Germany (I think)
Politically leftist
Very nice people
User experience 8, works fine and people put a lot of effort in
It's free, but you need an invite code

Sigh.

Goddammit. I'm so fucking tired.

This is how they win.
- Like zombies, slow and steady, dumb and hungry
Be tired with Tuta!
Am I the only that don't see this the same way as the rest? I am in way way endorsing or supporting MAGA, but they did take action against big tech (though for reasons of retribution) and I see Proton only acknowledging a good person being designated to lead the next antitrust efforts, apparently with a good track record.

Proton also acknowledges Lina Kahn who has done a great job, nominated under Joe Biden.

Ultimately, I feel like from a perspective of Proton, any win against Big Tech, is a good win, and I can't disagree.

There is a longer discussion to be had around how the dems were supported by oligarchs and I think that's what Proton is referring to, they decided to turn a blind eye under the Obama administration for instance. Bernie Sanders goes to lengths about this in this interview, illuminating: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzkgWDCucNY

So all in all, maga sucks, new pick probably good, and in my view, proton not actually endorsing maga/trump but just acknowledging a good pick.

Did I miss something?
- The main part of the message that pissed me off was the idea that GOP sides with the “little guy”. First, it’s demonstrably false. Second, he is a tech CEO. He wouldn’t recognise a little guy before his security crew has time to forcibly remove him.

Truly unhinged that they decided to come out on this. Fellas, you are fucking Swiss why throw yourself under the bus for the US election

Because terrible people literally can't help themselves. Wait for people to show you who they truly are, they will...

Wow!

Of all companies, this is one I didn't expect.

Damn.

the good news is this is a lesson to never trust any entity whose role in the world is to accumulate capital
- What's insane is that didn't Proton just recently announce they were converting to a non-profit?
  
  Yes, they did: https://proton.me/blog/proton-non-profit-foundation
- There is absolutely no way to verify any of Proton's privacy claims. Why should I trust one for profit company over another?
Why would this be unexpected?

Proton already handed over the IP of a climate protester to authorities several years ago, while boasting that they had a no log policy.

https://therecord.media/protonmail-forced-to-collect-an-activists-ip-address-in-police-investigation

Every time, in the past few years, that I bring this up, everyone just acts like I'm setting an impossible standard and no alternative exists.

Proton has been shady for years.
- From reading that article it looks like they were only using and able to log the IP address when the person logged in to their protonmail account specifically - not VPN.
  
  They even state that VPNs can not be forced to log under the same legal order and are treated differently so in this case it seems the activists were not using the VPN while accessing their emails.
  
  Although I dont agree with even the logging of the email IP, it appears like the user shot themselves in the foot like that other case where someone used their real name in the username and that obviosly has to be logged in some way.
- I didn't know about this. I haven't followed Proton closely for a while, but this...wow. Kinda lousy.
- I wish I had heard of this earlier, that combined with these new political statements is enough for me to find something else.

Phew! For a moment I thought you were talking about the steam compatibility thingy.

If that proton goes nazi, I am going straight to the farm
- When I was a kid, my parents took our family dog to the farm. If you see him, let him know he's a good boy!
I thought they were talking about the elementary particle—I was afraid we’d have to find some other way of manifesting our physical existence.
- Aww man! AGAIN?!?

Misinformation. OP is advocating that you shoot yourself in the foot.

The CEO said something silly on Twitter which revealed either that (a) he shares an exceedingly banal opinion with literally half of America or (b) he's not above a bit of preemptive sycophancy to advance his (positive) anti-trust agenda.

There's nothing particularly scandalous in the offending tweet:

Implying that the Democrats are now "the party of big business" is arguably true (and very boring)
Implying that the Republicans now "stand for the little guys" is dumb but also arguably true, unfortunately - the working classes swung to Trump in the recent election while the Democrats are fast becoming a party of high-earning elites (which is why they lost)
Saying that the antitrust actions began under Trump I is, well, true

Proton is not owned Zuck-like by its CEO. It's controlled by a foundation with other stakeholders on the board, including the inventor of the Web himself. In its niche it is still by far the best option. Ditching it for a nebulous non-existent alternative because the CEO expressed a dumb and extremely commonplace opinion is just silly and self-defeating.

PS: to be clear, OP is peddling misinformation because it's not true that "Proton took the stance" of anything. It's the personal opinion of the CEO that's at issue. It's a major distinction. I find it disappointing that people interested in privacy would have such little respect for a private individual's right to have their own thoughts.

PPS: to be extra clear, my comments are about the post above, not stuff that people are reading elsewhere. But the substance stands. See discussion for detail.

I largely agree with what you’re saying, except the official Proton Mastadon account doubled down on that personal opinion. That seems pretty clear that it’s endorsed not just by that one individual on the board.
- Link to Mastodon thread: https://mastodon.social/@protonprivacy/113833073219145503
- Significant if true. But still. Proton has a great product and a lot of stored-up goodwill. I think the reasonable thing to do here is to wait and see, and to judge them on actions before words.
I love how you’re claiming misinformation while posting misinformation. It’s not the CEO, it’s a board member. That said, the company also officially posted these ideas on their Bluesky account.

This isn’t a “CEO” expressing a belief, it’s the board, and now the official company line.

I’m not disagreeing with their post particularly on corporate dems, but this is a company and not a persons sole belief.

Also, if dems are the party of big business then why are all these big businesses donating to Trump? Does that just mean republicans are the party of even bigger business?
- Their bullet points are spin-doctoring.
  
  Also the comment got a few dozen upvotes almost immediately. Suspicious.
- Both parties are the big business parties. Big business is “donating” (bribing) Trump now like all big businesses have done to both parties since citizens united passed.
- This is all over the place.
  
  My comment concerns the post above. OP cites a tweet and states a falsehood about it. No, "Proton" did not "take the stance" of anything in that tweet. Yes, Andy Yen is the CEO. Yes, that tweet is in his name and not in the name of Proton. I was not responding to other things that you've seen elsewhere.
  
  Now, as for those other things elsewhere, I stick by the substance of my point. Sure, it's more of a problem that dumb things are being said in the name of Proton rather than just it's CEO. But look at the detail of those things. There is nothing scandalous. People are getting their underwear in a twist about extremely common opinions being expressed on Twitter. Personally I don't care if a CEO voted a different way to me, or even if a whole board did. This should not have any bearing on Proton's product or what makes it better than others. This is just another typically American culture-war drama. It's boring.
It isn't misinformation.

Someone like this board member being a traitor to his species isn't covered by "opinion". No normalizing nazis. It's such a low bar. He couldn't clear it.

He blasted his treachery over the public airwaves. His privacy isn't being violated.

This whole comment feels like an exercise in using all the best words to miss the point. We know, as does this probably-lying board member, that Republicans are only going to go more authoritarian, and the only reason they would pretend to care about big tech abuses is to grab the steering wheel from them to commit far worse abuses. No company that gets into bed with traitors is going to become the new center of my digital life.

Tuta for email, syncthing for photos bc I'm not self-hosting, mullvad for VPN.
- You have to self host if you use synching
- Traitor to his species
  
  ??? Lol? Imagine having an opinion in 2025
- Sorry but I won't participate in this juvenile trivializing of the word "Nazi". Yes, I know that's become almost a meaningless slur at this point, but personally I just will not take seriously anybody who throws it around like this. Perhaps because I'm European. Perhaps because I studied history. It's not serious.
Implying that the Republicans now "stand for the little guys" is dumb but also arguably true

No, no it isn't arguably true. It's just flat out incorrect. 100% of people could vote for him or others like him out of fear of disappearing in the night if they don't. That doesn't make him or the party "for the little guy".

