After Andy Yen’s endorsement of the orange utan, I would seriously reconsider using any Proton product.
Yen tried to backpedal meekly several times since then, to get out of the pickle he got himself into with his definitely-not-impressed customers, but it’s a bit late for that: either he’s pro-Trump or he’s naive. Either way, he makes Proton sketchy.
Idc if I likes Trump or not (even though Trump is garbage); but I do care that he says the Republicans - the party that has spent years attacking encryption and privacy, who has sued to obtain private medical records of women and trans people who see doctors, and who is funded by billionaire big tech moguls - is the better option for privacy.
Also just taking ANY position for a leader of the US - one of the biggest parties to the Five Eyes agreement - just leaves a bad taste.
Do you have any recommendations for someone who just uses them for email?
I’m a happy mailbox.org user
Just switched and couldn’t be happier. Now I can use FairMail as a client and loving all the extra features.
I used a custom but generic sounding domain name which made the switch pretty seamless.
I’ve been using Tuta for more than 8 years now and had one serious issue with their service during this time (longer outage, pretty early on). Other than that I have nothing but positive experience with them.
They’re also based in Germany if that makes any difference.I’m happy Posteo.net user.
German and secure email service.
But unfortunately the web frontend isn’t quite as good, so if you are dependent on something like this then don’t use it.
I’ve been a Runbox customer for many years. Never had any problem with them. They’re located in privacy-friendly Norway.
Been very impressed with Runbox since Andy turned out to be an idiot.
I made it, so I’m obviously very biased, but I think it’s better than Proton. It’s got some really useful organization and anti-spam features.
The labeling idea is pretty interesting, an email service with inbuilt proxy, but your website is pretty light on details. Stuff like pricing or custom domain support is absent.
Good point. I’ll add that.
I’m working on custom domain support right now. And pricing is pretty straightforward, since I only have extra storage and sending options. You get 500MB for free, and the ability to receive email. Sending is $1/month. I put that behind a paywall to prevent spammers from using Port87. As a small email service, if you send spam, the big players can blocklist you and kill your service. So, keeping my SMTP servers’ IP address reputation high is really important.
You can join the Discord to follow along with new features and updates:
“…join the Discord…”
Aaaaand I’m out.
Not OP, but I’ve been using Fastmail for a few years now and have had no issues with them.
Same, I just switched over to them and have had a good experience with it.
Posteo is good. Have been using them for 2 years now.
I’ve got an account with tilde.club
They even have a newsgroup service for the tilde community. It’s not full on Usenet and there aren’t any hosted files, but it’s a nice community feature.
You get a gigabyte soft cap (three gig hard cap and a week grace period to get back to soft cap) but it actually talks to google, for the time being, and I’ve been making an attempt at migrating to the point of using gmail as a ‘talking ot my republican family’ and ‘spam’ account.
I think im going to try it out. I dont like where proton is going.
https://tilde.club/signup/ https://tilde.club/wiki/faq.html
Remember. This is a hobbiest community. Personal recommendation is using tilde.club for emails, and spread your other needs across other tilde servers.
Yes commandline interaction is required.
Save your SSH keys not just on your computer but in a couple other secure places. If you have to pull them from backup, remember to reset the file’s permissions otherwise SSH won’t like them. Setting up a password backup is very helpful here especially since that will let you use your mail address with apps such as k-9 on android, or claws/thunderbird/outlook for desktop.
oh yeah def. Im going to donate if/when I take a look. sdf also has something similar.
SDF’s been, in my experiance, less sure? I don’t want to talk trash about what is effectivly pubnix’s grandaddy. I’m going to put money in the pot because I want that place to keep running, but i view it more as curiosity than cornerstone.
Tutanota has been pretty decent to me, though their android client is sometimes a little rough around the edges. Though never in a way that’s caused problems for me or impaired usage, and it has a pretty enough interface.
