Summary
Proton Mail, known for its privacy-first email services, faced backlash after CEO Andy Yen praised the Republican Party and its antitrust stance.
The company initially posted and deleted a statement supporting Yen’s comments, later claiming an “internal miscommunication” and reiterating its political neutrality.
Critics question Proton’s impartiality, particularly as it cooperates with Swiss authorities on legal data requests.
Privacy advocates warn that political alignments could undermine trust, especially for Proton’s users—journalists and activists wary of government surveillance under administrations like Trump’s.
Just when I’m done migrating all my email shit to Proton, the CEO turns out to be a nazi. A classic.
Same. Considered getting a domain for my email, but ended up just switching directly to the protonmail domain. Regretting that now.
Getting your own domain is the best thing you can do, regardless of provider - it means they can’t lock you in anymore.
I gotta get a personal domain just for email, I don’t really want my personal life mixed in with our small business domain; both due to the nature of the products and because I don’t want to dox myself on either side of the work/life gulf. It’s a shame too, because I am actually proud of our garage business.
I totally get that; I have three domains (work, personal, and one only for online services / aliases)
They’re relatively cheap. I’ve had one for years, though I don’t use it for email forwarding.
Weird shit also happens if send mail isn’t coming from a big provider :(
Yeah, I have no desire to try to host smtp. I’m thinking I could run my own imap and pull mail from various accounts and then just send mail through proton or tula or whoever. Someone already trusted.
And the main reason I didn’t get a domain? Because I couldn’t come up with a good domain name. Naming stuff is always hard.
It is hard. I made up a name that sounds like it would be a webmail provider (it has “mail” in the name).
Surely the point of your own domain is to personalise it? Why would you go for something generic?
I use it with aliases for online signups, so the genericness is a feature, not a bug.
But it’s awful for privacy, because everything is on one domain.
Email is already bad for privacy, and WHOIS protection solves most of the rest. And obviously don’t buy a personally-identifiable domain if that’s a concern.
Only way to make sure your email isn’t run by a Nazi is to run it yourself.
Unless you’re a Nazi in which case FUCK OFF
Even for the technically literate, running a mail server is an ongoing nightmare. If you think it’s easy, you’re not doing it right.
Which is why I let my email be run by Nazis.
Seriously I wish I could quit them but it’s too damn hard.
Dagnabbit - I went all in on Proton as well. Why is it so hard to find an email provider that respects privacy and isn’t run by people with ‘problematic’ views (i.e. people who wish people like me didn’t exist)
I guess I’m lucky he came out with this shit just as I was about to migrate.
I did some more research and this is no joke:
Globalism is bad, being fair is bad, Europe-first, huh I wonder where we’ve heard this kind of rhetoric before.
The EU was initially a good idea, but it got too involved in national politics (anyone remembers the banana guideline that reads like a meme?). I still think, the EU is fine and we should keep it, but it should be a defensive alliance first and foremost and not some fucking merger that is advocating for the rich. Sadly, it’s the rich that have the influence because, well, money and they are going to abuse it.
A call for isolation and autarky is a massive red flag and nothing good will ever happen after that, it always leads to exploitation and violence. The reason CEOs don’t like globalism is because it’s harder to create a monopoly on a global market than regional and capitalism strives for those because it hates competition.
Ar eyou saying Proton’s CEO is a Nazi? Far as I can tell he isn’t
Edit: your message is confusing which is why I ask
Signed up last month because I had something to protect. Looking into Tuta. Anyone know a comparable free vpn?
I switched to Mullvad, works pretty well so far, for my needs.
I am aware of mullvad, and it sounds very good. However, I was looking for a free vpn, as I use vpn service very rarely.
#BigSame Friend.
I was looking at Tutanota for a bit. Guess I’m need to bust open that research again.
While the comments were not welcome and left a sour taste, we are blowing it a bit out of proportion here.
You don’t get to decide how other people feel and respond to the issue.
They’re just expressing an opinion. Cool it.
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I guess their username speaks for itself XD
Person A has an opinion, that is allowed. Person B has opinion, that is not allowed.
Lol I read this thread first, then went to the article and his comments were supportive of the potential for anti-trust legislation under the new administration? That makes him a Nazi? Wtf 😂
This is a huge reason why Lemmy faces an uphill battle in terms of growth, these absolutely batshit insane political takes pollute most threads about newsworthy events, which are in many ways the lifeblood of a content aggregator.
I can’t even count the number of times I’ve seen people say they tried Lemmy for a little while but eventually stopped because they got sick of every thread and community being constantly flooded with Nazi comparisons, accusations of genocide denial, and guillotine the rich stuff.