It doesn't matter that 51% of the country votes for the Republicans. The party has consistently shit all over "the little guy" and made him eat it for over 40 years, telling him he's eating shit and then said only the party can fix it.

All the while the party's been giving tax money to their friends and saying "don't worry, we're here now. you can feed him as much shit as you want. we'll find someone cleaning up shit and make the "little guy" think that person was making it instead. that way when you get caught doing it no one will believe it"
Implying that the Democrats are now "the party of big business" is arguably true (and very boring)

While true in some scenarios, in anti-trust Lina khan's ftc has done significantly more than trump ever did. Biden keeping her over the protest of countless business execs and daily articles in the wall street journal on how she's ruining America shows some commitment to prosecuting big tech.

Meanwhile, trump's anti-trust moves were mostly based off petty issues he had with the ceos or the platforms having a "liberal bias". Now that every big tech ceo has fallen in line and given him $1 million for his inauguration I doubt we'll see much movement on that front.
- Completely agree on all that.
- From what I remember pre-election news was saying wealthy dems/dem donors wanted Biden (and Kamala in some report I saw) gone primarily because they didn’t like what Lina Khan was doing. There were also questions about whether Kamala would continue to support Lina Khan after receiving donations from wealthy donors. JD Vance praised her work and it sounds like the Trump nomination is going to continue similarly.
  
  I don’t like Trump at all and I know how petty and sycophantic he can be, but this may end up being one case where I end up preferring the result on this one specific issue over what we may have had if the dems had won without Kamala or if she flipped and agreed to drop Khan. I won’t really know how I feel about this selection until I see the result.
  
  (Quick search turned these examples up that I’ve only skimmed, but I need to log off: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/24/kamala-harris-lina-khan-00185345 https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/kamala-harris-rich-donors-lina-khan/)
OP is peddling misinformation because it's not true that "Proton took the stance" of anything.

Except Proton's official Mastodon account made another post afterwords doubling down on the CEO's comments. They ended up taking down the post due to getting a ton of backlash
- Their official reddit account also tripled down by saying "here is our official response" (and then quoting the Mastodon post). So they've explicitly made it the company's view - not just the CEO's view.
As a non-American I don't normally care about US politics or what "literally half of America" think but I am concerned with far-right politics spilling over in to my country. So I would naturally want to resist organisations aligning themselves with those politics, whether they are scandalous to Americans or not.
The privacy community is always told to verify, not trust. The board of Proton have decided to publicly state something that leads a lot of people to be unable to trust them - namely supporting the choices of an extreme right wing leader who has repeatedly demonstrated the foolishness of trusting anything he says or does.

This CEO is totally free to have their own thoughts but its verging on the ridiculous to think that other people aren't going to have a negative reaction to them and seek alternatives. Its next to impossible to trust a company that express approval of Trump decisions because its impossible to trust Trump. And Proton going out of their way to publicly state their approval when they are not even a US org and would've lost nothing by simply not saying anything suggests a board that was keen to publicly express support for Trump. It inevitably makes people who are already on the receiving end of Trumpian hate legislation, or who soon will be, wonder what else Proton might be willing to do for Trump in the future.
Implying that the Republicans now “stand for the little guys” is dumb but also arguably true

How is it true exactly? Republicans do not care about the little guys in any way lol
OP is responding to a public post and rationalizing why it's a red line for them. How is that "disinformation"?
Not American, but there is this regarding the third point: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i1zjgn/comment/m7b1wib/

Any thoughts here?

To me this whole demonizing proton ceo thing seems a bit overblown. Sucking up is actually pathetic and funny
- If you've got an argument, make it.
Nothing that OP said is false, so we can’t characterize this post as “misinformation.” The CEO of Proton is, as a matter of empirical fact, dangerously delusional. The Republican Party is not interested in antitrust issues let alone protecting “the little guy.” They’re interested in corporate subservience, the paradigm of all fascist regimes. I’m not sure why you would feel comfortable with a service whose CEO is this childishly naive.
- He said that "Proton took a stance". Until confirmation to the contrary, that is patently false.
Did he defend the whole party? I thought he just said they picked someone who is going to so one good thing

Which is true.
I tend to agree. Don't blow this out of proportion. If you dig deep enough, you will not like the CEO of ANY company... so don't let some comments from the CEO of Proton get you worked up.
Nailed it, Americans get so offended and divided on these issues that they just throw reason and logic out the window
- You are extremely ignorant. We have people marching through the streets with police protection chanting ‘Jews will not replace us".
I find it disappointing that people interested in privacy would have such little respect for a private individual’s right to have their own thoughts.

Ding ding ding.

It seems the vast majority of people do NOT want to allow speech they don't like, no matter the consequences. That requires too much forward thinking. Excuse me while I watch history repeat itself...
- Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences. Nobody here is silencing speech, we are just exercising our right to free association by not doing business with Nazi sympathizers.
- Oh I want him to be allowed to speak his mind. I just don't want to give a Trumpet any money, and especially not after their annoucement of a crypto wallet and ventures into AI crap.
  
  Free speech doesn't mean I should spend my money there.
- I don't wanna give money to people who would hate me for who I am
  
  Then you don't really like free speech!
  
  Ok bud. I'm not gonna weigh in with my actual opinion on the matter being discussed, I just wanted to point out that you've taken a few too many steps with that assumption lol
- Yes I tend to share your analysis.

This may sound drastic but really I think the only move for Proton is fire Andy. They’re a non-profit, the board need to step in. He has single-handedly cost the company both current and potential customers by just not being smart enough to keep his mouth shut. This makes him an idiot, and an idiot as CEO is not a good look (see: anything musk)

I will continue to use Proton and their services, not because I support or endorse any political decisions from the CEO/board members (and I don't), but because they provide open source, secure, and private software that I love.

This is no different than arguing about using GrapheneOS based on the behavior of the maintainers.

Oh no... I use Graphene... what's the deal with the maintainers?
- This video seemed to have been the start of an anti-GrapheneOS movement. I won't get into details, because it's been explained to death, but it's here for your convenience.
  
  I use and love GrapheneOS as well.
Nope, they don't share their server code. Not cool.
Or... lemmy lol
If its open source, where's the fork? Someone can provide "electron". No, "quark"?

The CEO "apologized" this morning (after being duly chastised, I'm sure):

Hi all, last night, a post from last year from my personal X account suddenly became a topic of discussion here on Reddit. I want to share a few thoughts on this to provide clarity to the community on what is Proton's policy on politics going forward.

First, while the X post was not intended to be a political statement, I can understand how it can be interpreted as such, and it therefore should not have been made. While we will not prohibit all employees from expressing personal political opinions publicly, it is something I will personally avoid in the future. I lean left on some issues, and right on other issues, but it doesn't serve our mission to publicly debate this. It should be obvious, but I will say that it is a false equivalence to say that agreeing with Republicans on one specific issue (antitrust enforcement to protect small companies) is equal to endorsing the entire Republican party platform.

