I’ve decided to leave Proton after being a user since 2017. Today, I migrated all my services to my new domain, marking the end of my time with Proton. The recent political noise and price point were no longer justifiable for me. It was a good experience while it lasted. Thanks for the fishes 🐟 🐠
What did the migration entail for you? I reckon it’s a huge effort to move the mailing provider. I expect the calendar to be the most straightforward service to move.
If you have a custom domain I assume it’s pretty easy? Just swap the dns
If you have to do it manually - hit all of the important financial ones, then update them every time you get an email. Make sure your storage is under the free tier limit for anything you forgot. (GDPR for you email history as a single download)
Same for me, just in the process of updating my mail adress everywhere again right now.
My renewal was just coming up and I also couldn’t justify it. I’ve switched to a personal domain with my E-Mail and use Infomaniak for mail, calendar and cloud storage and Keepass as my password manager. Positive side effect, I only pay half of what I’ve paid for Proton.
They stopped their official Mastodon presence citing having not enough resources to maintain communities everywhere, which caused outrage among the Fediverse.
Previously, they vocally supported the actions of Trump administration on the matters of Internet privacy, which caused a massive backlash.
So, essentially, they have alienated a lot of userbase by making questionable moves.
Proton did not comment on Trump. Their CEO did.
And specifically on liking a certain hire for a certain position because he thought that would be good for small business.
It was a garbage take for many reasons, and the community let that be known. For me that was that but people keep coming back to this as some sort of unforgivable transgression.
Liberals (among which I count myself) like to piss on Musk and buddies for not actually supporting freedom of speech even though they call themselves absolutists in this area, but drastic moves like leaving over some tweet is a plank cut from the same tree…
If you’re going to move every time somebody says something you find questionable you’re going to have a hell of a time with the average company being filled with hundreds of people and thusly hundreds of opinions.
And it’s good to remember most people are going to be having these takes in background without you knowing of them.
Reddit has a tendancy to be alarmist. AFAIK there’s zero evidence to support Proton are closeted MAGA.
If i’m wrong on this i’ll gladly stand corrected with some substantial evidence.
I absolutely do not believe Proton is MAGA, nor did I want to make such a statement.
It’s just that the CEO is the most company-representing voice, and they said something vaguely positive, attributing it to the Trump administration, which caused a backlash. I do not think it is right, but it is what it is, and in the current political landscape Proton CEO’s actions were a bit insensitive.
Many bigger hosting providers also offer email hosting with IMAP access. I currently have a personal domain at a host that offers it, but my email is still hosted with a free Google domains account (it’s grandfathered in for life, but I’m still finally planning to move it to my hosts service).
I’m onboarding onto Proton now (but WITH my own domain, so I’ll never have to change e-mails again (well, unless I turn out to be trans later and change my name)).
For mail I’ve heard of Tuta, I think that’s the only serious alternative.
Ah. I tried tuta, back when I decided to go for proton instead. Their security requirements were more restrictive than I was able to allow for regular email use, although I don’t remember the details of what they were, anymore.
Andrew Yan made ONE comment about ONE decision Trump took. Sure it was a stupid comment. But PROTON isn’t bad because of this. They’re being run by a foundation with some pretty competent and knowledgeable people on the board of directors, if you ever bothered to look.
Some people seem to think that adding a license to their comments will prevent LLMs from using them for training data. It won’t actually help at all, and is born out of a fundamental misunderstanding of how copyright law works.
It got to be pretty popular for a while when Reddit was announcing that they’re selling content as LLM training data. But these days it has become clear that it’s just virtue signaling. Most of us just side-eye the commenters who do it, because it’s basically the Reddit equivalent of one of those “Facebook will begin using all of your data unless you post this status on your page” chain letters.