Like I get it, I really do, but maybe direct some of that righteous anger into some kind of real world activism instead of constantly bitching at anonymous strangers on Lemmy. These people are so outraged and the situation is so dire, and yet they continue to scroll online forums and farm upvotes? Have some ideological consistency ffs, if it’s a matter of life and death, go out there and do something to help.
Doomposting on Lemmy accomplishes nothing, and in fact continues to marginalize one of the few tools that we could potentially have to fight back. If Lemmy were to grow significantly and become a place where people could organize and communicate without being subject to corporate control or censorship, that could potentially do a great deal of good for people IRL. But constantly whining Nazi this, Nazi that is preventing that growth from happening.
Which is why this platform will never have a meaningful growth. But 90% of the user base is happy with that because they enjoy having their opinions validated and not challenged a.k.a. echo chamber.
Reminds me of another site. It’s why upvotes/downvotes will never work.
That other site is the 6th most visited website in the world, so clearly having upvotes/downvotes doesn’t preclude growth.
Does mbin only have upvotes or am I misremembering? And boosts I guess. That’s not my personal preference but the beauty is we can still access the same content from different platforms.
Well, never say never. It happened once already, in June/July 2023 the userbase grew more than 10x.
And we have seen a nice bump of 2k users in the past week or so as the fediverse has gotten some publicity. Reddit is not an option so we have no choice but to try to make Lemmy better, and I genuinely believe that the federated, decentralized concept can be the solution in so many ways.
Piefed and Mbin are also huge boons to our chances of success. Lemmy may not ever take off, but I expect one of the fediverse content aggregators eventually will. Reddit is simply too shitty of a user experience, they are guaranteed to fail.
Yeah this is a masks off moment for them and people better be paying attention!
“If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
-Desmond Tutu
“If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, but your CEO and official company social media accounts are publically praising the policies of the elephant, the mouse will not appreciate your alleged neutrality.”
-iAmTheTot
I migrated literally everything from Gmail around 2021. Gotta tell ya, I feel just about dumb as shit right now. I kind of understand people with those “I bought this before he sieg heiled” bumper stickers on their Teslas.
I was planning to transition everything to proton this month. Now I don’t know what to do.
Tuta for mail, bitwarden for passwords, mullvad for vpn. You lose port forwarding.
I migrated last week. I dont miss proton.
There are other good VPN options that provide port forwarding but it’s usually at an extra cost or absolutely tedious to set up.
AirVPN, Windscribe, PIA, and another one I can’t remember. Personally I prefer the security and privacy of Mullvad but I use proton’s port forwarding and proton mail for quite a bit so the transition is gonna be annyoing…
PrivateVPN is what I use. No ties to the big VPN corporations known, pretty open about their stuff, decent price, small company, port forwarding over OVPN (not wireguard) and no-log policy.
The problem is I don’t think they have ever been audited but also because they are obscure enough, I don’t know if there are any watchdogs for them turning over info to authorities.
Honestly the lesson I took away from this is to not vendor-lock myself if I can help it. Maybe it’d be better to have a domain through which you can route incoming emails to any inbox? That way you can just hotswap email services if their CEO turns out to be a cannibal or something.
yeah, I myself was already getting a little uncomfortable with how far proton was branching out. It’s a good thing that I was already making a transition to using my own domain using aliases through eforw.com
Or I guess just self host an email server
That actually doesn’t work. Most large email providers will put you into the spam folder unless you are a well known server. Microsoft doesn’t even bother with that and outright throws the emails away entirely. Plus, most ISPs block sending emails from residential IPs and cloud providers block sending them from cloud.
It is not that bad. I have been running my own mail server for 20 years and i generally don’t have more problems with it than users of ‘big and known’ mail server do (it is not like GMail is perfect). And when there are problems I am usually able to tell what happened.
But this does not mean I would recommend self-hosting mail server to everybody. I am an expert, have been doing this professionaly for years. And it is an ongoing fight. It is not like I set it up in 2000 and it has been working since then without changes or incidents.
Do you send mail directly from your server, or do you use some intermediary?
I will admit I did not try it myself but I was under the impression it was pretty bad with the spam filters.
That’s actually a lot more effort than most self hosting tasks. And it’s an ongoing effort at that.