They have a free plan if you’re broke as shit like I am and are looking to switch from a free proton plan
Hotmail. Been using it since high school and every data breach and fuck up taught me something new.
Any alternatives for their VPN service with port forwarding?
Mullvad (or Mullvad on a router with Adguard)
Mullvad no longer has port forwarding.
There are none of them as good as Proton.
For example, AirVPN hasn’t had any security audits and doesn’t seem too interested in them either due to monetary concerns. That’s a deal breaker for me.
Private internet access is nice
They have port forwarding, but they were bought by a company that has been caught stuffing malware into purchased programs. Basically, it was a company that has a history of buying out otherwise legitimate software brands, and then bulking them with adware as a quick cash grab on the existing customers.
That buyout was like 4 or 5 years ago, but it left a sour taste in many people’s mouths. Because everyone expected the PIA client to silently get bulked with adware one day. Since trust is basically the only reason to casually use a VPN, it pushed a lot of their users to alternatives.
Airvpn, or Azirevpn if you’re ok with few servers
Of those I’ve only used Azire, and it worked well. I’ve seen Airvpn recommended often though
Just did the transition off Proton! Most replacement self hosted in my homelab except for email.
Does Proton really support Trump? A deeper analysis
One thing to note is that while on Reddit, people are alleging that Proton is a company run by a fascist, pro-MAGA, pro-dictatorship CEO, users on X are accusing Andy and the company of being anti-MAGA/anti-Trump.
So, in the face of all the evidence I’ve found, to compare Andy to a tech oligarch like Zuck and Elon, who are now bootlicking on display for all to see, is not supported by the evidence.
[…]
However, being disillusioned with one party on one issue doesn’t mean that all of a sudden Andy Yen changed all of his stances and that now he’s actually pro-Republican or pro-MAGA. All of the evidence gathered suggests the exact opposite.
Considering how many users here have expressed similar disillusionment with the current Democratic party, it seems a bit hypocritical to judge Andy Yen for having the same feelings (or expressing them on occasion).
This whole “Proton supports MAGA” thing is another example of internet mob-think where everybody has an opinion informed by no facts at all, actively ignores or dismisses the larger context in order to protect that fragile opinion from reality, and most haven’t even looked at the original statements that sparked the controversy.
Considering how many users here have expressed similar disillusionment with the current Democratic party, it seems a bit hypocritical to judge Andy Yen for having the same feelings (or expressing them on occasion).
The only thing Yen should have done to be credible is shut the fuck up and not take any side, or express any political opinion. I expect no less from the CEO of a company that pretends to sell me privacy from a neutral country.
I’m not saying Yen is a raging magat. I’m saying the moment he opened his trap about US politics, he tainted his company and damaged its credibility.
It’s not “his” company, the company is owned by the Proton foundation (of whatever it’s exactly called)
Yeah Yen is an idiot, but his power is more limited than with a normal CEO company structure and the Swiss law is a lot stricter than the competitors law in like Germany.
Just like with any of these mail servers, buy your own domain just incase the company switches gears and starts selling your data or whatnot
It’s not “his” company
I meant “his” the same way I say “my” company: it’s not mine, but it’s where I work and who I work for.
Ah yes, I too require everyone else to only express views that agree with my own or else keep silent. Of course, I am the only person allowed to have nuanced opinions.
🤡
“10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned.”
Yen said this as our government is being devoured by someone with massive conflicts of interest. In no way is this nuanced. It was in extremely poor taste and the worst time to say something political.
We don’t use real names on the internet for a reason. CEOs that use their own names as platforms should have a department (or at least a publicist) take a look at their posts as it can effect a company.
People are leaving the platform now because of something pretty avoidable.
Sure sure. The guy who unprompted endorsed a trump appointment that has deep US Telco ties, bizarrly said “the GOP is the party for the little guy,” had nothing but wonderful things to say about J.D vance, stated that Chuck Schumer slow rolled 2 internet privacy bills because of “quid pro quo” with his daughters working for big tech, used the phrase “triggered” unprompted, and just randomly added “88” to the end of his new user name.
