Instead of leaving Xitter, they left Mastodon. Proton’s trend is not inspiring confidence and this feels like another step backwards.
Ugh, I use proton for VPN and email. Any suggestions for decent VPN at this point?
Looks like I’m leaving Proton. Fucking hell, not even a year ago I migrated from Gmail
It’s as if with each passing day, Proton wakes up and chooses to wear a slightly different red flag for a cape than the one they wore yesterday. I’m obviously being hyperbolic here, but I’m also a bit upset with myself for having decided to get an annual subscription with them last November.
I’ve heard good things about Mullvad for VPN and Tuta for mail. I’ve got my own domain that I can start using with whatever mail host I land on.
I’m in the U.S. What other mail providers are people using, and what other VPN providers should I be considering?
I’ve used Mullvad VPN for almost a year and it’s amazing. I only switched to Proton because I use all their services.
I was an apologist for Proton during the whole Andy Yen commentary mess, but this is a really sus choice for Proton to be making.
All that matters under capitalism is growth. I wonder if the thinking here is that Proton has already captured all the geek/privacy enthusiast crowd that it’s going to, and Andy Yen’s social fuck-up basically killed any future expansion in that space, so this is part of a pivot to new markets and abandonment of areas they know they aren’t going to win back.
If so, I’d expect to see Proton making expanded ad buys targeting preppers, libertarians, sov-cit types and other “I’m being watched!!” kooks.
They’re focusing on platforms that allow them to censor discussion.
Same. I’ll be shopping around for something else when my sub comes up.
If you’re looking to shake up your email provider in the wake of this, I highly recommend getting a custom domain name, whatever provider you choose. Cloudflare sells domains at cost. Get a not-embarrasing
.comof your own, and then you can move email providers in future without losing continuity. Proton allows exporting.emlfiles, which you can then import into your next provider. Or just keep in cold storage and declare email bankruptcy. Once you have a custom domain, you can use unique emails for all your services by setting up a catchall address. This will at least impede credential stuffing attacks, and let you know who sold/leaked your address if you do get spam.I personally left Proton a month or so ago after the last bit of drama, in part out of principle, but also because their offering is just really expensive for my use case: I just want email, on a budget, with reasonable privacy. Plus I was tired of not having IMAP support and being locked into their clients. Moved to a Zoho business account (for now) and have been happy for the $12/yr. I already had a domain name, but they typically run <$20/year too.
so the social media manager has time to clean the toilets in the afternoon
“limited resources” wtf? just copy and paste the content. I guess they didn’t like the backslash on Mastodon because of the CEO and Trump bootlicker Andy Yen
Yeah not even copy paste, this has been easily automatable for years.
Oh yeah that’s prob it. On Reddit they can delete any negative comments
This is even more ridiculous given they have a bluesky account and all they need to do is follow the bridge and their content will be ported to mastodon. Literally 5 seconds.
It’s the age of stinginess
I believe I’ll need to move to mailbox.org with custom domains.
On Mastodon, Proton is held to a higher standard. That’s why they left for the dumb masses instead.
Anyone know any good vpn alternatives with port forwarding?
AirVPN is a popular choice
I’ll second this. While it doesn’t have a track record like mullvad, it doesn’t have a bad track record so far and I have not had any problems with it since buying.
Funny how they didn’t make actual post on Mastodon, but just silently edited their profile to say they left Mastodon? That’s pretty cowardly.
Yet another reason to not like Proton.
I’ve been giving them the benefit of the doubt, but I’m kinda done with them. Anyone have any suggestions for a mail provider? I’m not yet willing to self-host that.
Posteo
I’ve been happy with mailbox.org. I left proton after the boot licking. I had been a paying customer for years.
I just signed up for mailbox.org, let’s see how this goes
I can see a company not wanting to invest resources in a social media platform without critical mass. But for a company that itself is trying to gain critical mass, moving away from a similarly situated privacy focused platform is idiotic. It signals to potential Proton users that the company cannot be trusted and it’s very hard to recover from that.
Didn’t the CEO of Proton lick the Trump boot recently?
They did, yes.