Personally I signed up for web hosting at the same company where my VPS is hoted, hetzner. The cheapest tier web hosting costs a couple of euros a month and gives you multiple inboxes on your custom domain, whereas proton and gmail wanted something like 6 or 7 euros per inbox per month
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Tbh I think proton is solid. What the CEO said is just stating a fact of the situation 10 years ago and linking it to now. I don’t believe that’s right but he posted the message 4th of December which (if I’m not mistaken) was before it was clear all the tech CEOs were sucking his dick like we saw around his in inauguration.
I’d still recommend it, the other stuff the CEO says on twitter is all very logical and positive for privacy and against big tech. Unfortunately someone says something that is remotely questionable (not like this guy has outright praised Trump far as I can tell) and sudetly Proton is a dead service not considering all the good they have done and will (probably) continue to do
Why do you feel stupid? None of this could have been predicted. If you switched to any other privacy focused provider it might as well have been them this was about. You did a logical thing at the time, as many others here did. I don’t see how any of this isn’t obvious.
I see how moving out of the Google ecosystem could be a pain, but moving out of proton probably shouldn’t be that big of a deal?
Switching to another services for calendar, storage, or VPN should be simple. I kind of see how going to another email provider and not wanting to lose old conversations could be a pain though. In fact, that pain is what largely made me try to avoid using email for communicating with people in my life.
Either way, much less of a pain than buying a semi-luxury car only to see it lose basically all of its value because Elon is a nazi.
I understand the concern but it’s not like the CEO is sieg heiling… He is stating how things used to be and his hope that Trump will continue that trend. He posted 4th of December which was far before Trump got all his big tech chronies to sit Infront of US allies at his inauguration
Swiss company says “Nazi’s aren’t so bad.”
The more things change the more they stay the same.
When they say they’re “neutral” lets not forget what “neutral” meant during World War II. It meant making a fucking shitload of money at the expense of the rest of Europe.
Also, the geography of Switzerland is how they were able to convince Germany to not invade. A few US Nukes dropped from the sky make their geography a moot fucking point this time around.
That escalated quickly
So does their geography!
Not if @[email protected] has their way.
Yep, I moved to tuta the day Andy decided to out himself as a MAGA dipshit. The only way I’d go back is if he resigns or gets forced out. At the absolute minimum Andy Yen has shown extremely poor judgement in claiming Republicans are the party concerned with people’s digital rights. That tells me he fundamentally does not know what he’s talking about, and I do not trust Proton under his leadership anymore.
As a side note, If anyone’s looking for a VPN alternative, I highly recommend Mullvad.
What are your thoughts on Tuta so far?
If your goal is basic mail, with standard features, Tuta is great. The free option is more than enough for an anonymous email.
If you want to pay a little you can move your domain over and get a bunch more features.
If you appreciate a simple interface, Tuta will be perfect. They have apps for desktops and phones as well as web.
I appreciate the response!
It seems like a good alternative but I honestly haven’t used it enough over the last two weeks to feel comfortable recommending it to people yet. Sorry I can’t be more helpful, but there’s a free tier so there’s no downside in giving Tuta a shot for a bit.
Thank you for the response. I’ll probably give it a try since my needs are simple
Commenting so I can come back to this because hell if I’m going to remember to check it if I just save the comment.
Thank you for your assistance on the matter.
Been running my own domain from Tuta for about a year now. Had no issues so far.
I just signed up for the cheapest paid Addy plan and so far I’m very impressed, especially since it seems to be a one-man show. The docs are good which has been a huge help, and the user dashboard website is easy to grok.
What are the political alignments of the Tuta CEO?
He didn’t say that though, he thinks Republicans are the party more likely to fight for “small tech” against big tech in the antitrust space. You can still consider this bad judgment but it’s purely an opinion that he motivated from his point of view with a few data points.
Digital rights are an indirect benefit that may derive for breaking big tech monopolies, but nothing was mentioned.
Edit: for those downvoting, this is factual. Just go check the tweet and the reddit comments he did. If you want to be pissed at someone at least choose what that person did or said.
The sort of Swiss neutrality that doesn’t care whose teeth the gold is from.
Reason n1 why I never use Swiss services.
Wow. There’s a whole lot of people here reacting to the headline, and not actually reading the story. That’s important, because the journalist’s headline is (shocker) a huge overstatement.
I was concerned as I’m a Proton user and have been for years, and hard left politically, and despise Trump. But maybe lets just read it before reacting?
Here’s what the CEO posted on Xitter:
10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned.
Yep. That’s a bad look. Doesn’t make a lot of sense either because the Republicans are very much the party of big business and corporate handouts and deregulation in oil, gas, energy, mining, manufacture, industrial farming etc.