Second, officially Proton must always be politically neutral, and while we may share facts and analysis, our policy going forward will be to share no opinions of a political nature. The line between facts, analysis, and opinions can be blurry at times, but we will seek to better clarify this over time through your feedback and input.

The exception to these rules is on the topics of privacy, security, and freedom. These are necessarily political topics, where influencing public policy to defend these values, often requires engaging politically.

The operations of Proton have always reflected our neutrality. For example, recently we refused pressure to deplatform both Palestinian student groups and Zionist student groups, not because we necessarily agreed with their views, but because we believe more strongly in their right to have their own views.

It is also a legal guarantee under Swiss law, which explicitly prohibits us from assisting foreign governments or agencies, and allows us no discretion to show favoritism as Swiss law and Swiss courts have the final say.

The promise we make is that no matter your politics, you will always be welcome at Proton (subject of course to adherence to our terms and conditions). When it comes to defending your right to privacy, Proton will show no favoritism or bias, and will unconditionally defend it irrespective of the opinions you may hold.

This is because both Proton as a company, and Proton as a community, is highly diverse, with people that hold a wide range of opinions and perspectives. It's important that we not lose sight of nuance. Agreeing/disagreeing with somebody on one point, rarely means you agree/disagree with them on every other point.

I would like to believe that as a community there is more that unites us than divides us, and that privacy and freedom are universal values that we can all agree upon. This continues to be the mission of the non-profit Proton Foundation, and we will strive to carry it out as neutrally as possible.

Going forward, I will be posting via u/andy1011000. Thank you for your feedback and inputs so far, and we look forward to continuing the conversation.

Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i2nz9v/on_politics_and_proton_a_message_from_andy/

Am I being paranoid when I notice that the binary at the end of his username translates to 88?

Remember when businesses stayed the fuck out of politics so they didn't alienate their customers because they like money? Pepperidge Farms remembers.

Remember when businesses stayed the fuck out of politics

No.
Is "staying out of politics" even possible for a company?

I feel even just the creation of a company already has political repercussions (and I don't mean that as in them being necessarily bad).
Taking a neutral stance is also political;<br> Also when people say that "they don't like politics in X,Y&Z" they mean politics that they don't agree with
That's never been the case.

I own and operate https://port87.com/, and in no way am I even close to right wing. I don’t call myself a liberal, and get offended when people do, because I’m a leftist.

It’s not ready for business email yet, but it’ll work for your personal email.

This is cool but tbh having numbers in the domain makes it feel kinda sketchy especially for a business email, also i already wouldn’t use proton for business due to the worry of getting caught by spam filters so it would be much more difficult to use this, especially since its hard to know if you’ll be able to sustain the business for 5/10/15 years.

Im glad youre working on it though and ill keep an eye out on your progress!
- For business email, you would use your own domain name, so it wouldn’t be an @port87.com address.
  
  Yeah, unfortunately Google and Microsoft basically have the power to kill any smaller email provider this way just by claiming they’re “spammy”. It’s a duopoly and probably should be investigated under antitrust laws.
I didn't see in the "about" what jurisdiction (if any) you are incorporated in. I also don't see if there's any encryption at rest.

This is important to me because in the US, the government can go to court, get an order demanding a US email provider to put in a backdoor, and then get a gag order so the US company can't disclose it to users.

And with open-source code, I end up trusting to some extent that the server code matches what is on github, so making it open-source doesn't stop forced backdoors and gag orders if it's based in the US.

For someone whose threat model doesn't include the government (someone not LGBT+, not Latino, not trans, a political moderate with average viewpoints who won't be impacted regardless of who is in power), it's not the sort of thing that matters. But for others, it would help to include that information.
- It’s in California, and that’s where the data is stored. It’s not stored with end to end encryption, so I understand your worry, and unfortunately Port87 wouldn’t be a good choice for your needs if that’s not acceptable.
  
  In the future I might make the system work with locally hosted databases, so you would still use my SMTP servers, but everything else would be locally hosted. That’s probably a while in the future though. I have some priorities before exploring that option.
- I see they have a us patent somewhere, am guessing they are located in the us then ?
- I didn’t see in the “about” what jurisdiction (if any) you are incorporated in. I also don’t see if there’s any encryption at rest.
  
  You only get company names with "Inc." in the USA as far as I know?
This fucks. Joined your waitlist!
I like this organization method, feels very ADHD-friendly
- Yep! I have ADHD and it’s the only organization method that’s ever worked for me. I wrote an article about it:
  
  https://sciactive.com/2023/07/17/the-best-email-for-those-who-struggle-with-organization/
does it support custom domains?
- Not yet, but I’m working on them right now. I’m hoping to have that done in a month or two. I just finished the user management and access control part of it.
Do you have a calendar?
- Not yet, but that’s definitely planned.
Not sure if you know this but with Gmail (and I bet that almost with any other email service) you can approach this - instead of the '-' character you use a '+' and set custom filters and tags for each '+' you want. I've been doing this for ages with it - though as a third world person I can't afford privacy by paying a third party subscription nor setting a home server and running local services 24/7 by paying more electricity.
- Yeah, that does work, but then you have to manage all of the filters yourself, and some places don’t accept a + in an email.
  
  I wrote an article that talks about that here:
  
  https://sciactive.com/2023/07/17/the-best-email-for-those-who-struggle-with-organization/

"Proton? Why the fuck would he be mad at a WINE fork...?"
"... OH THE MAIL-"

If a car company in Germany complemented Hitler on his paintings, would it be still fine to buy their cars? And what if they were a really great car company and only mentioned how cool Hitler's paintings were and nothing else?

I sort of feel like if I am cool with Proton's statement, then I also am cool with trans people and Latino people and Gazan people being treated poorly, and I'm not actually cool with that.

It's unfortunate, because despite Proton not accepting XMR and logging IPs when they promised they wouldn't and doing other questionable practices, they have a lot of great services. But now, it's like if I'm using their services, I'm sort of spitting on the grave of every trans person who ended their life out of shame, spitting on the grave of every dead Gazan who simply didn't want to die, and being disrespectful to all the cool Latinos out there who have been degraded simply out of racism.

:-(

Unlike a car which is bought once and is mostly outside of vendor control once you have it, Proton mail is a service that requires continuous trust in the company since they offer a service. This means I no longer trust Proton as much, which makes me much less inclined to use their services.
- car which is bought once and is mostly outside of vendor control once you have it
  
  Well, cars in the 1940s at least. Don't buy a Tesla.
A car company complimenting Hitler's painting is nothing compared to making business deals with Hitler. Ford and GM still have subsidiaries that operated and built for Nazi Germany despite the US declaration of war in World War 2.

Things haven't really changed. Corporations will typically side with fascists when it comes to it.
- It’s all about profit, and right wing policies tend to facilitate that…for example reduced workers rights.
- So, donation supported open source is the way ?
I think it's a personal decision. As in, you might be cool with a car from that company or using proton's services, but that doesn't mean that everyone else ought to be cool with it too, because they need to make their own decision.

By being a customer of whatever company you are tacitly condoning their behavior.

Trump's terrible politics aside:

the Republican party is pushing legislation which requires you to identify yourself to view porn
you can get around this with a VPN
proton is a VPN (nonprofit, but still).

I'll be switching email providers when I can... I can't remember when my subscription ends.

