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
Sigh.
Goddammit. I’m so fucking tired.
This is how they win.
Like zombies, slow and steady, dumb and hungry
Perfect
Be tired with Tuta!
Am I the only that don’t see this the same way as the rest? I am in way way endorsing or supporting MAGA, but they did take action against big tech (though for reasons of retribution) and I see Proton only acknowledging a good person being designated to lead the next antitrust efforts, apparently with a good track record.
Proton also acknowledges Lina Kahn who has done a great job, nominated under Joe Biden.
Ultimately, I feel like from a perspective of Proton, any win against Big Tech, is a good win, and I can’t disagree.
There is a longer discussion to be had around how the dems were supported by oligarchs and I think that’s what Proton is referring to, they decided to turn a blind eye under the Obama administration for instance. Bernie Sanders goes to lengths about this in this interview, illuminating: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzkgWDCucNY
So all in all, maga sucks, new pick probably good, and in my view, proton not actually endorsing maga/trump but just acknowledging a good pick.
Did I miss something?
The main part of the message that pissed me off was the idea that GOP sides with the “little guy”. First, it’s demonstrably false. Second, he is a tech CEO. He wouldn’t recognise a little guy before his security crew has time to forcibly remove him.
Yes I fully agree with you.
Does that claim alone warrant the absolute backlash though? I personally feel like no.
Truly unhinged that they decided to come out on this. Fellas, you are fucking Swiss why throw yourself under the bus for the US election
Because terrible people literally can’t help themselves. Wait for people to show you who they truly are, they will…
This may sound drastic but really I think the only move for Proton is fire Andy. They’re a non-profit, the board need to step in. He has single-handedly cost the company both current and potential customers by just not being smart enough to keep his mouth shut. This makes him an idiot, and an idiot as CEO is not a good look (see: anything musk)
The CEO “apologized” this morning (after being duly chastised, I’m sure):
Hi all, last night, a post from last year from my personal X account suddenly became a topic of discussion here on Reddit. I want to share a few thoughts on this to provide clarity to the community on what is Proton’s policy on politics going forward.
First, while the X post was not intended to be a political statement, I can understand how it can be interpreted as such, and it therefore should not have been made. While we will not prohibit all employees from expressing personal political opinions publicly, it is something I will personally avoid in the future. I lean left on some issues, and right on other issues, but it doesn’t serve our mission to publicly debate this. It should be obvious, but I will say that it is a false equivalence to say that agreeing with Republicans on one specific issue (antitrust enforcement to protect small companies) is equal to endorsing the entire Republican party platform.
Second, officially Proton must always be politically neutral, and while we may share facts and analysis, our policy going forward will be to share no opinions of a political nature. The line between facts, analysis, and opinions can be blurry at times, but we will seek to better clarify this over time through your feedback and input.
The exception to these rules is on the topics of privacy, security, and freedom. These are necessarily political topics, where influencing public policy to defend these values, often requires engaging politically.
The operations of Proton have always reflected our neutrality. For example, recently we refused pressure to deplatform both Palestinian student groups and Zionist student groups, not because we necessarily agreed with their views, but because we believe more strongly in their right to have their own views.
It is also a legal guarantee under Swiss law, which explicitly prohibits us from assisting foreign governments or agencies, and allows us no discretion to show favoritism as Swiss law and Swiss courts have the final say.
The promise we make is that no matter your politics, you will always be welcome at Proton (subject of course to adherence to our terms and conditions). When it comes to defending your right to privacy, Proton will show no favoritism or bias, and will unconditionally defend it irrespective of the opinions you may hold.
This is because both Proton as a company, and Proton as a community, is highly diverse, with people that hold a wide range of opinions and perspectives. It’s important that we not lose sight of nuance. Agreeing/disagreeing with somebody on one point, rarely means you agree/disagree with them on every other point.
I would like to believe that as a community there is more that unites us than divides us, and that privacy and freedom are universal values that we can all agree upon. This continues to be the mission of the non-profit Proton Foundation, and we will strive to carry it out as neutrally as possible.
Going forward, I will be posting via u/andy1011000. Thank you for your feedback and inputs so far, and we look forward to continuing the conversation.
Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i2nz9v/on_politics_and_proton_a_message_from_andy/
Am I being paranoid when I notice that the binary at the end of his username translates to 88?
Wow!
Of all companies, this is one I didn’t expect.
Damn.
the good news is this is a lesson to never trust any entity whose role in the world is to accumulate capital
What’s insane is that didn’t Proton just recently announce they were converting to a non-profit?
Yes, they did: https://proton.me/blog/proton-non-profit-foundation
deleted by creator
There is absolutely no way to verify any of Proton’s privacy claims. Why should I trust one for profit company over another?
... ... ....,, .
Why would this be unexpected?
Proton already handed over the IP of a climate protester to authorities several years ago, while boasting that they had a no log policy.
https://therecord.media/protonmail-forced-to-collect-an-activists-ip-address-in-police-investigation
Every time, in the past few years, that I bring this up, everyone just acts like I’m setting an impossible standard and no alternative exists.
Proton has been shady for years.
From reading that article it looks like they were only using and able to log the IP address when the person logged in to their protonmail account specifically - not VPN.
They even state that VPNs can not be forced to log under the same legal order and are treated differently so in this case it seems the activists were not using the VPN while accessing their emails.
Although I dont agree with even the logging of the email IP, it appears like the user shot themselves in the foot like that other case where someone used their real name in the username and that obviosly has to be logged in some way.
I didn’t know about this. I haven’t followed Proton closely for a while, but this…wow. Kinda lousy.
I wish I had heard of this earlier, that combined with these new political statements is enough for me to find something else.
Remember when businesses stayed the fuck out of politics so they didn’t alienate their customers because they like money? Pepperidge Farms remembers.
“Proton? Why the fuck would he be mad at a WINE fork…?”
“… OH THE MAIL-”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.
:-(
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.
car which is bought once and is mostly outside of vendor control once you have it
Well, cars in the 1940s at least. Don’t buy a Tesla.
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 ?
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.
Trump’s terrible politics aside:
-
the Republican party is pushing legislation which requires you to identify yourself to view porn
-
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.
-
Abandoning the Proton subscription now. How stupid and irresponsible. In fact, are running away from all your principles.
If they think Dollar Store Hitler is going to stand up for small businesses then they’re about to have a rude awakening.
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.
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!
For business email, you would use your own domain name, so it wouldn’t be an @port87.com address.
Yeah, unfortunately Google and Microsoft basically have the power to kill any smaller email provider this way just by claiming they’re “spammy”. It’s a duopoly and probably should be investigated under antitrust laws.
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.
It’s in California, and that’s where the data is stored. It’s not stored with end to end encryption, so I understand your worry, and unfortunately Port87 wouldn’t be a good choice for your needs if that’s not acceptable.
In the future I might make the system work with locally hosted databases, so you would still use my SMTP servers, but everything else would be locally hosted. That’s probably a while in the future though. I have some priorities before exploring that option.
It’s probably still a good option for an all-in-one solution for anyone with a very low threat model who wants to get rid of clutter and protect their inbox.
I see they have a us patent somewhere, am guessing they are located in the us then ?
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?
Canada too.
This fucks. Joined your waitlist!
I like this organization method, feels very ADHD-friendly
Yep! I have ADHD and it’s the only organization method that’s ever worked for me. I wrote an article about it:
https://sciactive.com/2023/07/17/the-best-email-for-those-who-struggle-with-organization/
Awesome. Signed up for the waitlist, can’t wait to try it out.
does it support custom domains?
Not yet, but I’m working on them right now. I’m hoping to have that done in a month or two. I just finished the user management and access control part of it.
Do you have a calendar?
Not yet, but that’s definitely planned.
Not sure if you know this but with Gmail (and I bet that almost with any other email service) you can approach this - instead of the ‘-’ character you use a ‘+’ and set custom filters and tags for each ‘+’ you want. I’ve been doing this for ages with it - though as a third world person I can’t afford privacy by paying a third party subscription nor setting a home server and running local services 24/7 by paying more electricity.
Yeah, that does work, but then you have to manage all of the filters yourself, and some places don’t accept a + in an email.
I wrote an article that talks about that here:
https://sciactive.com/2023/07/17/the-best-email-for-those-who-struggle-with-organization/
Phew! For a moment I thought you were talking about the steam compatibility thingy.
I will continue to use Proton and their services, not because I support or endorse any political decisions from the CEO/board members (and I don’t), but because they provide open source, secure, and private software that I love.
This is no different than arguing about using GrapheneOS based on the behavior of the maintainers.
Oh no… I use Graphene… what’s the deal with the maintainers?
This video seemed to have been the start of an anti-GrapheneOS movement. I won’t get into details, because it’s been explained to death, but it’s here for your convenience.
I use and love GrapheneOS as well.
Thanks for the video, much appreciated. Never paid much attention to the project beyond their website… and I’m glad that’s as far as I’ve gone lol
Don’t bother videos against GrapheneOS. The lead of GrapheneOS has autism and he lacks social skills. This creates endless loop of hate talk between some YouTubers and GrapheneOS.
As a technical project, GOS is far superior and it is the most secure OS on the planet right now. The lead of the GOS has developed hardened malloc and various other security solutions that is now baked into GrapheneOS. So I would ask people to enjoy the project rather than stimulating more fuss against the project.
Heads up: autism isn’t a defense, it’s a condition.
It is when the guy was swatted
Louis Rossman has bad understanding of FOSS remember
At least GrapheneOS isn’t something I’d pay for
Nope, they don’t share their server code. Not cool.
Or… lemmy lol
If its open source, where’s the fork? Someone can provide “electron”. No, “quark”?
There are 2 kinds of companies:
- Evil companies
- Companies that are not evil YET.
What this means in this case is that only your own E-Mail server running on a Raspi in your own home can be considered private or secure in the long run. Unfortunately this is really really hard to do, which is the only reason i have not done it yet.
Personally i do not consider any E-Mail private, because E-Mail is not E2E-encrypted, and 99.9% of times one side of the conversation is going to be hosted on some shady companies servers.Of course Proton delivers a great service, because they make an insecure protocol a little less insecure, and i personally use Proton mail. Unfortunately their closed-source nature makes it impossible to switch providers without abandoning their great software.
As for services like Drive, they can actually be hosted privately and securely on your own Raspi with stuff like NextCloud/OwnCloud.
For those that can’t/don’t want to self-host, i would recommend paying for a hoster that hosts FOSS software and contributes to it either with money or code. In that case you would probably loose E2E-encryption, but gain the ability to switch providers once your provider turns on you. In that case at least some of your money would continue to offer value to you by having improved the software you are still using.
