What happens if you have more than 1 free accounts on privacy-respecting email providers such as Protonmail or Tutanota?

[telorand@reddthat.com]

Probably nothing would happen to you. They might correlate your IP address and ban you, but that's likely it.

However, don't do that. Servers aren't free, and if people abuse the charity of these services, they'll stop offering free options for everyone.

If you need extra addresses, use something like https://addy.io/. if you need more storage, might be worth considering self-hosting your email.

[dannyboy@sh.itjust.works]

What about unnatural people?

[idkwhatusernametoputherelolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com]

I guess they got unlimited accounts then, sicne they are obviously exempt from the ToS ‍️

[dannyboy@sh.itjust.works]

Danged zombies ruining it for the rest of us.

[irotsoma@lemmy.blahaj.zone]

I think it's unlikely to be enforced for normal use. If you use them for spam or to store a ton of data or some other abusive usage, they might shit down your accounts, but it would be pretty customer-unfriendly to do that for someone with just two accounts and not abusing it. Most privacy respecting services are too young to have gotten to the screw customers, only short-term profit phase of capitalism.

[ryannathans@aussie.zone]

Due to CGNAT it's likely to have up to hundreds or thousands of unrelated customers sharing an IPv4 address

[quazaromega@lemy.lol]

Proton explicitly enabled keeping 2 free accounts on the mobile apps quite some time ago, probably more than a year, so they're cool with you having 2 like that.

If you get more, you'll be hampered at the application level, but, unless it's like a load of accounts for spam purposes, having just a handful shouldn't get you banned, I believe

[pandantic@midwest.social]

If not want multiple emails, why have “switch account” button? (Proton)

[goatmeal@midwest.social]

Ive had two on proton mail (plus more on their services) without any issues

[Guest]

I have 3 proton accounts and 3 tuta accounts free. No issues till now.

[telorand@reddthat.com]

Perhaps, but if I connect from my IP and then 30sec later to a different account on the same IP, and that happens routinely for the same accounts, one could reasonably assume it was potentially one person using two accounts.

You could circumvent that with a VPN, since those IP ranges are usually known and known to be shared, but probably not with a residential IP address.

Anyway, it's just a guess. I don't know with any certainty how they might sus out somebody breaking the policy. I just believe that if they find people doing that with regularity, the free tier many people enjoy can be revoked, and so it would be a dick move to try to abuse account creation.

[kng@feddit.rocks]

I researched this a bit previously for proton and I think there was one case where someone had their account deleted but they were using the service excessively. I also read that if you do upgrade to a premium subscription support can help you merge your accounts together so I guess they kind of support it. If your making a few accounts even on the same IP you are probably fine just don't login to them in quick succession and you will probably be fine. I do suggest you use an aliasing service when you can.

[ryannathans@aussie.zone]

Sure, but on my WiFi network with my flat mates there would be like five concurrently logged in email accounts constantly connected and receiving traffic from proton. And then behind CGNAT that might extend to a hundred people concurrently logged in with one IP.

The false positives would drive away so many more paying or future paying customers it wouldn't be worth trying

Only thing I can think of is fingerprinting devices but then that'd be obvious, break their business model and also drive away customers

[liliumstar@lemmy.dbzer0.com]

Yeah, I remember someone getting all their Proton accounts banned, but they had a large amount, basically using it as a disposable provider. Don't be that person and ruin it for everyone.

I have two with Proton and have had two with Tuta. I don't think either would bother coming down on that. It could very easily be two people sharing a device with different email accounts or so forth.

[azalty@jlai.lu]

Sure but they probably make more than enough money. Email is really cheap to run

[unknowing8343@discuss.tchncs.de]

Because if you pay, you can have as many Proton accounts as you please.

[coolusername@lemmy.ml]

Proton is CIA

[azalty@jlai.lu]

Addy is nice but sometimes blocked, and a bit expensive.

[telorand@reddthat.com]

Free for me. I haven't paid them a cent. Depends what you need out of the service.

[telorand@reddthat.com]

Perhaps, but you're just guessing. I don't know their operating costs, and I would suspect that neither do you.

If you know better, please enlighten me.