Abandoning the Proton subscription now. How stupid and irresponsible. In fact, are running away from all your principles.

If they think Dollar Store Hitler is going to stand up for small businesses then they're about to have a rude awakening.

There are 2 kinds of companies:

Evil companies
Companies that are not evil YET.

What this means in this case is that only your own E-Mail server running on a Raspi in your own home can be considered private or secure in the long run. Unfortunately this is really really hard to do, which is the only reason i have not done it yet.
Personally i do not consider any E-Mail private, because E-Mail is not E2E-encrypted, and 99.9% of times one side of the conversation is going to be hosted on some shady companies servers.

Of course Proton delivers a great service, because they make an insecure protocol a little less insecure, and i personally use Proton mail. Unfortunately their closed-source nature makes it impossible to switch providers without abandoning their great software.

As for services like Drive, they can actually be hosted privately and securely on your own Raspi with stuff like NextCloud/OwnCloud.
For those that can't/don't want to self-host, i would recommend paying for a hoster that hosts FOSS software and contributes to it either with money or code. In that case you would probably loose E2E-encryption, but gain the ability to switch providers once your provider turns on you. In that case at least some of your money would continue to offer value to you by having improved the software you are still using.

There's also non profits...
There a two kinds of large companies. There are a lot of family-run bussineses who aren't gonna become evil. (Unless of course their bought-out or something)
I think the only thing you can trust is software architecture - things like E2E encryption, zero knowledge architecture, auditable code etc.
I only use Proton for Email and Calendar and self host everything else since I don't trust myself to run an email server properly.

Mullvad is supposed to be a safe and secure VPN.

Unfortunately not a mail or storage provider.
- If this wasn't enough of a wakeupcall to not put all the eggs in one basket then what is? Companies are literally doing this to lock you into their service so it's harder to switch since you then have to find X new services instead of just one.
  
  Better go with one that'd specialized for each service you need...
- Posteo, Mailbox.org, and Tuta are all good alternatives.
  
  EDIT: Mailbox.org will eventually recycle your address if you stop using their service. Something to be aware of.

OK I think I will move to Posteo. Great security, privacy focussed, servers in Germany, running with 100% renewable energy. Prices are ok, too. Ticks all boxes.

Check Mailbox.org
- Does that check the boxes they listed?
It's super simple and great for pricing its like 1 dollar a month worth it to tick all the positive boxes it does.
Also give PurelyMail a try.

Maybe not the contribution that you're looking for, but going to tell you this story regardless.

I am Swiss, and am a former Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA / EDA) employee. My colleagues and I had organized an evening on cybersecurity, where we showcase what Switzerland has to offer. I invited stakeholders such as:

Dreamlab (really cool company, should look them up if you don't know of them)
NCSC (Swiss National Cyber Security Center)
Some Swiss cyber regulator; and
Proton

Firstly, when speaking to a delegate of one of the above listed (don't feel comfortably sharing publicly which one), he ushered a statement; upon me saying I'm a huge Proton fan and subscribed to all services - "they are lying to your faces".

I was curious, so I spoke with the regulators and NCSC delegates, they said that Proton has been involved in a handful of leaks - some that were made public, some behind the scenes.

When I spoke to Andy, having told him that I grew up in Canada, I asked him what his plan was for North America. His response: "I will gladly take their money, but never open up shop there - too many national security departments that come knocking on the door".

Now I see that (on the Proton page), that they are looking for a few US based positions for Marketing and Growth - going against what we discussed a few years back. In all honesty, I still have a Plus subscription with them, but beginning to questions a lot more things regarding security and ethics at Proton. Guess I'll just self-host in the future. Trust no one but yourself with your personal data.

Very interesting, thanks! Did you ask what kind of leaks because technically they shouldn't be able to leak anything as they claim to have a zero knowledge policy?
- I genuinely don't remember the exact instances we were speaking about, but it happens from time to team. They released data from a French citizen to Swiss & French authorities in the past, and I'm sure this isn't the only case.
  
  Edit: found the link: https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/06/protonmail-logged-ip-address-of-french-activist-after-order-by-swiss-authorities/

Tuta.com is similar to Proton Mail + Calendar.

Location: Germany
Governance: Private GmbH (German corporation, similar to an American LLC)
Integrity/trustworthiness/transparency: Better than Proton IMHO. All their apps are open source and available on F-Droid. They encrypt email headers (unlike Proton, who are weaselly about this in their marketing materials).
User Experience: Ehhhh...6? I'm not in the best position to compare because I do not have a premium plan, so I am not able to examine features like inbox rules/filters. Much like Proton, it doesn't support full-text email search unless you have it cache your entire mailbox locally (either via the web site or app). They do not support POP or IMAP, but do offer their own desktop and mobile apps.
Pricing: €3/month for 20GB, €8/month for 500GB. https://tuta.com/pricing

Yep, I've been using Tuta for email for years now, just the free version.
No IMAP is a killer
Thank you!

Tweet is from early december. Why is it blowing up now?

I guess on the one hand people are anxious about Trumps inaugeration and on the other hand this is a great opportunity for competitors or otherwise opposed people to launch an astroturfing campaign off of it.

When looking at posts titled has gone "full MAGA" for saying they feel Trump is more likely to enact antitrust rules against big tech than Democrats who let them down the past years, is just absurd.

It is the same line of reasoning like claiming the WHO to have been a chinese asset because they supported some of Chinas anti-Covid measures.
Because it was just now retweeted by the founder of Privacy Guides.

I'm currently on Tuta, because I can't imagine Mail without a free tier. It's run out of Germany(EU). Its 3€ a month for the normal tier, free takes away most features. Like Proton, you need to use their (OSS)-Client, for encryption reasons. It's currently growing and I hope they don't go crazy anytime soon.

I was looking at Posteo, but I don't want my entire internet identity to be gone, if I ever can't pay for it.

Fair point
Nice thing about Posteo, and which is AFAIK unique to them now, is they will never delete your account even if you stop paying. If you cease payments, they will let you log in and continue to receive email, but you cannot send emails until you pay again.

The only way your account gets deleted is if you manually delete it yourself.

Proton used to say your account would never be deleted from inactivity if you'd made at least one payment for premium service, but that policy was walked back last year I believe.
Also, Posteo doesn't let you use custom domains.

PurelyMail is very cheap and it has unlimited custom domains.

I just got settled for fuck's sake

I don’t use proton, but I would be grateful if you could share a link on how Proton sided with fascists.

Also, I use Mullvad for VPN and I host my own email

They didn't exactly "side with fascists", but Andy Yen, one of the board members on the Non-Profit that owns Proton AG, has very bad takes on politics, and just has a right-wing "Libertarian" vibe.

https://x.com/andyyen/status/1864436449942110660 (https://archive.is/l1WYU)

https://x.com/andyyen/status/1812442643726537182 (https://archive.is/ADc8C)
- Huh, I wasn’t very concerned with your links… but I googled and found out Andy Yen is the founder. That’s alarming
- Libertarian and Republicans have nothing in common do not mix

I've said it in another thread: German users should consider posteo as a green, safe, and affordable (1€/M) alternative. https://posteo.de/de

I use and like posteo but their refusal to allow custom domain names, for in my opinion dubious reasons, should not go unmentioned.
Never used it. Is there a reason why you mention German users, in specific?
- No, anyone can use it, payed plans only though (1€ p month min)
- It's not limited to German users, but those might be especially inclined since it's a Berlin-based company 🙂

Uggghhh I just upped for two years. Fucking asshats are all caving to the orange fuckhead. Probably off to Europe somewhere.