I’m assuming the next video to be released will be of the Proton CEO and Trump on on some fetish.
Andy is a cuck.
Fucking disgusting
People on here like complain and will tell that he has his balls in his mouth when in reality all he did was show some hope after the Republicans appointed someone who has a track record of being anti-bigtech. I still think the way the situation was handled terribly, but to say that he is MAGA would be a hell of a stretch in my opinion
So it came as a surprise last month when Proton CEO Andy Yen praised the Republican Party in a post on X, declaring that “10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned.” When the tweet went viral, Proton’s official Reddit account posted a now-deleted comment stating that “Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.”
show some hope huh
Yeah so uh youre proving my point, he’s happy that the nominated person is more favorable to small businesses than the one previously nominated by the Democrats. Wether it’s true or false I don’t know, but this post (and his other posts form before and after the event) to me don’t suggest MAGA
Then I just don’t know what to tell ya. It’s right there.
I wonder how that’s working out for him.
Guess I made the right choice to leave Proton.
Looks like Tuta’s getting my business now.
Unfortunately, they lock you in. If they decide the AfD is their best friend, you can’t get the emails out of their system because they don’t have an email export function…
Come on, do you really think going to a mail provider located in a country with an intelligence agreement with the US, and with a prominent far-right political party that got the most votes in the recent election could possibly be a bad idea?
I’m forward thinking like that 😉
Do you believe a country that’s part of the 14 Eyes, in which the far-right party just won the most votes in the recent election, is going to be a surefire supporter of your email privacy? Also, do you believe that Tuta would refuse a court order by the German government to turn over your data?
Just curious, what would you recommend for an email provider, or more importantly a VPN for someone in the US? A few months ago I was thinking of switching from BTGuard to proton VPN. But after a bunch of stories came out about them recently, I am no longer so interested.
There’s a few different options for VPN.
- I would suggest Njalla. They offer a VPN, domain name registration, and VPS services. They’re based in Costa Rica, and they have a bit of an infamous reputation for protecting quite a few piracy sites, so you don’t have to worry about them caring if you’re sailing the High Seas.
- Mullvad is another one that’s recommended, but they apparently removed the option to port forward after they got heat for supporting piracy, from what I’ve heard from users. I don’t know if that’s true, so you would have to ask around.
- There’s also cryptostorm, if you’re REALLY paranoid. They offer a token based authentication system that doesn’t use accounts, so they don’t keep any information on their users. Instead, the token starts a timer as soon as you first use it. You can purchase tokens using cryptocurrency, so if you’re into that, you could make it so they have no idea who you are, and there’s no information they could provide to the authorities.
- Host your own. You can set up a VPN service pretty easily by renting a VPS and just installing the needed software. This has the added bonus of you probably not needing to worry about websites blocking you for being on a VPN. You could also very easily do something like set up fedi software such as Lemmy or Mastodon, or use it to host a blog or whatever.
I would not recommend Proton if you’re going to be pirating. Proton uses a random port for forwarding each time you connect, to make it harder for people to pirate. I use it, but my download clients are Docker containers that use a script that automatically sets them to the right port each time Proton connects, so there’s no issue. Otherwise, I would have to manually set the correct port every time I used the client. Proton is hosted in Switzerland, which is outside the US jurisdiction, so despite the recent uproar over them, they are the safest choice since it’s illegal for them to provide private information to other governments, such as the US.
As for mail service, it’s not difficult to find good ones, since mail is pretty simple, but keep in mind that there is no mail service that’s going to refuse a court order for your data from their own government, so if you’re planning on doing something illegal, or if you’re going to be engaging in activism, then you need to find a provider that’s outside the jurisdiction of your country or it’s allies. For someone in the US, that might mean going to Switzerland or Russia for a provider. Any mail service will do fine, as you can easily encrypt your mail using PGP. There are some that would say that’s not secure enough, and while they have a point that it’s not the most secure, it’s good enough for the vast majority of users. Most people aren’t talking about anything that a government or hacker is going to want bad enough they spend the time decrypting your emails. And if they did want it that bad, it would be easier for a government to just raid your house and poke through your computer as they please.