Then here’s what Proton’s team said on Reddit as an explanation and expansion of the CEO’s post (and then later deleted):
Here is our official response, also available on the Mastodon post in the screenshot:
Corporate capture of Dems is real. In 2022, we campaigned extensively in the US for anti-trust legislation.
Two bills were ready, with bipartisan support. Chuck Schumer (who coincidentally has two daughters working as big tech lobbyists) refused to bring the bills for a vote.
At a 2024 event covering antitrust remedies, out of all the invited senators, just a single one showed up - JD Vance.
By working on the front lines of many policy issues, we have seen the shift between Dems and Republicans over the past decade first hand.
Dems had a choice between the progressive wing (Bernie Sanders, etc), versus corporate Dems, but in the end money won and constituents lost.
Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.
First off, I feel like I’ve read from hundreds of Lemmy users total agreement that the Democratic party is captured by corporate interests, so I really doubt any disagreement with that section of Proton’s post. My reaction to the remainder is that it’s not at all praise for the Republican party, just the factual statement of the sad reality that Republicans with their very hard-on-Silicon-Valley rhetoric are more likely to actually reign in the big tech companies than the Democratic party - and Proton is in a good position to have seen this first hand. Zero of the statement praises Trump or praises Republicans, and there is in fact lament that the Democrats didn’t stick harder with their left-wing candidates, even highlighting Bernie. I can see why they deleted it though, it’s office chatter than never should have left the cubicle.
TL;DR: storm in a teacup, I’ll be keeping my Proton mail account.
p.s. yes this is my first Lemmy post. I’m a longtime lurker though. I felt strongly enough about this to make an account to post, as nobody seemed to be actually posting the content of the article - just reacting. Edit: typos & formatting of the quote.
Yep, a complete drama over nothing that got many people start a witch hunt. We already reached the point in which the guy is now a Nazi for having chosen a username with 88 in it, despite the fact that he is Taiwanese AND born in that year. Basically this is the well-meaning, internet vigilantes version of “bill gates injects 5g microchips with vaccines”.
It’s what happens when politics becomes faith.
Same for me. Was it kind of stupid what the CEO said? Yes, sure, but who the fuck does not do that from time to time?
I also hate this mentality, that if you agree with a decision a party / person made, then that means you agree with everything they stand for. Bitch, no!
Nicely said.
I had my doubts, I mailed Proton and they responded with a statement Yen his opinion isn’t that of Proton, his comment while using the Proton account was a mistake which has been deleted and Proton changed to a foundation so no one, including a CEO like Yen, can change what Proton stands for.
Good first post
Thank you for clarifying!
Thank you for the summary.
Then here’s what Proton’s team said on Reddit
are you REALLY asking us to care about their PR damage control? They can literally cherry pick anything and say anything that’s true and try to tie it back into their argument. What stands is his initial heartfelt public statement.
Zero of the statement praises Trump or praises Republicans
Great pick by @realDonaldTrump . 10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned. People forget that the current antitrust actions against Big Tech were started under the first Trump admin.On Twitter (your know, the fascist communication network)
Tagging Trump directly (ohh look at me, I’m a good boy, give me contracts, invite me over)
your definition of Zero and mine are WILDLY different.
I feel like I’ve read from hundreds of Lemmy users total agreement that the Democratic party
Yes, the standard far right argument, no no they’re both bad so this isn’t bad.
of the sad reality that Republicans with their very hard-on-Silicon-Valley rhetoric are more likely to actually
There it is, you’re not even going to sugar coat it, No no, the Republicans WHO ARE DISMANTLING DEI AND MEDIA FACT CHECKING
are going to
ctually reign in the big tech companies (more )than the Democratic party
GTFO, or at least come up with a half reasonable argument. That’s serious not even worth the time to post on…
TL;DR: storm in a teacup, I’ll be keeping my Proton mail account.
If you’re for real, (and I expect you’re just more damage control), sounds like you’re in a good place with like minded friends not worried at all about their safety.
p.s. yes this is my first Lemmy post.
Ahh so more damage control. Gotcha!
Their PR Department can do better
“Tagging Trump” because it was an answer (quote? Not sure what is the xitter term) to the tweer where Trump announced the pick for antitrust.
I do disagree with the person you are answering to, he did praise republicans. He did in a very narrow context and for specific (although opinable) reasons and he praised Trump for having made that specific pick.
Personally, I don’t see what the big deal is.
Due respect, your take is obtuse at best or you’re a shill. The company, with current leadership in place, just cannot come back from the first statement, it illustrates a fundamental detachment from objective reality, to the point that you’ve lost any and all credibility, permanently.
