Proton has stopped using their Mastodon account
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Such delicate snowflakes these ceos…
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.
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I worked for multiple non-profits that made a profit. That's not how this works. It's not the function, it's the cost.
The bottom line is that Proton does not collect your data to sell it for profit.
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Yeah, all the scumbags who use this just for advertising only tried mastodon to see if it would have a significant amount of useful idiots.
like i was following a bunch yotubers one time, and i heard over the pandemic they fled to facebook, because they were crying the sub was making them look bad, they are on facebook specifically so they can do what reddit mods can do, ban people, block them from thier discussions, delete criticism comments.( they had thier followers, and the employees systemically attack one of subs about them and taken it down, the current one they couldnt do it, so now they are trolling it)
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Mastodon has that too, so Wonder why leave Mastodon at all
reddit allows you more ability to censor people permanently from the site, in the form of sitewide bans and automatic removals and such.
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I’d say this move seems too dumb even for fiction, if that wasn’t the SOP for the entire country I live in.
Given the context though, I’m curious if one of you privacy experts can change my mind on how I approach email.
I don’t use email for any meaningful communication where I expect privacy. It is essentially the way for companies and a few other organizations to send me low priority information and/or confirm my identity to reset a password or whatever. Because of that, the only attributes of an email service I really care about are reliability and availability, including not having emails silently blocked for not coming from a “trusted” provider.
So what is the practical risk of just using a Gmail address for that stuff, equivalent to hiding in plain sight? Yeah it helps Google fine tune their advertising model for me, while I’m running Linux on all my machines and blocking ads on any device I touch. My social media is Lemmy and my streaming service is Jellyfin.
Am I risking too much if I use it as the corporate contact point that it is? Am I just letting my white/straight/cis/male privilege show through?
I mean yeah I think the main problem is just Google having all that data about you and potentially selling it to others whether that be for advertising, robocalling, or other things. So it really just comes down to how comfortable you are allowing Google to be able to use your emails and communications from corporations to see what things you like. Only time it really matters more is if you are using email for more personal or secure communications which yeah I would always prefer using better encrypted more messaging focused apps like signal for or just talking in person when possible.
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reddit allows you more ability to censor people permanently from the site, in the form of sitewide bans and automatic removals and such.
Good to know, thank you
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I've committed a bunch of relatives and myself to a year of the Family plan, and now most of us want to leave.. What a mess.
Wait, you bought/gave money to Proton so early in its life? Why do people keep falling for these over and over.
If a 'can run on low resources sustainably' is legit, going to have test and wait for it to see first.
Otherwise we need to accept what we can and can't have based on what is possible without being greedy and at someone else's expense.
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Do you have any recommendations for someone who just uses them for email?
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
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Three years ago I made an issue on their feedback page because the android app doesn't really work on degoogled phones, it requires gms for notifications. Still not fixed.
Nice privacy focused App that can't fully be used if you take privacy seriously.
FYI i use a degoogled FP3 with microG and I don't have any problemi.
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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.
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Mastodon has that too, so Wonder why leave Mastodon at all
But people still can see the other messages. Instead a censored post on Reddit or Instagram is invisible
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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)
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I’d say this move seems too dumb even for fiction, if that wasn’t the SOP for the entire country I live in.
Given the context though, I’m curious if one of you privacy experts can change my mind on how I approach email.
I don’t use email for any meaningful communication where I expect privacy. It is essentially the way for companies and a few other organizations to send me low priority information and/or confirm my identity to reset a password or whatever. Because of that, the only attributes of an email service I really care about are reliability and availability, including not having emails silently blocked for not coming from a “trusted” provider.
So what is the practical risk of just using a Gmail address for that stuff, equivalent to hiding in plain sight? Yeah it helps Google fine tune their advertising model for me, while I’m running Linux on all my machines and blocking ads on any device I touch. My social media is Lemmy and my streaming service is Jellyfin.
Am I risking too much if I use it as the corporate contact point that it is? Am I just letting my white/straight/cis/male privilege show through?
I don’t use email for any meaningful communication where I expect privacy. It is essentially the way for companies and a few other organizations to send me low priority information and/or confirm my identity to reset a password or whatever.
As a privacy enthusiast (expert seems too much), this immediately stood out. Privacy is the context of emails means that all my data which includes the content of the messages but also the metadata (who I talk to, which services I use - like in your example -, when I communicate, how often, etc.) is kept private, meaning not used for anything else than providing me the service (i.e., let me send and receive emails).
From this point of view, even if you consider the content of your emails not sensitive, already the fact that you do use company X (because they sent you a password reset email) is data about you, and as such can and will be mined by Google to profile you or to sell it.Am I risking too much if I use it as the corporate contact point that it is? Am I just letting my white/straight/cis/male privilege show through?
Nobody can tell you this, because risk in this context is purely a subjective estimation, and you are free to do what you please.