Ask them for a cancellation and refund. Don't explain the reason, just say you changed your mind, make up some excuse if they ask.
- Why wouldn't you tell them the reason?
I believe they offer refunds if you cancel within 30 days.

I think I would wait for changes in their mission and policies before I start moving anything.

Sooo, can we not create and/or finance our own? Please be gentle…but…is there not enough of us paying for proton and other privacy apps to fund a floss or non-profit version? I mean there are tech nerds all over this place, along with law nerds and political nerds…etc..(meant with love btw) that would have an instant user base.

I pledge here to sub up to $15usd/month for any lemmy person that starts an entity that provides us with what we need with ethics and morality of lemmy common.

You need a domain with enough reputation to not just get immediately flagged as spam, or sites outright refuse letting you use the email because they detect the domain as "invalid".
- I feel like this is an infinitessimal part of the problem.
  
  As in... to make a proton substitute you need a similar level of resources. If you have those resources then domain reputation would be a snap.
- If your mail server is configured correctly this generally isn't that big of an issue. You need a DKIM service on your mail server, and with that add some dns records (SPF records and DMARC) to the domain As long as those are in place and configured properly, you should be able to avoid most spam filters considering your domain invalid.
- Man you mean a handful of companies control email rules? Lol isn't this what the proton guys are saying?
  
  They might be going about it the wrong way and in the interest of self profit, but there is truth to their points (on this one very specific thing).
  
  Democrats are absolutely not your friends either. They take money from big tech, isp, telecom lobbyists and anyone else with their wallet open same as Republicans.
Disroot is about that much per year. If you donate that much per month, their services will just get better and better.

AFAICT, it looks like all he's doing is praising 🍄's pick for AG in the Antitrust division . . . although if you look over her Wikipedia page, you're right, it doesn't look all that encouraging.

Can someone on Mastodon ask the Proton CEO what it was exactly that she did that he likes so much? Anyone who can work at Fox for any length of time, frankly, is complete and utter shite.

EDIT: Also, just as a broken clock can be right twice a day, 🍄 sank the Trans Pacific Partnership, which was the right thing to do, but for the wrong reason: mainly to get back at Obama for existing. So in the same way, I suppose it's possible that Slater did something good, but I'd sure like to know what it was.

this idea of if you use a product you have to support every belief the company have is absolutely insane, like why can't you recognize that a company's products and it's beliefs are two separate things? yeah the beliefs do effect the product but not all of them (especially not in this case like bro its ceos personal belief), why are we living in a time where you either have to %100 support something or you have %100 be against it? the fact that even a small political stand that someone dont agree with can turn them against a company or even a person is crazy to me

anyway i understand you made this choice and even tho i dont agree with the reasoning ill also provide 2 alternatives for vpn: mullvad and ivpn, both dont require email for account creation and accept monero payment, you probably heard them before

for email i suggest hosting your own if you have the time, there is this great project named docker-mailserver and its really easy to setup, but if you dont want to go through the effort feel free to check numerous alternatives others provided

This is amazing. People were perfectly okay with ignoring all the red flags in Proton and their products and really okay with buying all their bullshit, then a tweet saying Trump comes up and that's it. lol

🤷 sometimes people grumble quietly until a final straw is added to the stack. Not surprising.
- The Trust Thermocline!
- What a piss of an excuse that is ahah
What were the red flags?
- Huge Red Flag:
  
  /jk lol
- From what I recall, the red flags included stuff like giving the IP away of activists, having access to private keys while claiming e2e, and taking more info than they claim. I am busy atm, but i can find some links to sources when I get a chance.
What red flags?
- https://slrpnk.net/comment/13200172

Nextcloud is an amazing alternative to things like google suite or Office365. You can.self-host it or rent space on a server with nextcloud preinstalled. It integrates things like file storage, online office, podcast, rss feed reader, photo albums, etc. There's litteraly hundreds of apps that can easily be installed. I was a big user of the G suite, made the change last year and couldn't be happier. It's much more powerful than I was expecting and no evil gafam get access to my data.

My personal recommendations:

https://uberspace.de

Server location (jurisdiction): Germany
Integrity/trustworthiness/transparency: About-Page
User experience/ease of use (grade 1 to 10, lets take Proton as a benchmark with an 8): 6
Pricing: Based on solidarity, but recommend minimum is 5 € per month

https://www.hostsharing.net

Server location (jurisdiction): Germany
Integrity/trustworthiness/transparency: well, you own part of hostsharing if you use it (collective-ownership)
User experience/ease of use (grade 1 to 10, lets take Proton as a benchmark with an 8): 6
Pricing: 64 € onetime payment + 10 € per month (cooperative)

Other recommendations:

mailbox.org, systemli.org, riseup.net, posteo.de (as far as I know all of them are located in Germany)

Excuse my ignorance, but why is Germany a good place for privacy vs proton's Sweden?

And also eg, versus a non EU nation ?
- https://digitalcourage.de/blog/2021/history-german-privacy-movement
Systemli requires an invite code last I checked? Disroot does not.
Thanks!

I've been using Posteo for email since 2020. Love it. Mullvad for VPN.

Why treat Proton like it's the work of a single person rather than a large team?

Before you decide to go back to Google or close your account, keep in mind that Proton became a non profit organization with the main mission of protecting your privacy. And as a non profit, they're not trying to profit off of you in any way.

Going back to Google is the worst solution you can use. Remember that Google donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund. Google also doesn't care about your privacy. On the contrary, they're selling your data and using it against you.

While the Proton CEO may be a nut case, he's only praising the choice that Trump made as the candidate for the antitrust department. While that's understandably stupid since I don't believe Trump is going up stick up for the little guy now that he's got Musk and Zuck in his pocket, at least he didn't actively donated and enabled Trump either personally or through his platform and spread misinformation.

Think about it.

At least with proton, the fact that you're different, that you're 2SLGBTQ+, is safe. Or at least substantially safer than Google.

They have doubled down officially with their official Mastodon account https://mastodon.social/@protonprivacy/113833073219145503 I therefore consider this official opinion of Proton. Focussing on one aspect and completely ignoring the bigger picture of a luming fascist period in the most militarized economy of the world is just inacceptable. Proton just could have kept their mouth shut, but they decided not to.
- This is extremely disappointing. :(
- Toot has been deleted.
Why are there so many responses like this, saying not to go back to Google? The OP didn't even mention Google as an option they were considering. I've seen zero discussion in any of the other posts around the fediverse where people have expressed any desire to use Google because of this. Why would anyone think that users who had already moved to Proton would find Google acceptable as an alternative right now?

This just feels like you're trying to discourage actual conversation about alternatives by acting like the only options are Proton or Google, so we all ought to shut up and sit down.

Also, if you think merely becoming a non-profit means a corporation can never exploit people and isn't interested in making money off of it's customers, then I've got a bridge to sell you.
- Because I looked at the discussion threads for this post and I saw a few early comments where people mentioned they would go back or stick with Google.
  
  I'm not trying to shut down or discourage any discussion. Just pointing out to the people who said they'd go back that it's not the best solution.
Yes, proton is about ten thousand times better than google, even with this board member's stupid fully factored in.
Safer.