Ça sert a rien d’être nuancé ici, regardes mon historique de commentaires, les 2 avec -30 votes sont liés exactement au même sujet. Attends toi à la même chose 😁
Oui je sais. C’est con. Tout le monde Embarqué sur le bandwagon sans aucune pensée critique ni aucune nuance. C’est noir ou c’est blanc. Ça résume pas mal l’état des choses en ce moment.
It’s not just about a single issue, the company has changed significantly over the past 8 years. It has grown too large and now offers many products that I don’t use. As a result, it no longer aligns with my needs, and I’ve decided to take more control, similar to when I stopped using Gmail. I’m not suggesting you should stop using it, I’m just making a personal choice that works for me.
I don’t get the “too many products” comment. Proton has always said their goal was to be a privacy first replacement for Google and not just do e-mail.
The crypto wallet is a weird one as this is not among Google’s services, but i’d say their library of services otherwise perfectly follows this goal?
Then it’s not about that political crap. It’s about it not being what you’re looking for. And that’s fine. But say that instead of the politics being the major reason you’re leaving.
Edit :
And yes it has changed in 8 years.
It improved by providing more than a sinple VPN or a simple email service. But offering a whole suite of tools to compete with Google, which is a pretty fucking ambitious project.
They also changed to being owned by a non profit foundation with a clear mission to which they are legally tied to with a seriously competent team.
I agree on the products thing. Bitcoin Wallet? WTF. While their staff says supporting drive sync on Linux is hard. (Yet seafile, and Google drive work on Linux)
Just a side note. Rclone is not the same as GNOME gdrive access. Rclone does a clone of the data to your local, GNOME gives you online access and you basically open from remote like using Seadrive client.
My point being Proton could easily add same online account with GNOME help and do the same.
Yes but that’s not supported by Google. If your going to ding Proton Drive for not having a natove Linux client then you shouldn’t tout Google Drive as a competitor who does, as they don’t. You’re giving Google Drive a free pass because of a third party. Google and Proton are the same on this feature and you should disparage both services equally as a result.
The official apps are all open source (GPL-3.0, https://github.com/ProtonDriveApps), so even though a formal API isn’t documented it is derivable from the 4 available clients. This is how rclone added support for Proton Drive. So there isn’t really anything stopping GNOME or KDE from supporting it.
PIA is notable for still having port forwarding; Something many other VPNs have ditched. So on that one point, they’re better than others.
However, 4 or 5 years ago they were bought by a company (Kape Technology, formerly known as Crossrider) that has a history of stuffing adware into their programs. Like their business model was basically:
Buy popular program
Stuff it with adware
Get short term profit off of existing user base
Abandon program after users have fled
Repeat
Since a VPN provider’s only real source of legitimacy is public trust, the Kape buyout had a lot of customers fleeing to alternatives like Proton. So far, the PIA app has been fine. But Kape could decide at any point to just pump it full of adware and run away with arms full of cash, like they have done in the past. Also, Kape is (or at least was, at the time of the buyout) headed by a known Israeli intelligence agent. So that was another big thing that sent customers scrambling to alternatives.
I think the most common alternatives I see recommended are Mullvad and IVPN. Both have a great track record, but also both lack port forwarding if that is an essential feature for you.
Does this affect anyone outside of Italy though? When I recently signed up for it it had a huge warning saying they don’t allow Italian residents to use them, nor do they host any Italian servers, I assume so they don’t have to deal with this law at all
I’m not sure how they would distinguish between the two in practice, surely they would block all piracy attempts, not just the ones going to an Italian IP address? It’s an unknown for now, but I would be hesitant to use them until it’s more clear how this could effect privacy.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !protonprivacy@lemmy.world
Empowering you to choose a better internet where privacy is the default. Protect yourself online with
Proton Mail, Proton VPN, Proton Calendar, Proton Drive. Proton Pass and SimpleLogin.
Proton Mail is the world’s largest secure email provider. Swiss, end-to-end encrypted, private, and free.
Proton VPN is the world’s only open-source, publicly audited, unlimited and free VPN. Swiss-based, no-ads, and no-logs.