In a business based on trust, this is just so clear. Poop
Sir, this is Lemmy’s. We don’t allow reason here.
Reason is fine, doesn’t mean everyone has to agree.
I don’t get why anyone would stay on a site they thought reason wasn’t allowed at.
I’ve been frustrated several times at what I perceive as Lemmy bias that borders extremism, but on the whole it’s perfectly reasonable. Essentially every response to the parent comment agreed with it (I have yet to see someone disagree but perhaps I haven’t scrolled enough).
Lemmy isn’t big enough to feel you need to stay, as Reddit was when comments like this were plentiful.
If by reigning in big tech you mean a cartel style system where companies need to provide funds to Trump to continue existing, sure. But there is no chance that the Republicans will reign in big tech : they are big tech.
You are leaving out the part where Andy Yen said that the tables have turned and the Republicans are now the party of the small people.
Andy Yen’s statement is downright pathetic and misleading. People are right to stir up shit because that’s the only thing corpos understand.
This isn’t a storm in a tea cup, this is the CEO of a company telling us who he really is and people choosing to tell him to get fucked.
Your post reeks of astroturfing.
the Republicans are now the party of the small people
He didn’t. He clearly meant small tech in that context, opposed to big tech\monopolies. Not only this is the only interpretation that makes sense, but he said this himself in a clarifying (personal) reddit comment.
Stop bootlicking
From Andy Yen directly:
“[…]10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today, the tables have completely turned.”
There is no place for interpretation here, the message is clear. If he wants to back pedal because he got slinged shit, so be it, but it doesn’t detract from the fact that he said that the Republicans are now the party of the small guys.
Stop spreading misinformation
I will quote his own words:
Unfortunately that was misinterpreted. If you go back to the original tweet in question, it is clear from the context that that is about “little tech” vs "big tech
I know we are in the internet in 2025, and nobody has the right to clarify their opinion anymore, one strike and you are out, but still.
To me it was obvious from the context to be honest, without even needing his own explanation (that you call backpedaling because good faith is never assumed). But then again, I was not looking for reasons to be outraged.
It’s hilarious though that reporting the authors own thoughts you call misinformation. Instead drawing your own conclusions that are explicitly denied by that person is supposedly objective. If there are no more rules of logic then everything goes.
Also this is not bootlicking, it’s just a timid defense of rationality in the face of people building castles in the air.
Yeah because cozying up buddy buddy with Trump is a castle in the air.
It’s not like the guy was cooked on the spot and spouted an incohenrent sentence.
The guy took the time to tag Donald Trump to show him how he’s not like the other girls , wrote out his message and thought that this was good enough to press send.
There is a lot of deliberate actions that leads to this and takebacksies are a lot more difficult to justify.
In that case, there is a little space for interpretation and Andy Yen is clearly in damage control.
It is not little joe from Arkansas owning a potato farm tweeting that shit, it’s the CEO of a supposedly “neutral” company, that deals in privacy, tagging his buddy Trump. Shit like that can’t get a pass.
Lucky for him, there are enlightened people like you that loves the smell of fresh polish directly from the boot.
My renewal of proton VPN is entirely dependent on who the ceo is when it’s time for me to renew.
If fuckface is still there, I’ll move on.
I’m fickle that way.
The number of places I can do business with is dropping drastically. I’m going to have to start making my own clothes in the near future.
I strongly recommend Mullvad. Exceptional performance, wireguard support and if you’re really paranoid about anonymity you can literally send them money via post.
Same at this point. I just paid for the year in November.
Same plan here, bought Mail Plus for a year back in May. Although if they decide to enshittify everything before May I’ll just bail early.
Good news for them, I’m “financially neutral”
Okay, can someone help me, a tech illiterate, choose a new vpn, email provider, and password manager? I’d really prefer open source.
Vpn: Mullvad
Email: Tuta / tutanota
Password manager: Bitwarden or 1password
DEFINITELY do not go 1password. They took a massive VC investment and it is only a matter of time before they find a way to monetize it. Ignoring the fact they absolutely destroyed the app.
Bitwarden (you can host yourself with vaultwarden) or KeepassXC.
Just moved to Proxmox. Vaultwarden as an LXC from helper-scripts is so easy.
They took a massive VC investment and it is only a matter of time before they find a way to monetize it.
Can you explain this? I’ve been using the app for over 10 years and it’s only gotten better. I haven’t seen any evidence yet that it would suddenly change
Yes, in 2021 they took a $100M investment for a password manager. There’s no planet on which they can justify that valuation without doing things to significantly increase their revenue. https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/27/1password-raises-100m-at-a-2b-valuation/
If you’ve used the product for 10 years like you claim, then you should know very well the many ways in which they’ve gotten worse. A couple obvious ones off the top of my head because I dropped them like a bad habit after I saw that VC “investment”:
- they killed off any ability to purchase a permanent license key and forced people into subscriptions.
