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
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.
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.
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
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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.
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.
:-(
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)
Systemli requires an invite code last I checked? Disroot does not.
Excuse my ignorance, but why is Germany a good place for privacy vs proton’s Sweden?
And also eg, versus a non EU nation ?
TLDR: The Gestapo and Stasi
“uh uh. you aren’t doing that shit to me again”
meanwhile, on the other side of the atlantic
“spy on me daddy”
US never had fascism, so they’re experimenting and learning the hard way
oh man. we’re the og fascists. our policies inspired european fascism. we’ve done all the key components of a fascist regime before: the forced labor, the death camps, the mass surveilance, the overt militarism, the desperate need to expand and get rid of the people who were already there
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?
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 literally just asked their support about this last year and they confirmed they intentionally don’t offer this option.
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.
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.
Tuta and Mailbox.org allow custom domains.
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…
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Posteo, Mailbox.org, and Tuta are all good alternatives.
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.
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.
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!
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Worth mentioning Snowden used Lavabit. There’s a great history there.
Lavabit
Connection to Edward Snowden
Lavabit received media attention in July 2013 when it was revealed that Edward Snowden was using the Lavabit email address Ed_Snowden@lavabit.com to invite human rights lawyers and activists to a press conference during his confinement at Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow.[16] The day after Snowden revealed his identity, the United States federal government served a court order, dated June 10, 2013, and issued under 18 USC 2703(d), a 1994 amendment of the Stored Communications Act, asking for metadata on a customer who was unnamed. Kevin Poulsen of Wired wrote that “the timing and circumstances suggest” that Snowden was this customer.[17] In July 2013 the federal government obtained a search warrant demanding that Lavabit give away the private SSL keys to its service, affecting all Lavabit users.[18] A 2016 redaction error confirmed that Edward Snowden was the target.[2]
But what is the status now? Also, I think in the years to come the jurisdiction will also play a role. If the service is in the soil of a country that can subpoeana the encryption keys, then nobody is really safe.
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.
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. :(
Yes, proton is about ten thousand times better than google, even with this board member’s stupid fully factored in.
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.
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.
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
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?!?
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.