Well, they handed out activists' metadata in the past, for the French authorities. In their position of an e2ee provider who controls both ends as a default, they are in a position where the can fuck people over. This is exactly what Snowden described as someone pointing a gun at you while saying "Relax, I am not gonna use it against you."

So much for safety.

Ah, and my original point was: it is either safe or unsafe, the word saf_er_ means nothing during a genocide.
- IIRC, this was because the user in question had set a recovery email for their account, which Proton either volunteered or was forced to give to the authorities. Definitely crappy behavior on Proton's part. Don't set a recovery email!
- Contents of email are safe.
  
  But assume IPs are compromised.
- Worth mentioning Snowden used Lavabit. There's a great history there.
OpenAI was also a non-profit until a few months ago
- No, Proton actually just went from being a company to a non profit recently for the purpose of remaining a privacy focused organization whose mission won't change.

Currently exploring my options, thinking of switching to Tuta. It sucks because I literally just paid for a Proton annual plan, looking if I can cancel it and get (part of) my money back...

It seems there aren't any exact replacements, but this probably lists service providers to consider: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/email/

Are you one of those TechLore punks ? Use privacytools
- https://www.privacyguides.org/en/about/privacytools/
  
  privacytools is dogshit now, the original owner made it into a promotional VPN shill website and every single contributor, admin, mod, etc from the former privacytools now is under privacyguides
- privacytools.io is full of affiliate links and PG has shit tech bro recommendations like Brave browser

God damnit I literally just got Proton going like 4 days ago.

Does DisRoot count ? It has a myriad of services that are all FOSS tools Has a "Hub-App" on Fdroid

I think it's a good special case thing but I don't think you're intended to host tons of stuff there as a primary account
This. There's a bunch of great tech collectives out there. Unfortunately many require invite links. Disroot is one that lets anyone signup.

Thank fuck I didn't get that subscription, I was looking into getting a secure mail service. I engaged with people calling proton a CIA honeypot, investigating what was up with the rumors and I was about to jump into bed with proton.

I'll still continue using proton, as I haven't seen them staying from their goal just yet, but I'd love to see some alternatives non the less.

You could look at infomaniak, but I didn't have the best experience trying out (or even getting started with) their services. Finding a provider that has all of Proton's apps is going to be tough (or at least it was from me while I was looking to escape from Tuta). Good luck, tho.

EDIT: Infomaniak is on F-Droid!

Finding a provider that has all of Proton's apps is going to be toug

Nobody should be using any provider as one stop shop... That's how we got cooked by Google and Apple the first time folks.

Unbundle, mix and match...

Yeah it auck Proton did this but if you only got one proton service, it is eaiser to either do nothing or switch it.
- I agree! I don't use Proton's VPN or their password manager for that reason. The equivalents I had in place already were fine and I didn't feel the need to switch over everything, just some things.
Escape from Tuta for what reason if you're willing to share? I see it recommended a lot.
- Oh boy, getting old here, let's see if I can remember.
  
  I think in part it was because they seemed unable to fix the Linux desktop client after months and months and months, and repeated support requests. Also, I had been a user of theirs for some time when they changed how their plans worked, and moved a feature I relied heavily upon (I think it was email templates—something you might never need!) to a much more expensive plan. Felt like I was being charged more for being a longtime user. I don't know if they have cloud storage now, but at the time they didn't, and Proton had that, along of course with mail and calendar—all of that for less than what Tuta was offering which was mail, calendar, and plenty of other features that were continuously promised but never released. So really just a bunch of little things that were important to me, but which other users might never miss.

Uhg. How much longer until it's more viable to self host...

I will prefer to pay Zoho Mail instead of supporting Proton Mail. I was just holding into them because of their support to privacy and security but the lack of support to Linux and now this. I will move on.
- ZoHo's CEO is no better https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sridhar_Vembu#Political_views

Damn it my two year subscription just got refreshed...

I use mailbox.org its pretty sweet

Server locations: Riseup is in the US (Washington state), so keep that in mind. Disroot is in the Netherlands (part of the EU).

Governance: Riseup: Look at their “about us” page. Disroot: Look at their “about” page. The terms of service are more detailed. tl;dr: As far as I can tell, these are run by leftists.

Integrity/Transparency: I have no idea how to grade this.

Ease of Use: Subjective. Riseup VPN is just: install the client, turn it on or off. Disroot is much better with a mail client of some kind, so if you already use one, it’s probably a 10, otherwise, the webmail server isn’t that great. Disroot also requries manual encryption (I’m biased here because I use Kmail which makes PGP really easy to use).

Pricing and Links: Free https://riseup.net/en/vpn https://disroot.org/en/services/email

tl;dr: Use collective-run services, not corporate-run services

Yo so question for y'alls: what's your opinion on using custom domain (for portability) vs masked emails?

Rn I have my main emails on my personal domain, and then I have masked emails going through [email protected] for more anonymity + segmenting (err i mean just being able to disable a certain address individually) . But watching all this reminded me that if I decided to move away from fastmail, i'm much more locked-in this way. Do y'alls use a custom domain for masked email as well? The one thing I don't like about that is that it'd be so easy to connect multiple accounts based on domain, so anonymity is probably kinda broken.

I use a custom domain for basically all emails since I care more about portability than anonymity. Each account gets its own address, and if a site gets hacked and I start getting spam then I know which one it was. If I really wanted anonymity for something then I would use a randomly generated masked email.
This is going to break your email encryption, unless you add all your masked emails to your pgp key
I keep a single domain for distnct emails. It's not anonymous in the sense that anyone with half a brain could put 2+2 together and figure out who I am. It's highly useful for three reasons: If I suddenly get junk mail on a specific email, I tell my server to deposit them in in the bit bucket. Next, the algorithms aren't necessarily smart so having a different email for every login a) makes it harder to profile me, and b) it's more secure. Hackers will waste a server month trying to open my lemmy email in all the money stores.

I've been very happy with disroot.org, but you have to do your own encryption (I use Thunderbird).

I think I pay $10 per year for 5 GB, but they have a free plan.

I was mulling moving everything from Google to Proton. Guess I'll keep my money for now.

I've been doing research into this because I want to degoogle. Looking for hosted and secure Mail, Calendar, Drive... maybe docs if possible. I don't mind paying as long as I'm a customer and not a product to be sold.

My short list was: Mailbox.org, Zoho, and Notion.

Then there are the services I don't understand as much because I don't really want to self host or step into server maintenance... NextCloud, OwnCloud, LibreCloud, OnlyOffice. Maybe someone could straighten me out with those if I'm off base.

Thanks for this post. Any alternatives for Drive specifically?? Including self-hosted options

Immich if you want really good photo backup. Nextcloud if you want a full Drive replacement
- syncthing if you just want to keep a few folders in sync between devices.
I like Filen. Germany based, E2E, works well.
I use Filen, and unlike Proton they have a Linux app.

I swear by Njalla, which is run by Peter Sunde

i wanted to move my google stuff to Proton this year as a Backup for my self hosted stuff. Shame, seems like I need to put a little more time into managing my self hosted stuff

I was looking at Tresorit as a potential cloud option. I mean, not becausw of the Andy Yen stupid tweets debacle, its because Proton's mobile app is utter garbage, can't even download an entire folder when almost every other cloud provider can.