Yeah, that guy is just neutral and disillusioned with the Democratic party. It’s not utterly clear what spaces and politics he aligns with. That would just be wholley unknowable.
Yen is an idiot yes I don’t anybody can disagree on that one.
But he was born in 88 and while it is well known on the internet the general public doesn’t know it’s other meaning (except the Germans and maybe the American’s).
I live in NL and I can ask around and the majority of people will not know what it means. Probably the same with 34, 69 en 420 for the matter.
I also don’t believe that endorsing one statement means that you agree with the entire pov of the person/party, but I am not American.
Believe what you want and the best thing is to just use a personal domain for your email
It wasn’t unprompted - he was literally replying to the announcement of the appointment on Twitter. An announcement of a person he thought would be great for a role that he’s apparently been advocating for action against big tech in for years.
He’s born in 1988 you dolt.
The ugliest thing about Lemmy I’ve noticed so far is that it enjoys disinformation just as much as Reddit - as long as it fits the circlejerk, updoots this way.
Huh, I noticed you cherry picked two things to try to refute (interesting that you ignored him hiding “88” in binary and the fact he specifically tagged Trump in that tweet) and ignored all the others I listed. Its almost like you want to spread disinfo about how this is a non issue instead of actually digging into it.
Explain his fandom for J.D vance (a tech millionaire funded by the biggest, most privacy invading, facebook funding, Palentir creating tech billionaire ever, Peter theil) while endlessly criticizing Chuck Schumer, his statement that the GOP “was there for the little guy,” that the GOP was going to take on big tech even while they bent the knee and were donating millions directly to Trump in real time, his use of the term “triggered” to describe offending someone, on and on.
Go on, keep excusing all the clear MAGA “mask on” indicators. Tell us why a CEO in a foreign country, that keeps heaping praise on one party while using their cultural shibboleths, also “coincidentally” used an in-group dog whistle, is actually totally non partisan. That should be easy, right?
This comment is a perfect example of why I have written https://loudwhisper.me/blog/proton-fediverse-burnout/
The 88 thing is the complete tip of the iceberg for me. I can’t honestly imagine the thought process needed to reach a conclusion that a Taiwanese guy (8 is a lucky number) born in '88 would put that number as a dog-whistle (which is not really part of his own cultural landscape) for Nazis, while dealing with a PR issue.
It’s like looking at a crashed car, tire marks on the ground and suggesting it must have been a sharknado and not a car accident.
Nicely written blog post, it actually sums it up pretty nicely imo
Thanks, I appreciate it.
“Hide your power level” mask on behavior from the alt right love to play these plausible deniability games while still signaling their actual intent. You see it with the “my heart goes out to” or “i’m just autisitc” cover for musks nazi salute, or the “he was just waving” Bannon nazi salute. They made a nazi salute, but of course it cant be a nazi salute, wink wink.
I honestly find the 88 to be a faint indicator in this case, but it was a wildly tone deaf one if so. When someone claiming neutrality is making very partisan endorsements for a party that’s steeped in all of the same memetic game playing, you cant ignore the dog whistles.
The problem is that those arguments are not falsifiable. If not one, but two completely reasonable explanation cannot convince you of someone motivations, nothing can. However, I don’t care if Musk did or did not a Nazi salute. His actions speak much louder (in a bad sense) than the aesthetic that he decides to adopt. Proton donation pattern for example would be a strong indicator to measure intentions.
but it was a wildly tone deaf one if so
Maybe. But also maybe people are allowed to have different cultural references, and in a global context (i.e., the internet) we should expect diversity. I - for example - had never heard of this 88 thing, and I would definitely not think about it at all the next time I create a username, and I didn’t think it when I went to a barber shop that has that number in the name. Likewise, I wouldn’t call anybody writing “Merry Xmas” tone deaf for missing the reference to the X MAS of infamous history (and just recently in the news). For some people it’s apparently impossible to see their culture as non-universal (at the cost of sounding stereotypical, folks from US have particularly this problem after decades of cultural hegemony).
for a party that’s steeped in all of the same memetic game playing, you cant ignore the dog whistles
This all happened before Musk/Bannon salute. Just to specify it.
