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 knowalternatives setups, feel free to share, too.
#ProtonExodus
Background: https://lemmy.ca/comment/13913116
I was mulling moving everything from Google to Proton. Guess I’ll keep my money for now.
using services based on the ceos political leaning instead of actual features and policies of thats service? that’s dumb, tell me when that political leaning reflects in polices of proton then we can talk
The service themselves also made a Mastodon thread (which has since been deleted) supporting the Republican party
I guess the assumption is that over time they inevitably will have an effect and people want to switch before that happens.
why exactly is it inevitable? and why should we switch before it 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.
Recent post from the Proton Reddit account: https://archive.ph/quYyb
Seems it’s not just the CEO’s personal opinion.
Why treat Proton like it’s the work of a single person rather than a large team?
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.
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
What red flags?
🤷 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 a piss poor brain you have.
And since when did I offend you? Unless… you’ve been “grumble quietly until a final straw is added to the stack”
Cry about it and reflect on it, bitch.
???
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.
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.
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
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.
It’s super simple and great for pricing its like 1 dollar a month worth it to tick all the positive boxes it does.
Check Mailbox.org
Does that check the boxes they listed?
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 installedI 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.
Whatever you choose, remember that ease of migration is important. So for email buy your own domain name and use a service like posteo.de 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.
Fair mistake to make, they have a very similar colour scheme I can see. Happy to hear of yet another mail provider to consider, I want to hear about as many as possible; I want to make the right choice
Yeah I get them confused constantly hah.
At least with your own domain name and IMAP, changing email providers is pretty quick and easy.
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.
So long, and thanks for all the fish
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.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).
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.
He directly profits from Proton subscriptions. As does the rest of the leadership which seem to back him on this.
A comparison of singing the praises for a modern proto-fascist movement with “secretly loving Windows” is… certainly something.
Yeah you’re right, I hadn’t considered that because I never paid a single cent for anything Proton, that’s a mistake on my part. Sometimes I forget capitalism is still a thing.
A comparison of singing the praises for a modern proto-fascist movement with “secretly loving Windows” is… certainly something.
If that’s the takeaway you had from reading both of my comments then I honestly can’t help you, but I can try to spell out my intent a second time:
I deliberately chose Linus Torvalds because he’s basically Jesus of Lemmy but I didn’t expect to be called a fascist over a dumb analogy I used to show that OP might be overextrapolating a CEO’s standpoint onto a whole company. I agree that there is a not insignificant risk of this affecting the company, don’t get me wrong, but this post just feels like fearmongering.I think you misread my comment. I didn’t call you a fascist, I simply called out two points where your comparison falls flat.
How dare you find a tone to respond that makes me regret my original harsh choice of words a little? :P Still - my point was that no matter how much Torvals is involved, the linux ecosystem isn’t under his control, while proton services are very much under corporate control, and if their CEO decides to introduce a backdoor for american nazi services, that can happen.
Unlike some I’m not here to insult other people :)
Yeah you have a point there and I totally get how my comment was a bit shortsighted on that end, but I was just weirded out by the fact that a CEO’s political position is supposed to be indicative of the future actions/positions of a company. Sure it’s not entirely unlikely that it might affect the company in the future, but OPs post just felt a little like fearmongering to me.Have you been following the news though? The 180 policy swings the moment it seemed good for business under a new administration in the divided states? Is it really so far-fetched to worry about a dipshit at the top of a company?
LMAO! This is the type of person who would leave Steam if Gabe endorsed Trump.
I’ve been using Runbox for many years and it’s weird i don’t see recommendations.