There are also Sync.com and Icecloud but I didn't like those. Sync.com's app looks outdated af, Icecloud makes extraordinary claims like how AES is built by the NSA and therefore is somehow "insecure" so they use a different algorithm. So Tresorit seems like the only one left that does encryption by default. (Mega's predecessor was shut down before, so I don't trust them for file longevity).

Anyone else got any other suggestions for cloud storage providers?
- Sync supports unencrypted data. If you accidentally click a button, everything becomes unencrypted. With tresorit, its always encrypted.
  
  You might also want to check mega too. Its cheaper.

is tuta the new pick for custom domain email?

Mailbox.org is another good one.

EDIT: Apparently they recycle addresses, so if you ever cancel your subscription with them, someone could eventually sign up with your old address and receive any mail from places you didn't switch over to a new address, which is concerning.
- I was considering them until I found out they allow the re-registration of previously used addresses. If you don’t log in for a year or so, someone else can take over your address and potentially gain access to various accounts you’ve registered with it.
I don't know about "the pick" but it was mine. Six months ago I looked around and decided to stay with Tuta for now. Encrypted email + calendar, on my custom domain, is all I need though. Ymmv
- I only need email but they seem decent and much cheaper for multiple custom domains. They were one of the options I looked at before I signed up for proton and looks like they’ve improved a lot since, too

So literally one guy can change your entire network lifestyle?

So literally one guy can change your entire network lifestyle?

Seriously? You're going to question people on loyalty when they find out the person in charge of not selling their data to the highest bidder is an oligarch wanna-be?

Hell yes. If you give me red flags in how a company I need to ultimately trust is run/staffed, I will find a better solution.
- You think one person decides everything?
Yes? But only if it's the guy in charge of a network service I'm buying.
I am trying to understand this too... I don't care about the CEO's personal opinions, so long as Proton provide the service they promised.
I'd be happy if someone would ELI5 as to why I'm wrong, I'm too lazy to switch otherwise.
- If yhe person running the show shows poor judgment in whose company they keep, where else have they had poor judgement?
- A CEO/founder of a communications company praising a fascist is gonna be a major concern of a privacy focused community like this.
  
  Proton should be doing everything they can to keep things private, since that's they're whole marketing strategy. Yet here they are licking the boot. That makes them untrustworthy of our data.
- That's naive. I'm not ditching proton yet, personally, but this does shake my confidence in them.

Whatever you choose, remember that ease of migration is important. So for email buy your own domain name and use a service like mailbox.org that allows custom domains and full IMAP access.

As far as I can tell from posteo's own FAQ site, they do not allow custom domains. I'd really consider swithcing to them otherwise. Do you use posteo?
- I literally just asked their support about this last year and they confirmed they intentionally don't offer this option.
- Woops I think I was thinking of mailbox.org who does support domains.

I have been on Opalstack since they started. I like them. I pay for hosting monthly. I've self-hosted several apps there (or tried to, sometimes; I couldn't make everything work all the time). Nextcloud is dodgy; I like it, but it's a pain in the ass for someone like me (not a dev, not a coder) to deal with the almost inevitable problems every 2 or 3 times I need to upgrade. And I've never been able to get an office suite working well. Much of this could be because I'm trying to run NC on shared hosting; even opalstack's support doesn't fix all of that.

Email: opalstack has email. I use it. I don't actually know what service it is, but I have three or four mailboxes linked to a couple of domain names I own, and several hundred email addresses* Thunderbird does great with IMAP on my laptop, desktop, and phone, with opalstack as the server.

*lots of emails because when I sign up for something I create a new email address just in case they sell my stuff and I start to get spam.

Stop switching to every new "cool" and "encrypted" service every time the previous one disappointed you a little bit. This is not helpful neither for your time, nor for privacy community overall. We should lean on most developed and best platforms we have right now (Proton, Signal etc.) and get everyone to switch. Unless we know we have market dominance, dispersing our efforts is futile.

And yep, answering your question, Tuta Mail is fine

I've been using Runbox for many years and it's weird i don't see recommendations.

In all seriousness, I genuinely feel like the demographics of those making over 250K/year outside of Silicon Valley (proton is from Switzerland which is a center-right country), and outside of the arts industries, is probably bare minimum of lib-center, and probably most likely to be at least fiscally conservative, if not socially as well. Those kind of people are more concerned with maintaining their financial position than the issues plaguing the income classes that the individual has graduated out of.

I don’t think you’re going to find many CEOs that aren’t at least a little right of center or self serving in their business interests.

Getting to the top 1% income bracket is a lot easier than maintaining that financial position.

Protonmail has been my main email provider for the past 7 years, and unless its CEO decides to sell it to Trump or Musk I honestly don't see how his stupid private or not so private opinions are worth the hassle of changing my email for the million things I use my main and all the other emails I registered with Protonmail.
Most rich people have very dubious or outright awful political opinions and unless you're rich enough to have someone build you an alternative or deconnected enough from society/only exist in programmer circles and are able to live entirely on FOSS software I don't see why the average user should care about the CEO's political stance. Maybe that's my ignorant opinion as a European, but would you stop using Linux if you found out Linus Torvalds secretly loves Windows? Probably not.

Your analogy/ example is fucked up and beyond stupid. Protonmail is hosted by the organization. Linus has no access to the Linux systems in the world. Also, thousands have contributed to the Linux ecosystem.
- I agree that my analogy is fucked up and a little stupid, but I was just applying OPs logic: Andy Yen doesn't do any more for Proton than Linus Torvalds does for Linux; they're just stand in figures that people project their love or in this case hate onto. I doubt he personally wrote a single line of code for Proton. In that case Linus Torvalds is actually way more involved with Linux than Andy Yen is with Proton; Andy Yen might have more power over Proton but afaik and like you said Proton is owned in majority by its foundation, which I hope does get a say in what they do.
Service =/= Software

Proton could (theoretically) hold your data hostage. Linus Torvalds could not just update linux to inject a maga banner in your desktop, or turn your os into ransomware. Even if your distro maintainer wanted to do that, you still have the final say on whether or not to update (and if you keep up with the news, you can just avoid the update and wait for someone to fork it).

So long, and thanks for all the fish

been using https://migadu.com/ for a few months now and its pretty great

Ive been using proton for a little more than a year now and I think that the service is one of the best out there. That, and their privacy guides in their blog are great as well. I think abandoning ship this early isn't really a need. I've abondonded things like Plex for jellyfin due to Plex starting to feel very commerical. As others have pointed out, the governing of the company may keep one individuals views from interfering with the products. With that said, if your beliefs swing opposite, i see how it can leave a bad taste and make it worth keeping an eye on the direction of the company.

Been super happy with NordVPN for years.

People will complain about them advertising on YouTube. Why would I care about that? Companies advertise.

People will complain about them not having port forwarding. This doesn't matter for the majority of VPN users. If it does, use a different one.

disroot

depending on your politics, autistici

Looks like the mastodon thread was deleted. Did anyone manage to archive it?

using services based on the ceo's political leaning instead of actual features and policies of that service? that's dumb, tell me when that political leaning reflects in polices of proton then we can talk

I guess the assumption is that over time they inevitably will have an effect and people want to switch before that happens.
- You're both right. I'd do the same to jump ship before the enshitification sets in. Often, I've seen how innocuous policy and feature changes creep in and before you know it, the switching costs are too high.
  