- the app has only improved? How are those nested tags working for you? A feature they had 10 years ago that they broke and never brought back.
- Performance on windows has continually gotten worse with every release for the last 8 years.
- they killed off any ability to purchase a permanent license key and forced people into subscriptions.
For I think $75 I used an excellent password manager for literally like 7 years on multiple platforms. As a software engineer I know that wasn’t a small effort to make that happen. I think I got my money’s worth… and out of every digital service I pay for, I find password management most critical and worth paying for
- the app has only improved? How are those nested tags working for you? A feature they had 10 years ago that they broke and never brought back.
Yes it certainly has gotten better on every platform. I don’t know anything about nested tags. I don’t even use non nested tags. But sure the whole company sucks because they removed a feature you liked. Features that get less use get removed, that’s how products work…How has it improved? Well, it’s weird you ask it all aggro like that but yeah, the search, UI, watchtower, browser extensions, ease of adding a new device, cli tool, and many tiny details have improved over the years.
- Performance on windows has continually gotten worse with every release for the last 8 years.
Funny you say that, the app went from barely usable on windows (which I rarely use) to almost as good as Mac. Then right when I switched to Linux they released a very good client on that platform, which was something I didn’t even expect.
I am not quite sure what the motivation is implying I’m lying about how long I’ve used software or my experience with it, but I’m not. Be mad I guess.
It might get worse eventually but I disagree with your condescending assertions that it already is. Later.
Keepass is superior in my experience for passwords
They asked as a “tech illiterate” so I answered what I’d answer a tech illiterate person.
Keepass is good, but it’s not tech illiterate friendly.
Oh I must have missed that sorry. Then yes it’s a bit more difficult for the tech illiterate until they’ve been using it for a while
Thank you for respecting my literacy level! Lol
From a UX perspective I disagree. 1password wins at UX hands down but Bitwarden is a very close second and IMO has better privacy guarantees.
Security is useless if it’s too difficult. Despite liking Bitwarden I am a 1Password subscriber and happy with my choice.
Really? I really dislike the UI of one password. I have to use it for work and it’s a pain.
Never tried bit Warden could be good who knows not me that’s for sure.
I don’t think keepass is to difficult as to make it useless. I think it really depends on the platform there are some amazing Android apps that will autofill directly from your keyboard no real work necessary it recognizes everything. Now if you’re on Windows… Yeah things start to fall off the wagon
VPN: Mullvad
Password manager: Bitwarden
(or if you are advanced user, KeePassXC + Syncthing for full control of your DB)Email: I use Tuta, but I am honestly not that confident in it to recommend it, unlike the above.
Airvpn has port forward i believe.
I guess if you really really need port forwarding, you need to look at dodgy choices like that.
But unless you absolutely need port forwarding, stick to Mullvad. If it is only about torrents, consider getting a seedbox instead of or in addition to VPN.
I’ve had a good experience with AirVPN. I mean, I only use it for torrenting, but… Is there a good reason not to go with them for torrents?
I don’t think there is particular problem with torrents. The problem is, when your VPN is active, you probably send all your other data through it. That is why dodgy seedbox is much less of an issue compared to dodgy VPN. A seedbox only has access to your torrents, a VPN probably has access to all of your communications.
While AirVPN claims no logging, with prices that cheap and already having to skirt the law to be able to provide port forwarding, it’s not very credible. There is a good chance your data is being sold to someone and/or getting stolen since good security costs money.
Now there is no guarantee AirVPN has these issues or that Mullvad doesn’t, but Mullvad goes to great lengths to build their trustworthines, e.g. 3d-party audits, not even having disks in their servers to ensure logs can’t be stored, etc.
Oh, okay, I understand what you’re saying now.
Yeah, I don’t trust any of the VPN providers. There’s just no evidence that they’re trustworthy. I reach for Tor (or i2p sometimes).
I typically run all the torrenting stuff in a container, I’ve never actually used that VPN to browse. I just spin the container up and down when I want my bandwidth back.
Nice. Good to see you know what you are doing. I see no issue with this setup.
