What are your alternatives to proton?
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I honestly don't see the big deal with people hating on proton. It's still open source it's still encrypted and doesn't mine your data that seams to check most of the boxes for me. The only problem I had with it was the default main client which shows upgrades to go unlimited all the time but I just use Thunderbird now.
The hate for proton is because the CEO Andy Yen retweeted Trump announcing his pick for assistant attorney general for antitrust cases. His retweet included commentary fawning over Republicans as “standing for the little guys.” When criticized the company doubled down and supported him but then said they wouldn’t be making any more comments because it was a distraction.
If that isn’t enough, someone noticed that CEO Andy’s Reddit username is ”andy1011000.” The numbers at the end are binary for “88” - a well known pro-Nazi dog whistle. He says this is only a coincidence and is meant to refer to being born in 1988.
So in summary he is publicly praising fascists and has a username which coincidentally has a pro-Nazi reference.
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What assurances do you have they won’t go full proton in the future?
Absolutely none. That applies to all services that exist now or in the future. The only way around that is self-hosting but that path has its own issues including a very steep learning curve if you want to be secure as well as private. Maybe this could be a longer term project to work towards?
For services:
- Mail - Mailbox.org seems the best option right now
- Calendar - don't know.
- Drive - either Cryptomator used with literally any service or a dedicated service like Filen
- VPN - Mullvad
- Password Manager - Bitwarden
- Documents - I just use LibreOffice offline or CryptPad occasionally if I'm collabing with someone.
In truth none of these are perfect. Privacy has got a lot harder recently as Proton and StartMail/StartPage have politically shit the bed and the UK seems determined to kill encryption which means I have to avoid really good services like IceDrive just because they're in the UK.
Can you provide any link for what Startpage has done wrong? I’m familiar with the Proton situation but hadn’t heard anything about Startpage. I’ve actively been looking for non-US based search engines.
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The hate for proton is because the CEO Andy Yen retweeted Trump announcing his pick for assistant attorney general for antitrust cases. His retweet included commentary fawning over Republicans as “standing for the little guys.” When criticized the company doubled down and supported him but then said they wouldn’t be making any more comments because it was a distraction.
If that isn’t enough, someone noticed that CEO Andy’s Reddit username is ”andy1011000.” The numbers at the end are binary for “88” - a well known pro-Nazi dog whistle. He says this is only a coincidence and is meant to refer to being born in 1988.
So in summary he is publicly praising fascists and has a username which coincidentally has a pro-Nazi reference.
According to Wikipedia pages 14, 18, 1488, 8814 are also common Nazi's symbols. I personally feel the birthday explanation more likely as I see a lot of people doing that (without the nerdy base 2).
But yeah, I'm not sure of anything now, if you told me a few years ago that dozens of billionaires would go full on highlander on 2025 I wouldn't have believed you...
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The hate for proton is because the CEO Andy Yen retweeted Trump announcing his pick for assistant attorney general for antitrust cases. His retweet included commentary fawning over Republicans as “standing for the little guys.” When criticized the company doubled down and supported him but then said they wouldn’t be making any more comments because it was a distraction.
If that isn’t enough, someone noticed that CEO Andy’s Reddit username is ”andy1011000.” The numbers at the end are binary for “88” - a well known pro-Nazi dog whistle. He says this is only a coincidence and is meant to refer to being born in 1988.
So in summary he is publicly praising fascists and has a username which coincidentally has a pro-Nazi reference.
I get the controversy about the CEO being controversial the services that proton make are still very good for the most part. And since there open source and encrypted you don't need to trust proton anyway (aside from the VPN).
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According to Wikipedia pages 14, 18, 1488, 8814 are also common Nazi's symbols. I personally feel the birthday explanation more likely as I see a lot of people doing that (without the nerdy base 2).
But yeah, I'm not sure of anything now, if you told me a few years ago that dozens of billionaires would go full on highlander on 2025 I wouldn't have believed you...
I agree it could be a coincidence. It’s just a really unfortunate coincidence in light of his public statements and the fact that so many other corporations are doing an any% evil speed run right now. Folks are right to ask questions and be wary.
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Yikes...
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To replace everything. Mail, calendar, drive, vpn, password manager, documents etc. What are the pros and cons relative to proton? What are the mobile apps like? What assurances do you have they won't go full proton in the future? And other questions
The whole universe
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Can you provide any link for what Startpage has done wrong? I’m familiar with the Proton situation but hadn’t heard anything about Startpage. I’ve actively been looking for non-US based search engines.
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To replace everything. Mail, calendar, drive, vpn, password manager, documents etc. What are the pros and cons relative to proton? What are the mobile apps like? What assurances do you have they won't go full proton in the future? And other questions
So the whole "we encrypt your life" thing is pretty nice. But in reality look at what you're actually doing... You have super secure encrypted email to do what? Send unencrypted emails to your friends...
It makes no sense to me... Like, you need an encrypted calendar? Why? What are you getting with encryption that you can't get with using a VPN to connect to your local network and access a self-hosted calendar. In what was is that less secure?
Drive? Sure. VPN? Sure. Password manager? Sure. Documents? Sure. I see the value in having H/A for services like this, but all of that can be self-hosted on an rPi in your basement with a rProxy and a domain.
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So the whole "we encrypt your life" thing is pretty nice. But in reality look at what you're actually doing... You have super secure encrypted email to do what? Send unencrypted emails to your friends...
It makes no sense to me... Like, you need an encrypted calendar? Why? What are you getting with encryption that you can't get with using a VPN to connect to your local network and access a self-hosted calendar. In what was is that less secure?
Drive? Sure. VPN? Sure. Password manager? Sure. Documents? Sure. I see the value in having H/A for services like this, but all of that can be self-hosted on an rPi in your basement with a rProxy and a domain.
One reason is to prevent targeted advertisement.
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To replace everything. Mail, calendar, drive, vpn, password manager, documents etc. What are the pros and cons relative to proton? What are the mobile apps like? What assurances do you have they won't go full proton in the future? And other questions
I remember when the Chick-fil-A CEO got a lot of flack. While I disagree with him, I still eat at CFA. Until I feel like the quality of the service is or will be compromised, I do not plan on migrating off of Proton.
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One reason is to prevent targeted advertisement.
It doesn't, though. Not even a little bit. Using encrypted services doesn't stop tracking cookies. That too has to be handled client side. So you would use a browser that lets you use host files via extensions (firefox, etc) and other tracking blocking extensions, or you can setup network wide protection via Adguard Home, etc.
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Thank you!
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It doesn't, though. Not even a little bit. Using encrypted services doesn't stop tracking cookies. That too has to be handled client side. So you would use a browser that lets you use host files via extensions (firefox, etc) and other tracking blocking extensions, or you can setup network wide protection via Adguard Home, etc.
It does. You need both. Even if you have cookies disabled, Gmail can read all of your emails and use that information.
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To replace everything. Mail, calendar, drive, vpn, password manager, documents etc. What are the pros and cons relative to proton? What are the mobile apps like? What assurances do you have they won't go full proton in the future? And other questions
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It does. You need both. Even if you have cookies disabled, Gmail can read all of your emails and use that information.
You need both.
For the third time now--not if the service/device you're using contains both the password and the 2FA... How is this not getting through?
If someone gets into my Bitwarden install, and gets access to both my passwords and my 2FA seeds, in what way does 2FA protect me? I kept all the family jewels in one place. That's the exact situation two factor authentication is designed to prevent by forcing you to have an additional and separate device/key/passcode/password.
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You need both.
For the third time now--not if the service/device you're using contains both the password and the 2FA... How is this not getting through?
If someone gets into my Bitwarden install, and gets access to both my passwords and my 2FA seeds, in what way does 2FA protect me? I kept all the family jewels in one place. That's the exact situation two factor authentication is designed to prevent by forcing you to have an additional and separate device/key/passcode/password.
Say it a fourth time if you want to continue feigning ignorance. You're assuming that the only way your credentials could be compromised is if your password manager it compromised. 2FA would not protect that specific use case if you store both authentication methods in your password manager. However, it does still protect your services from other types of compromises, which is better than no 2FA at all.
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Say it a fourth time if you want to continue feigning ignorance. You're assuming that the only way your credentials could be compromised is if your password manager it compromised. 2FA would not protect that specific use case if you store both authentication methods in your password manager. However, it does still protect your services from other types of compromises, which is better than no 2FA at all.
This community is just as bad as the one on Reddit. Bunch of candies that run around with a VPN thinking they're security experts meanwhile they're the type of person who lets their son get shot because the password to their gun safe is
0000and they're just flabbergasted that the gun safe didn't work.. -
To replace everything. Mail, calendar, drive, vpn, password manager, documents etc. What are the pros and cons relative to proton? What are the mobile apps like? What assurances do you have they won't go full proton in the future? And other questions
Mail & Calendar -> Posteo
Drive -> Filen
VPN -> Mullvad
Password Manager -> BitwardenDon't place all of your eggs in the same basket
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I can personally recommend fruux for calendars and contacts, but their free accounts are rather limited.
