for some of us, they’re extras which aren’t needed. I just want to simplify my email into Tuta now I think, and Mullvad for VPN. While having those together was convenient, it’s no different on my phone or pc to use two different apps for those.
I will very clearly state why I’m taking my business elsewhere.
I’m also annoyed with how they pile so much into the service that for some of us, they’re extras which aren’t needed.
I agree, it's ever-more loaded up with crap that I won't use. I'm a free plan user and rarely use the service. Between the never-ending nagging to upgrade that I get on the website, the discount deals that end up being "one year only then full price" and their intentional crippling of the service (# of aliases, domain support, etc) that basically requires you to subscribe to one of their expensive plans just to get the functionality of other competing providers, there's no way I'd ever give them money. And now there's the kissing the Orange Diaper Baby butt on top of all that. It's going to be fun giving all these Nazi tech bro services the boot. mailbox.org is looking pretty good, unless they turn out to be AfD bootlickers.
“one year only then full price”
You can say what you want, but this is mostly the norm with subscriptions. Not only that but legally they can often index the price as well. I haven't seen a single subscription in Europe that keeps Grandfathering prices with the exception of Old School Runescape where people claim it.I haven't verified it
But. We still have the possibility of saying: NO. NO. I will NOT pay you for this service as is.
In Proton’s case, they said they are pro privacy. They built off that back.
Now, if the guy in charge of the ship is known to be fond of icebergs.. time to find a new ship and a better captain.
It’s ANNOYING to move services. Agreed. It’s annoying to be having to fight so hard for basic privacy. Agreed.
If you don’t consider it and just comply: you’re potentially putting yourself at risk.
There is still no proof that they aren’t complying with their own privacy standerds. Just because the CEO is a dick doesn’t mean the entire company has to be a dick. If everything is properly arranged the CEO shouldn’t even be arranged to push things that go against the believes and statements of the company in the situation of an European company with the structure of Proton.
Currently I am unable to switch anyway due to time restrains and such, so I am just gonna see if we hear anything about the next audit regarding privacy.
Protrump Mail?
More theater do to this today:
Okay, I feel like the part that people are skipping over is the "cooperating with authorities on legal data requests" part. No. As a privacy company; You DO NOT save and store ANY information apart from what is crucially and imminently necessary to run your service. Anything beyond that is a blatant conflict of interests and should not be trusted. Corruption and data sharing that CAN happen, WILL happen when it comes to data security based companies. Full stop.
This is so disappointing. I've already migrated my passwords back to KeePass. Time to start hunting down other alternative. This is what I get for allowing myself the comfort of a centralized ecosystem.
I thought it was KeepAss
I cancelled my subscription and moved to tuta and mailbox.org in a couple of hours.
I don't consider this a nothingburger and I didn't like how it played out.
Dollar vote.
With this president flattery will get you everything. If you don't publicly praise him he will come for you and your users.
I am not saying that I love the endorsement, I do understand it.
I can see this for like Apple or Google, but…
Proton?
What beef could Trump and conservative influencers possibly have with it? And even if they did, it's not even an American company, it's Swiss.
But he has absolutely no reason to do so. That's like VPNs bowing to Trump.
The lack of risk, especially when the average Proton user is actively looking for privacy/security from tech companies who bow to government, makes this endorsement even more sinister than it should be.
He literally had to say nothing at all lol
Maaaan, what the fuck?!?
And today I got an email saying they're donating a million dollars to support non-profits for privacy and freedom. Timing, timing, timing.
Try using a protonmail.com or another concealing email service to order online. Many websites automatically reject transactions made with these email domains because they are associated with fraudulent behaviour.
Bought a cheap domain and updated the MX records. Problem solved.
I use simplelogin aliases for everything. I have never had any problem with any purchase. So, I understand this may happen, but claiming that "many websites" do is just plain misinformation.
So, try placing an online order with a trashmail.com or armylspy.com email address then tell us what happened.
There are maasive lists of bad and dodgy email domains that are used to help screen out dodgy orders. Some of these lists include "privacy" domains like Proton.