  I had an app on my phone and one day they removed the export function. I only used it for backing up my data but when they raised rates and started slamming with ads, I wanted to leave but could not take my data with me. I ended to just uninstalling and starring over elsewhere.
  
  Also, this is exactly what happened to reddit. They cut the api first so it was harder to take your communities and saved stuff with you.
- why exactly is it inevitable? and why should we switch before it happens?
Recent post from the Proton Reddit account: https://archive.ph/quYyb

Seems it's not just the CEO's personal opinion.
The service themselves also made a Mastodon thread (which has since been deleted) supporting the Republican party

Just looking for a free alternative..

https://soverin.com/

I personally don't care. If their code changes, I'm out, but this shit is par for course. Capitalists are largely all capable of these decisions.

As a Brit, I'm not offended by the Proton CEO's post. I don't like Donald Trump BUT I do like that he has hired someone who should be tough on tech anti-trust moves. This is very important.

Americans can be obsessed with their electoral system, but the rest of us don't have to pretend to support the Democrats or Republicans. I don't necessarily agree with all of Andy Yen's take regarding the two parties, but I'm not offended enough by it to boycott Proton, certainly not based on one tweet. I can also see the pragmatic benefit to his position by massaging trumps well known fragile ego.

Hint: everything trump says is a lie. His new crony is NOT going to be "tough on big tech" as the toddler traitor says.

What he actually means is they're going to use the government to destroy our privacy and freedom of speech, whilst simultaneously stealing every red cent they can from our pockets.

You gotta read between the lies with that dipshit.
- Oh, I think they will be tough on the big tech companies that dont drop millions at the feet of Trump.
Was there any urge (as if you can be urged at all to bootlick a rightwing asshole) to make these statements? No. Yet he did it.

I dont know of any alternatives but I will use Zoho Mail for now with my own domain. As they are cheap and reliable. I been using them for my business and it is great.

Tuta and Mailbox.org allow custom domains.
I just wish zoho would hide my IP when I use their SMTP. I get that's how mail headers have always worked but it blows my mind that it's still standard practice to expose the IP of your mail server or home network.
Disroot lets you use a custom domain for the price of one coffee per month

I know Google just donated to Trump's inauguration, and also does all the stupid surveillance capitalism crap that Google does, but I just compared prices, and Google Workspace is a few dollars per month cheaper per user than Proton is, for my needs (family, custom domain names, etc)

We've been on Proton for a few years, and it's fine, but we do also have Pixel Android phones, and not using Google services constantly feels like swimming upstream, plus all family members also still end up having to use Google services for work, anyway

It's just not practical for me to de-Google, which is a shame, so I think I'll be switching in a few months, unless pricing changes significantly :S

I prioritize ease of use, reliability, basic features not behind a pay wall, solid support and ease of use through Thunderbird so I don't have to visit the awful web version of said mail program. While I had mentioned that I was on Tutamail, I did a search of them and found a Reddit post about them weighing pros and cons. The cons I read of them go against a little of the things I'm after.

So reluctantly, I had to go back to GMail. I spent over 20 minutes migrating, resetting, re-routing many addresses to my newer GMail. I know that privacy is neither here or there on surface web stuff so I don't care about privacy regarding that. I'll start caring about privacy when I sign up for more personalized things and that's where Tutamail is going to come into play.

Damn dude. I swear I can't wait for AI to program everything so I don't have to keep track of the shitty things people do because we are a shit species.

This reads like an angry response to what Proton has been doing very recently.

Take a moment to reflect how you started to use their services. Really think about what you thought at the time about them being the right service for your needs.

Did anything really change for you, other than thinking your porn download history is now as safe as Nazi gold in Switzerland?

Take the next step, and don't look back.

There’s plenty of alternatives for mail out there. As for me, what happened isn’t enough for me to consider leaving Proton for another service. There isn’t anywhere else that offers all the services Proton does for $8/month.

Wow, lots of people on Lemmy just look at screenshots of text and dont read anything anymore.

I dont think he said anything controversial. Read what he wrote.

He's not supporting Trump or the Republican party in general. He is calling them out for selecting someone good on antitrust. That's not controversial.

LMAO! This is the type of person who would leave Steam if Gabe endorsed Trump.

Apple has recently declared that they're keeping their DEI programs in contrast to other tech companies, so I suppose Lemmy crowd would approve that? Their CEO being openly gay since 2014 probably works as some sort of a guarantee, at least as long as he keeps being the CEO.

So I'll suggest: Apple hardware + icloud. User experience (with apple hardware) 10/10. Pricing: Hardware price + monthly cost. Integrity: who knows, but they seem to deriving their income from their devices more than many other things.

Monthly cost depends on geographical location and storage size, but in EU area per month:

5GB is free
50GB = 1 euro
200GB = 3 euros
2TB = 10 euros

That storage and cost can be shared with up to 5 family members.

I used this for a long time and it worked really really well. But it really does practically depend on having Apple devices, preferably on every level. I recently moved to Proton because I wanted to move to Linux, but I do miss the UX and reliability quite a lot. Icloud's web service isn't bad though but wasn't good enough for me.

Given that Tim Cook is donating a million dollars to the rapist’s inauguration, I can’t agree:

https://www.axios.com/2025/01/03/tim-cook-apple-donate-1-million-trump-inauguration
- wtf
  
  Is that for real? Do companies always make such donations to new presidents or is this a new thing specifically for Trump?
  
  edit Apparently this is typical and has been done with many earlier presidents, regardless of political party
- Not that I'm any fan of Apple but this is obesience, literally all the big tech companies are lining up to kiss the ring. Trump is a vindictive small-minded asshole and he's going to have more power than any other person in the country and they all want to be on his good side.
If anything I'd say that the lesson to be learned from this should be the exact opposite: No company is safe forever, so you should choose based on how easy it is to switch.

Chaining yourself to a single company all the way from the services you use down to the OS and even the hardware is only making it worse. Particularly when Apple is already aggressively anti-consumer on a lot of fronts.
If you dont hold the keys, it ain't encrypted.

Can we stop stooping to their level and quit the 'fascist' rhetoric. How can ppl like OP not recognize they revel in anyone antagonizing with the absurd 'fascist'. All the mud-slinging is exactly how all this got so messed up so quickly

Also who's going to mailbox with me?

US Politics is cartoons level antagonizing

why are so many people going apeshit with marketing and PR? yeah the guy seems to be a sycophant, licking boot to protect his business, while throwing out a couple of unfortunate truths

if or when Trump finally condenses the fascistic and white supremacist tendencies of the US overtly into the regime, would you expect Proton to lead the resistance? maybe Ben & Jerry's? or some other progressive BS posturing company?

why are we talking about what Proton stands for? it is not a person with ideologies...fuck corporate personhood

people looking for "good companies" is just sad

Why care about the ideological stance of a company that holds a significant amount of your data?
To protect his business? They're in Switzerland wtf

Wow. Sweet tantrum. Hope it pays dividends. I've seen enough, Lemmy. G'bye.

Lol dont be a child

Proton is dead (for me). Let's collect and discuss alternatives! ✊🛡

My personal recommendations:

https://uberspace.de

https://www.hostsharing.net

Other recommendations: