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’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
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 🙂
I would actually argue that for privacy reasons when choosing an email provider you should go for one outside of the country you live in, even better go for one in a country that wouldn’t comply with your country’s court requests for data.
Edit: ac corrected actually to factually lol
I see, thank you!
Remember when businesses stayed the fuck out of politics so they didn’t alienate their customers because they like money? Pepperidge Farms remembers.
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.
So literally one guy can change your entire network lifestyle?
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.
Does DisRoot count ? It has a myriad of services that are all FOSS tools Has a “Hub-App” on Fdroid
I swear by Njalla, which is run by Peter Sunde
Trump’s terrible politics aside:
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the Republican party is pushing legislation which requires you to identify yourself to view porn
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you can get around this with a VPN
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proton is a VPN (nonprofit, but still).
I’ll be switching email providers when I can… I can’t remember when my subscription ends.
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Abandoning the Proton subscription now. How stupid and irresponsible. In fact, are running away from all your principles.
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
I can’t speak for how things have been historically (I actually try to stay out of politics usually). But right now, there are plenty of news stories about a lot of companies/CEOs/Tech Bros who are contributing to Trump, apparently hoping to win his favor and protect their businesses/profits.
Disgusting IMO!
Seems like this is somewhat normal though: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/yes-it-s-common-for-large-corporations-to-donate-to-presidential-inaugurations/vi-AA1xg9ML#details
What an American thing.
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.
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
tech bro recommendations like Brave browser
I’m never gonna recommend librewolf/mullvad browser/whatever is popular these days to a coworker, even if I daily drive them. Do you know what I did suggest to them, and they actually switched to it from chrome? Brave.
It’s not the best, it’s not the most powerful, but being able to say “it’s chrome but without ads” is a major selling point, especially with non tech savy people who don’t want their cookies cleared on every restart
Nowadays I would recommend Zen Browser + uBO over Brave which has a nice user-friendly UI and supposedly disables telemetry. Before Zen Browser, disabling the crap Brave comes with takes a similar amount of effort as tweaking Librewolf’s aggressive privacy settings, but one of them is actually privacy focused and the other is run by a shady ad crypto company with a shady news feed that keeps pushing Fox News and a homophobic CEO. For mobile there’s Cromite.
Just looking for a free alternative…
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 xxx@fastmail.com 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.
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.
:-(
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 ?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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!
I like this organization method, feels very ADHD-friendly