That said, most people will use VPNs for their whole system. So when you nominate AirVPN without additional context, that is what most people would use it for. Please take care in making clear what you recommend it for going forward :)
You might want to have a look at this site to study-up on available/recommended tools: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/ I use Mullvad VPN myself and am happy w/it. Ditto Bitwarden which works well and is cheap. I have a Tuta account but detest the UI and the fact that they don’t support IMAP/SMTP clients, or PGP, so I do my own PGP encryption/decryption using Thunderbird Mail on desktop which has built-in support for it. Also I use Fastmail as a (paid) provider (no built in PGP but tons of other bells & whistles) though mailbox.org looks interesting and is well-priced. Finally I use addy.io for anonymous aliases/forwarding and they have good PGP support.
Bitwarden is a good password manager. Can’t help with the rest.
I would highly recommend 1password
My stance on Proton is my stance on GrapheneOS: just because the creator is bad doesn’t mean the software is bad. As long as the software is better compared to the alternatives then I seen no reason to stop using it.
Note: better can mean more privacy-friendly, cost-friendly, sustainable, nice to use, open, etc.
Oddly enough, I found the opposite to be true with companies like Nestle: the news of them killing children makes me dislike their chocolates.
I don’t know much about the creator of GrapheneOS. What’s the bad about them? I know they’re a little dogmatic, as security/FOSS folk can sometimes be, but I’ve not heard anything beyond that.
This reddit thread has a nice summary
To save others a click
From [deleted]
Wow, this is big news. My feelings are very conflicted on this.
I think it is important to recognize both that:
- He has (and hopefully will continue to) contribute greatly and meaningfully to privacy, security, and user control/autonomy over our devices and our data greatly. More than most people ever will. The work he has done with Graphene and with Copperhead before that have benefited us all. He has made great technical contributions to Privacy on Android and is a talented developer and deserves recognition and respect for that, I’m certain it was not always easy and often very thankless job. If he chooses to leave the project, losing his experience, knowledge, and dedication is a huge loss.
- And at the same time, he often behaved in unacceptable ways, is an extremely socially abrasive and often acted in ways that were not stable nor constructive, and saw anyone that wasn’t 100% deferential to him as an enemy out to get him and get grapheneOS. Many of us have personal experiences with this, and there are a couple well documented controversies as well. He did a lot for the project technically speaking and its existence is thanks mostly to him, but he also did a lot to push people away and alienate and bully people for the small things, perceived slights, or even technical disagreements, and overall contributed to a toxic and hostile culture in the sub community that harmed both the project and his own mental health. We all struggle in certain regards, and I truly and earnestly hope that he seeks the help he needs, or just takes a breather, and re-engages with the project in a more positive and healthy way. None of us are defined by just one aspect of ourselves, we are the sum of all parts, some good, some bad.
We should be able to acknowledge the good and the bad and not rush to paint a black and white picture in either extreme.
All I could tell from my recent search into FOSS Android OS’s is that they shit on competetitors like crazy. It’s pretty funny, albiet concerning, to see the official Reddit account bash on the competition.
My stance on Proton is my stance on GrapheneOS: just because the creator is bad doesn’t mean the software is bad. As long as the software is better compared to the alternatives then I seen no reason to stop using it.
I think the major difference is that for a software package or operating system like GrapheneOS, theoretically people can audit the code and verify that it is secure (of course in practice this is not something that 99% of people will ever do). So to some extent, you technically don’t have to put a ton of trust into the GrapheneOS devs, especially with features like reproducible builds allowing you to verify that the software you’re running is the same software as the repository.
For something like Proton where you’re using a service someone else is running, you sort of have to trust the provider by default. You can’t guarantee that they’re not leaking information about you, since there’s no way for you to tell what their servers are doing with your data. Accordingly, to some extent, if you don’t trust the team behind the service, it isn’t unreasonable to start doubting the service.
This is where audits come into place. Currently Proton only made the result of their security audit public, but you can also get an accounting firm to audit the privacy statement. Not endorsing them or anything, but PureVPN has been audited by iirc Deloitte on their privacy statement. I have verified this a couple year by then sharing the conclusion of the report from Deloitte with signature.
Proton should do something similar and yearly and could have a lot more faith in them. An accountant isn’t going to risk his career for something like Proton’s privacy statement. At least I would hope not
The Porton Foundation is also the majority owner of the company these days which makes it a bit harder to do whatever you wish with the company
gonna quickly post here, since I don’t know quite where else would be good, but I noticed sometime last year that the website, https://standardnotes.com/ (a product owned by proton) seems to use a massive amount of AI generated imagery.
also: I thought I was a fool for not getting lifetime visionary when I could, now a little less so :)
Standard Notes is owned by Proton? I didn’t know it lol
I only found out since I used standard notes before the ownership thing, I suppose I’m gonna have to look for a syncing note taking service again.