Proton Calendar is the world’s first end-to-end encrypted calendar that allows you to keep your life private.
Proton Drive is a free end-to-end encrypted cloud storage that allows you to securely backup and share your files. It’s open source, publicly audited, and Swiss-based.
Proton Pass Proton Pass is a free and open-source password manager which brings a higher level of security with rigorous end-to-end encryption of all data (including usernames, URLs, notes, and more) and email alias support.
SimpleLogin lets you send and receive emails anonymously via easily-generated unique email aliases.
Yeah I let my ProtonVPN subscription lapse, and rather than using them for email I moved to Soverin.
There were a bunch of companies that showed up in a search, but I’m guessing you mean this one?
https://soverin.com/
Yup that’s the one
What did the migration entail for you? I reckon it’s a huge effort to move the mailing provider. I expect the calendar to be the most straightforward service to move.
If you have a custom domain I assume it’s pretty easy? Just swap the dns
If you have to do it manually - hit all of the important financial ones, then update them every time you get an email. Make sure your storage is under the free tier limit for anything you forgot. (GDPR for you email history as a single download)
I hear you. Last August I prepaid for two years and now I regret it. I’m just going to ride it out since I can’t afford to switch.
Yeah same for me…
Same for me, just in the process of updating my mail adress everywhere again right now.
My renewal was just coming up and I also couldn’t justify it. I’ve switched to a personal domain with my E-Mail and use Infomaniak for mail, calendar and cloud storage and Keepass as my password manager. Positive side effect, I only pay half of what I’ve paid for Proton.
I’m out of the loop. What’s happening with Proton?
The CEO endorses the American Nazi Party
So depressing
They stopped their official Mastodon presence citing having not enough resources to maintain communities everywhere, which caused outrage among the Fediverse.
Previously, they vocally supported the actions of Trump administration on the matters of Internet privacy, which caused a massive backlash.
So, essentially, they have alienated a lot of userbase by making questionable moves.
I feel you’re misrepresenting the second point.
Proton did not comment on Trump. Their CEO did. And specifically on liking a certain hire for a certain position because he thought that would be good for small business.
It was a garbage take for many reasons, and the community let that be known. For me that was that but people keep coming back to this as some sort of unforgivable transgression.
Liberals (among which I count myself) like to piss on Musk and buddies for not actually supporting freedom of speech even though they call themselves absolutists in this area, but drastic moves like leaving over some tweet is a plank cut from the same tree…
If you’re going to move every time somebody says something you find questionable you’re going to have a hell of a time with the average company being filled with hundreds of people and thusly hundreds of opinions. And it’s good to remember most people are going to be having these takes in background without you knowing of them.
Reddit has a tendancy to be alarmist. AFAIK there’s zero evidence to support Proton are closeted MAGA. If i’m wrong on this i’ll gladly stand corrected with some substantial evidence.
I absolutely do not believe Proton is MAGA, nor did I want to make such a statement.
It’s just that the CEO is the most company-representing voice, and they said something vaguely positive, attributing it to the Trump administration, which caused a backlash. I do not think it is right, but it is what it is, and in the current political landscape Proton CEO’s actions were a bit insensitive.
https://lemmy.world/comment/15330467
Imagine thinking installing Felon as an unelected official would be the best approach to putting Tech Bros in place.
I would pay to watch this guy try to put his shoes on in the morning
What did you switch to?
Personal domain and an imap provider so that I can easily switch in the future if needed.
Which provider automatically handles pgp encryption for you, like proton?
How are you going to do that? I’m curious because I want to do the same and have email clients on multiple devices.
Anti Commercial-AI license
Here’s a provider you can do that with
https://kb.mailbox.org/en/private/custom-domains/using-e-mails-with-a-custom-domain/
Most web hosts provide IMAP hosting as part of the service? All you usually have to do is click a button to set it up.