This might sound crazy but this is way worse to me than the CEO simping for orange man. At least for Trump he has a semi plausible excuse.
Reposting stuff on Mastodon or Bluesky barely requires any additional effort. And I cannot think of a good reason to close abandon the free publicity when they already have it set up.
And I’d have thought the potential customers segment are exactly the Mastodon users.
I think the reason is that every time they post something, someone there points out the Andy Yen thing. Thats basically the only comments. So its detrimental to their business.
This is most likely what is the issue and they are never going to be able to fix this on a platform like that
They have tools that let you cross-post effortlessly, so that’s strange.
(Re)Posting and not engaging with the community is not free publicity, is bad publicity. They don’t have the resources (according to them) do to the latter, and therefore they choose not to do the former.
Shows their priorities by not choosing an open platform.
Sure, it does. Which depending on what their goal is, may be perfectly fine.
They have always been actively almost exclusively on reddit (where they engage) anyway, they will keep doing so I assume.
Not even Bluesky, they went straight to Reddit. Shame.
It’s a sad day when “you can find us over on Discord” is a better option.
At least reddits getting selfaware enough that every other post is ppl getting mad at ppl telling them to google since those posts are what they find off google, or they’ve already googled and found nothing.
The immediate assumption that everyone is an idiot who hasnt tried to google is annoying but used to be valid, ppl got lazy there (including me) and would just ask questions that were easily googleable, the issue is those posts are now first on google and none of them have answers lol
Pointing people to reddit, as if that’s an alternative. When a VPN provider makes such bad choices it’s tempting to imagine that the decision was influenced by somebody who wants to secretly get the message out that the company is no longer to be trusted, because it’s hard to see any other logic in it.
Reddit has a ton of users. Mastodon is marginal.
Privacy usually doesn’t mean following what’s popular.
We have to wait and see what the next audit is going to find, that will give us more security than any kind of information provided from Proton themselves.
The Swiss laws are also helping to make it so they keep the privacy standards high.
But I would definitely use your own domain for your Proton mail currently
Lmao k bye Proton
I’m searching for a safe and cheap alternative for my own domain, but it’s hard! And I don’t want to give money to American companies.
tuta.com is great for me so far
Tuta Mail is free for personal use, though you must accept a few limitations. The free edition lets you send and receive all the secure messages you want, and it includes a secure calendar. Searching encrypted email is limited—with the free edition, you can only search messages up to a month old. Paying 36 euros per year for a Revolutionary subscription ($38.65 as of this writing) removes that search limitation, lets you have multiple calendars, and adds features including filtering rules and 15 alias email addresses (more about those later). It also raises the storage for your messages from 1GB to 20GB.
yea I just went with a paid plan right off the bat since I have a custom domain, has been totally fine
Mailbox.org located in Germany and run by Peer Heinlein. You can use your own Domain with it just fine
I been using Canadian webhost hosterbox.com for several years. Been very happy with them.
Namecrane, I think they are Canadian
Such delicate snowflakes these ceos…
I do think the second part of your statement was unnecessary.
In a normal scenario yes. This is not longer a normal situation. You support Trump? You better start hiding…
Yeah. In my experience babies can be pretty fun people to be around and they have much healthier ways to express their emotions.
*member of the board
on reddit they can pursue sitewide bans more easily on users, since reddit had started doing this month. its to silence all criticism against them, im betting facebook will be thier next stop.
one simple reporting of your acct will get you immediately banned from the sub, and potentially a sitewide ban.
