In an unexpected mask off “secure” email and VPN provider Proton took the stance of siding with the fascist MAGA Reps. Proton’s services are no option for me and many others any longer. Let’s collect and discuss alternatives (E2E encrypted email and VPN) here 🔐👇
Always try to provide:
-Server location (jurisdiction)
-Governance
-Integrity/trustworthiness/transparency
-User experience/ease of use (grade 1 to 10, lets take Proton as a benchmark with an 8)
-Pricing and links
If you know alternative setups, feel free to share, too.
#ProtonExodus
Background: https://lemmy.ca/comment/13913116
Edit:typo
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.
“Proton? Why the fuck would he be mad at a WINE fork…?”
“… OH THE MAIL-”I was mulling moving everything from Google to Proton. Guess I’ll keep my money for now.
If they think Dollar Store Hitler is going to stand up for small businesses then they’re about to have a rude awakening.
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.
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.
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
Yea, and Andy Yen is only one of five members on the board of the Non-Profit organization, so you’ll just have to gamble that everyone else isn’t this weird (if you still want to continue using Proton services, that is, your choice 🤷♂️).
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.
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.
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.
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
God damnit I literally just got Proton going like 4 days ago.
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.
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.
Thanks for the writeup. It helps to know where to look to make an informed decision, when I finally have the time to sit down and de-google.
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.
I feel like I should pre-emptively switch to Keepass incase Bitwarden goes right wing.
I mean, Keepass is free open source software so the political views of the developers don’t matter as much.
I mean, Keepass is free open source software so the political views of the developers don’t matter as much.
So is bitwarden, you don’t have to use their servers.
+1 for keepass. Been using it for years and love it.
Phew! For a moment I thought you were talking about the steam compatibility thingy.
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?!?
If that proton goes nazi, I am going straight to the farm
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.
AFAICT, it looks like all he’s doing is praising Trump’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.
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.
:-(