Have you considered self hosting a syncing note taking service?
https://awesome-selfhosted.net/tags/note-taking--editors.html
it’s worth some consideration I suppose. so long as it’s not too resource intensive, it could be good to spin it up on my vps space
Provided you’re not in need of fully fledged powerpoints, it would be fine to run them w/ little to no resources allocated to it. It just depends on your use-case, I suggest doing a backup of some sort and try out the various options. Unless you’re setup allows you to freely try them all out in which case go nuts
I suppose I’ll look for a decent service (maybe with spreadsheet support this time) and try to spin something up next week
Ah in that case you may want to look into paperless-ngx in the Document Management section:
https://awesome-selfhosted.net/tags/document-management.html
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I don’t actually dislike ai imagery, I think it can produce interesting imagery. However, I must concede that is an excessive use of boilerplate bog-standard AI imagery.
I mostly agree, I think it’s good for individuals and small businesses who just need some free copyright-free (though arguably this is debatable) graphics for things. It’s not like the have the time/money to do it all themselves or get it commissioned.
But I don’t like it when >=medium businesses use it to cut costs or when it’s used for something that is directly meant to make money (like an advert or the core of a piece of content your consuming)
I use it a lot when I’m writing my notes (ie joplin/obsidian), I’ll use flux or stable diffusion for a few iterations until I can create an image that Is consistent with what I’m writing.
It can be really convenient to be able to recognize an image as you’re browsing through notes that are otherwise just filled with code or maybe a recount of the day.
I’m sure most consumers consider excessive use of generative AI to be in bad form. It certainly doesn’t exude professionalism.
I was considering signing up, any alternatives?
For VPN there’s mullvad, for email there’s posteo, for storage I recommend signing up with disroot, for password storage I’d recommend KeePass or BitWarden/VaultWarden depending on your threat models and needs
The real pain is going to be having those services split up so much.
Proton was really convenient for packaging those in a really convenient way.
Guess there’s a business opportunity here?
Some would say that is actually a pro, not a con. You don’t want your entire digital life tied to the whims of a single corporation. Fragmentation trades a bit of inconvenience for a ton more privacy and control over your digital presence.
Yes, it’s a pro in my opinion, don’t want all my eggs in one basket so to speak. And of course the providers want you to do just that, to use them for everything - mail, vpn, storage, passwords, aliases, docs, digital wallets (yeah proton has one now too!) - because that makes it very difficult to leave their service if their CEO turns out to be a Nazi or if you just find a better offering.
For a bundle I’d probably say look at disroot.org
FYI, if anyone is interested in VPN for torrenting, apparently Mullvad’s VPN is no longer good for that. Something to do with port forwarding. Out of the three that are recommended on https://www.privacyguides.org/en/vpn/ (IVPN, Mullvad, Proton), only Proton apparently still supports that.
You don’t need port-forwading for torrenting. It’s more like a nice-to-have. Mullvad works fine without it, so don’t let that stop you if you’re on the fence.
Good to know, thanks! Is that true even for seeding?
Yeah, it’s why I went with Proton over other options. :/
I went with mailbox.org for mail, contacts, calendar. Keepass+syncthing for passwords. Still looking for VPN and file storage. I’ve been trying out nextcloud but there is a learning curve to host your own.
Mullvad is great for vpn.
How are mailbox and fastmail privacy-wise? Where are they located? Are they friendly to share stuff to random authorities?
I’ve tried Proton mail and couldn’t get comfortable with their UI. Have been on Fastmail for two years now and it’s been excellent.
I’m back with Fastmail too, after having quit to go with Proton a while back. I never ran into a single email where the recipient was encrypted, so I’ve come to see the whole encrypted email shtick as mostly marketing.
I tried proton and I couldn’t get into using their service since it kept asking for personal information. I ended up not using it.
I really like Fastmail’s web client - just the right mix of 1990s web and “reactive” eye-candy web. The phone client is OK as far as I can tell, don’t use it much. The service itself has always been great and I’ve been a subscriber for 10-15 years, long before Proton existed.
I’m curious, too. It was the only decent free vpn.
Edit: Why downvote?
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For me, the most-used Proton service after email is their calendar. What privacy-friendly calendar alternatives are there that you can recommend?
Both my new service candidates, mailbox.org and posteo, offer calendars. However, I’m in a holding pattern currently since they are German based. Fuckface is meddling in their elections now, which happen at the end of Feb. so I’m holding off to see how much ground the Afd gains.
Self-hosting Nextcloud with Calendar plugin…