If a merchant is receiving an order from someone trying to hide their identity, wouldn't that merchant say "if I can't trust the email address, what else can't I trust about this customer?"
I don't need to try, I do, all the time. I use simplelogin aliases, as I said, which means I have passmail.net, simplelogin.com etc. emails. Trashmail is a disposable email address, which is already different. So far, I have never encountered a problem with a "privacy domain".
Again, I am not claiming that the problems don't exist, but that it's maybe few niche sites. And why wouldn't it be the case? Most orders require invoice data, which is personal data, or a shipping destination which is again personal. Why a seller would inherently care of the email address I use? Also anybody can create gmail accounts, so why proton would be different? It doesn't make any sense to me, and in fact I don't see this problem.
Can you maybe list a few sites for which proton addresses wouldn't work?
Sure hope their praises don't include giving your data to their heroes
They would hand over your liver for an atta-boy and a small government contract.
I thought hosting your own mail server was difficult cause you need to be trusted by the incumbet mail providers or get blocked by them.
Is this the story from a week or so ago re-reported or has he said something else?
It’s bad but still so much better than google.
The Swiss just can't help themselves
Oh ffs, I just made the move to Proton with some stuff a few months ago. I'm really keen on switching the address out on a load of accounts.
The thing is, he raises a lot of very accurate points about the Democratic party. Dems are captured by corporations; they're unwilling to do what the people want, and what is in the best interests of the people, because that hurts their flow of money. And yes, tech companies are kissing Trump's ass because he's volatile enough that he could very well regulate them out of business if they aren't sucking his dick. Additionally, prior to his MAGA phase, Vance does appear to have been much more populist in his approach to corporations; he was saying some of the right things, even if his social policies were trash.
A lot of the dems are truly "captured" by corps. But that's not what he said, he said the Republicans, who are 100% managed by corps, are better. That's insane. And don't start with Vance misinformation, he is owned and run by Peter Thiel.
he was saying some of the right things, even
Vance consistently talks about of both sides of his mouth. He will tell whomever he is talking to what they/their viewers want to hear.
His autobiography is verified fiction.
He's not this kinda getting it but confused figure, that's the costume he wears to try to gather votes from the left.
Vance really is such an obviously cynical piece of shit. Most politicians are of course, but he really takes the cake.
Most politicians are
I have higher expectations for those at the top. Lie to me, that's fine and expected, but be consistent in that lie.
Lololololololololol, just pure lies and bullshit, not one fact, literally the opposite of reality
Correction; the CEO posted a rather tone deaf message. while this is incredibly dumb, it should be little reason to burn the company to the ground
Having said that, people should start looking at email again how it was designed to be: have thousands of open providers instead of the tiny fee enormous ones we got now
It does make sense that a country located in Switzerland has this type of being "neutral", it's seems very similar to what the country was doing in WW1 and WW2.
Anyway, I'll be keeping my Proton account. It works pretty well and I have more faith in the laws in Switzerland than in the EU. Saying that I still have more faith in the EU than the rest of the world if it comes to privacy. If anything changes in the future I'll be moved in about an hour or two.
Exactly my point.
Considering Porton AG is owned by a foundation it is harder for the CEO to get rich of it so Ill just wait and see what happens
Interestingly, if I set my VPN location to Switzerland, I can watch YouTube videos without logging in. Everywhere in the US requires me to log in and be subjected to advertisements first.
Thank you for sharing this
What would be a good alternative? I refuse to support this. Thankfully, I have my own domain, so anything where I can use it would be great, and moving shouldn't be that hard. Bonus points if I can use wildcards, or at least have a few emails, like spam@mydomain and other.
Oh, and it has to support "+" emails, such as mail+whatever@mydomain.com
Yeah I definitively know which service is not getting my donations or subs this year. I'll continue using their free service for a while until I can migrate most stuff. After all it's all their cost. If they want to be nazis, the least I'll be is a load to them.
You gotta kowtow to America when Trump is in charge, its the nature of doing business.
Any good alternatives for ProtonVPN when visiting China? ProtonShield looks pretty promising and with 10 devices for 9,99€ a month my whole family (8 people) would get it for our trip