What kind of expensive resources you need to just post on Mastodon?
A human being.
Whoever posts on reddit can copy paste to other platforms, if they are to lazy to use a software that consolidates it for them.
ability to silence, and censor or criticism,?-proton probably
Mastodon has that too, so Wonder why leave Mastodon at all
They can’t control all the instances. I think that if they tried that with the one that I am on they would be laughed at.
Way easier for a company to make its own reddit and censor any post that talks about why you should probably start to look at moving your data before they are quietly asked to hand over all the data they have.
Makes sense
But people still can see the other messages. Instead a censored post on Reddit or Instagram is invisible
reddit allows you more ability to censor people permanently from the site, in the form of sitewide bans and automatic removals and such. and they can probably with the request of the admins take down any other proton subreddit that is potentially critical of them. and reddit recently has given mods more privileges to ban people with thier filters.
Good to know, thank you
i came here from reddit because of such a ban, apparently if you report someone too much you can get banned, or if you report and the mod doesnt like it you can recieve a sub ban, or even sitewide temp or permaban, and alot of the mods have admins ears, so you can get banned more easily. thats why proton wants to go to reddit, they just remove all negative comments, and ban people. and reddits ban feature is very intense(any attempt an evasion is pretty difficult nowawadays)
i disagree as there are plenty of tools to post to multiple platforms at once. but yea if they were so kind to actually interact then yes
So first taking Trump’s side and now that…
Agreeing with one statement doesn’t mean you side with all the points of a person/party.
Andy Yen is an idiot though, not going to lie about that one
Do they really need a team of people to post the same thing to X, Mastodon, BkueSky, etc? I’m honestly surprised they don’t have some bot to make all the posts for them to those services. Sounds like a cop out to me.
They specifically said they don’t want to do automated posting, to avoid writing and not interacting with the community. I see no value in them doing this, considering we can get the same content via RSS, blog page or email newsletter. Presence makes sense if it means presence. If it means a bot reposting content, anybody can do it, but the value is very low.
It wouldn’t be hard to do simultaneous posting. People figured that out ages ago.
It’s not a problem of complexity, it’s a deliberate choice of not wanting to do that, because it is synthetic content disconnected from the community.
Exactly. If they need help maybe someone could create something so they can post to BlueSky, Matrix, Lemmy, and Mastadon at same time soon. Also set it up for the up and coming Flashes and Pixelfed.
i heard they stopped posting on bluesky weeks ago, not surprised they are active on meta platforms, and X.
Fuck the fascists
That word has truly lost all meaning.
Nah, just they are to common and normalize now.
And you normalize them more if you dont like to call them by they name.
Well this is certainly one of the decisions of all time. I guess we finally got our reaction from the board. I was waiting, hoping to hear some rebuke of Yen’s bullshit. Didn’t expect another intentional step into shit. Bye Felicia.
Proton is really just trashing their rep.
One wonders why the rest of the Proton Foundation hasn’t stepped in and gotten rid of Andy; I assume it’s just because they don’t actually care about privacy, they’re just cryptonerds.
I suggest you give a read to “Privacy is power” by Carissa Veliz (on the board). She also gave a very good interview on the podcast “firewalls don’t stop dragons”.
I also don’t think “cryptonerds” applies to people like Tim Berners Lee.
Gross. I’m slowly moving from ProtonMail to Port87, which is kind of embarrassing because I made Port87 and launched it almost two years ago. Switching email providers is hard though. You have to update everything.
Unless you use a custom domain. That way you only need to update everything once.
Yep. Definitely worth the ten bucks a year. Also it lets you get your own DMARC reports, which can be useful sometimes.
Is there a free DMARC reports analyzer? I don’t want to pay for a premium service (it’s my personal email, after all), and I don’t like Postmark free service.
I don’t know. I just read the XML. It’s pretty easy to read. I’m sure there’s a tool out there though.
I feel like those resources are about to get even more limited.