However, I do care about my privacy, which means that I want to minimize the amount of data about me available for sale or to others in general. For me the motivation is quite simple, while I do block ads everywhere too and I generally don't have an impact in terms of getting personalized ads, once the data is collected I have no idea what will be used for, by whom and for what purpose. It doesn't even matter if the data actually allows to infer accurate things about me, it's enough that someone (e.g., insurance company, employer, bank, government, etc.) is gullible enough to believe that inference is correct. In the book "Privacy is power" (written by Carissa Veliz) she also develops a very interesting argument about the fact that violating your privacy usually means also violating the privacy of the people near you (the people with whom you share demographic, the people you communicate with etc.). This could be another point of view to consider.Anyway, if for you the above is fine, there is no other significant risk you are taking, and you should keep using Gmail if that suits you.
A technical note. Secure email providers generally can have technical controls (i.e., encryption) to protect the body (content) of the email, and in some cases some small amount of metadata (e.g., Tuta encrypts also the subject). Generally though, you are still trusting the provider to perform that encryption (especially because a mail from Gmail -> Proton/Tuta would be encrypted by Proton/Tuta) and to not use metadata for any purpose besides delivering the emails. So privacy here doesn't mean absolutely removing the data from a third party, but it means giving it to a third party who uses it (due to contractual obligation, business incentives etc.) only for the intended purpose in a privacy-preserving way.
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kinda wierd for proton to promote on reddit, when reddit doesnt allow VPN usage to most users, mostly for spam/botting/ban evasions.
That may be, but they have always done that. Reddit is the only place where they have a real presence for years. It's not like they are moving there now. They have always been predominantly there on the first place.
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like i was following a bunch yotubers one time, and i heard over the pandemic they fled to facebook, because they were crying the sub was making them look bad, they are on facebook specifically so they can do what reddit mods can do, ban people, block them from thier discussions, delete criticism comments.( they had thier followers, and the employees systemically attack one of subs about them and taken it down, the current one they couldnt do it, so now they are trolling it)
Yeah, it's pretty disgusting how much people abuse power once they have it.
Really makes me respect those who don't, but they are few and far between.
The average person just isn't something to write home about these days.
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I don’t use email for any meaningful communication where I expect privacy. It is essentially the way for companies and a few other organizations to send me low priority information and/or confirm my identity to reset a password or whatever.
As a privacy enthusiast (expert seems too much), this immediately stood out. Privacy is the context of emails means that all my data which includes the content of the messages but also the metadata (who I talk to, which services I use - like in your example -, when I communicate, how often, etc.) is kept private, meaning not used for anything else than providing me the service (i.e., let me send and receive emails).
From this point of view, even if you consider the content of your emails not sensitive, already the fact that you do use company X (because they sent you a password reset email) is data about you, and as such can and will be mined by Google to profile you or to sell it.Am I risking too much if I use it as the corporate contact point that it is? Am I just letting my white/straight/cis/male privilege show through?
Nobody can tell you this, because risk in this context is purely a subjective estimation, and you are free to do what you please.
However, I do care about my privacy, which means that I want to minimize the amount of data about me available for sale or to others in general. For me the motivation is quite simple, while I do block ads everywhere too and I generally don't have an impact in terms of getting personalized ads, once the data is collected I have no idea what will be used for, by whom and for what purpose. It doesn't even matter if the data actually allows to infer accurate things about me, it's enough that someone (e.g., insurance company, employer, bank, government, etc.) is gullible enough to believe that inference is correct. In the book "Privacy is power" (written by Carissa Veliz) she also develops a very interesting argument about the fact that violating your privacy usually means also violating the privacy of the people near you (the people with whom you share demographic, the people you communicate with etc.). This could be another point of view to consider.Anyway, if for you the above is fine, there is no other significant risk you are taking, and you should keep using Gmail if that suits you.
A technical note. Secure email providers generally can have technical controls (i.e., encryption) to protect the body (content) of the email, and in some cases some small amount of metadata (e.g., Tuta encrypts also the subject). Generally though, you are still trusting the provider to perform that encryption (especially because a mail from Gmail -> Proton/Tuta would be encrypted by Proton/Tuta) and to not use metadata for any purpose besides delivering the emails. So privacy here doesn't mean absolutely removing the data from a third party, but it means giving it to a third party who uses it (due to contractual obligation, business incentives etc.) only for the intended purpose in a privacy-preserving way.
Good stuff to think about. Thanks! I think I’ll keep the email issue on my mental list of things to address as I keep FOSSifying and self hosting things.
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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.
The problem is they continue to allow Andy Yen, the CEO of Proton, to remain on the board.
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The bottom line is that Proton does not collect your data to sell it for profit.
Why wouldn't they? Especially after the lasafare opinions expressed by their CEO.
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The problem is they continue to allow Andy Yen, the CEO of Proton, to remain on the board.
Yes that's true, and that seems quite natural. His poor communication in a tweet is not a reason to fire someone from a board, in my opinion. Especially since at the best of my knowledge he didn't do anything that harmed the privacy of anybody, nor he showed inclination to do so.
In any case, if you find yourself "assuming" that people that have years of track record caring about privacy and similar issue "don't care about privacy" or "are cryptonerds", maybe you should reflect a second.
This is why I said to go listen to her interview or read her pieces.