*I hereby legally grant AI scrapers permission to use my comment, and all parent comments by myself or others, for training purposes.
Many bigger hosting providers also offer email hosting with IMAP access. I currently have a personal domain at a host that offers it, but my email is still hosted with a free Google domains account (it’s grandfathered in for life, but I’m still finally planning to move it to my hosts service).
How do y’all do your email and calendars? Those are the two things that aren’t easy to replace from proton.
Mind, my email needs to be reliable for work reasons.
For e-mail, Tutanota, Posteo, Mailbox.org.
For calendar and contacts, self-hosted Radicale.
Tuta for mail, self hosted calendar with Radicale
Switched to Posteo and Addy.io
I’ve been using nextcloud for contacts, calendar, and files for many years
Will be easy for me to ditch proton if the bullshit escalates further
I’m onboarding onto Proton now (but WITH my own domain, so I’ll never have to change e-mails again (well, unless I turn out to be trans later and change my name)). For mail I’ve heard of Tuta, I think that’s the only serious alternative.
Ah. I tried tuta, back when I decided to go for proton instead. Their security requirements were more restrictive than I was able to allow for regular email use, although I don’t remember the details of what they were, anymore.
Man this community has become a Proton bitching party.
You’re all exaggerating. This thing with the tweet is WAY overblown.
Sure, supporting MAGA is “way overblown”.
Anti Commercial-AI license
Proton is not supporting MAGA.
Andrew Yan made ONE comment about ONE decision Trump took. Sure it was a stupid comment. But PROTON isn’t bad because of this. They’re being run by a foundation with some pretty competent and knowledgeable people on the board of directors, if you ever bothered to look.
Whatever you say, I guess. We didn’t read the same thing then.
Anti Commercial-AI license
What the heck are you on about? What does this license have to do with anything?
You posted the same link twice but neither of them mention or seem to relate to Proton?
Some people seem to think that adding a license to their comments will prevent LLMs from using them for training data. It won’t actually help at all, and is born out of a fundamental misunderstanding of how copyright law works.
It got to be pretty popular for a while when Reddit was announcing that they’re selling content as LLM training data. But these days it has become clear that it’s just virtue signaling. Most of us just side-eye the commenters who do it, because it’s basically the Reddit equivalent of one of those “Facebook will begin using all of your data unless you post this status on your page” chain letters.
Even if it legally counted, major AI companies evidently don’t give two shits about legality.
LOL!!! No they don’t!
Weren’t they accused to scraping everything they could off the web, even copyrighted content, to train their AIs?
Ça sert a rien d’être nuancé ici, regardes mon historique de commentaires, les 2 avec -30 votes sont liés exactement au même sujet. Attends toi à la même chose 😁
Oui je sais. C’est con. Tout le monde Embarqué sur le bandwagon sans aucune pensée critique ni aucune nuance. C’est noir ou c’est blanc. Ça résume pas mal l’état des choses en ce moment.
It’s not just about a single issue, the company has changed significantly over the past 8 years. It has grown too large and now offers many products that I don’t use. As a result, it no longer aligns with my needs, and I’ve decided to take more control, similar to when I stopped using Gmail. I’m not suggesting you should stop using it, I’m just making a personal choice that works for me.
I don’t get the “too many products” comment. Proton has always said their goal was to be a privacy first replacement for Google and not just do e-mail. The crypto wallet is a weird one as this is not among Google’s services, but i’d say their library of services otherwise perfectly follows this goal?
Then it’s not about that political crap. It’s about it not being what you’re looking for. And that’s fine. But say that instead of the politics being the major reason you’re leaving.
Edit :
And yes it has changed in 8 years.
It improved by providing more than a sinple VPN or a simple email service. But offering a whole suite of tools to compete with Google, which is a pretty fucking ambitious project.
They also changed to being owned by a non profit foundation with a clear mission to which they are legally tied to with a seriously competent team.
As mentioned, it is the noise AND the price. If the service works for you this is great. You do you 👍.
I agree on the products thing. Bitcoin Wallet? WTF. While their staff says supporting drive sync on Linux is hard. (Yet seafile, and Google drive work on Linux)
Google Drive doesn’t support Linux. Someone made a tool for it (RClone) which also happens to work with GDrive.
And its fine if all the tools Proton provide aren’t for you. I use all of them except the crypto wallet.
But it might be nice to have if one day i do use crypto.
Google drive works with GNOME desktop, you add your Online Account in settings, and it integrates your calendar, Email, and maps a remote GDrive
It’s a GNOME feature that’s not at all developed or supported by Google, but by another GNOME maintainer. That’s what I mean.
Just a side note. Rclone is not the same as GNOME gdrive access. Rclone does a clone of the data to your local, GNOME gives you online access and you basically open from remote like using Seadrive client.
My point being Proton could easily add same online account with GNOME help and do the same.
And KDE and xfce and cinnamon and MATE and Budgie… where does it end?
My point is that Google didn’t implement the feature. Someone else did.
It’s up to the desktop environment’s maintainers or some other developer to implement this.
But it would be nice to have if Proton provided it though, like they did with proton VPN. NGL.
Google does not support Drive on Linux.
If you add your Online Google Account to GNOME, it integrates your calendar, mail and adds a mapped Gdrive in Nautilus
Yes but that’s not supported by Google. If your going to ding Proton Drive for not having a natove Linux client then you shouldn’t tout Google Drive as a competitor who does, as they don’t. You’re giving Google Drive a free pass because of a third party. Google and Proton are the same on this feature and you should disparage both services equally as a result.
Does Proton have open API that GNOME can leverage same as GDrive?
The official apps are all open source (GPL-3.0, https://github.com/ProtonDriveApps), so even though a formal API isn’t documented it is derivable from the 4 available clients. This is how rclone added support for Proton Drive. So there isn’t really anything stopping GNOME or KDE from supporting it.
Any good VPN other than Proton? Almost every one is going down the enshitification route and I’m looking for an alternative.
PIA has been uneventful for a couple years…
PIA is notable for still having port forwarding; Something many other VPNs have ditched. So on that one point, they’re better than others.
However, 4 or 5 years ago they were bought by a company (Kape Technology, formerly known as Crossrider) that has a history of stuffing adware into their programs. Like their business model was basically:
Since a VPN provider’s only real source of legitimacy is public trust, the Kape buyout had a lot of customers fleeing to alternatives like Proton. So far, the PIA app has been fine. But Kape could decide at any point to just pump it full of adware and run away with arms full of cash, like they have done in the past. Also, Kape is (or at least was, at the time of the buyout) headed by a known Israeli intelligence agent. So that was another big thing that sent customers scrambling to alternatives.
Thanks. That is a useful brakedown of them. Using them for the last year with zero issues but always important to evaluate.
I’ve been happy with Mullvad. Good no-log policy, audited regularly, and their servers run on RAM. No port forwarding though, as others mentioned.
Windscribe is a good one in my experience - https://windscribe.com/
I think the most common alternatives I see recommended are Mullvad and IVPN. Both have a great track record, but also both lack port forwarding if that is an essential feature for you.
Mullvad, ivpn
I swear by AirVPN. Not the fastest or fanciest, but they’ve got port forwarding and are run by an activist org; I’ve got a lifetime membership IIRC
Be mindful that Italy passed a law forcing vpn’s to block pirated content, and AirVPN is based in Italy.
Does this affect anyone outside of Italy though? When I recently signed up for it it had a huge warning saying they don’t allow Italian residents to use them, nor do they host any Italian servers, I assume so they don’t have to deal with this law at all
I’m not sure how they would distinguish between the two in practice, surely they would block all piracy attempts, not just the ones going to an Italian IP address? It’s an unknown for now, but I would be hesitant to use them until it’s more clear how this could effect privacy.