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submitted 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) by ShotDonkey@lemmy.world to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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

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[-] bpev@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago

Yo so question for y'alls: what's your opinion on using custom domain (for portability) vs masked emails?

Rn I have my main emails on my personal domain, and then I have masked emails going through xxx@fastmail.com for more anonymity + segmenting (err i mean just being able to disable a certain address individually) . But watching all this reminded me that if I decided to move away from fastmail, i'm much more locked-in this way. Do y'alls use a custom domain for masked email as well? The one thing I don't like about that is that it'd be so easy to connect multiple accounts based on domain, so anonymity is probably kinda broken.

[-] Onyx376@lemmy.ml 16 points 2 hours ago

Abandoning the Proton subscription now. How stupid and irresponsible. In fact, are running away from all your principles.

[-] echolalia@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 hour ago

Trump's terrible politics aside:

  1. the Republican party is pushing legislation which requires you to identify yourself to view porn

  2. you can get around this with a VPN

  3. proton is a VPN (nonprofit, but still).

I'll be switching email providers when I can... I can't remember when my subscription ends.

It seems there aren't any exact replacements, but this probably lists service providers to consider: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/email/

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.

:-(

[-] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 12 points 2 hours ago

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.

[-] mukt@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 hours ago

So, donation supported open source is the way ?

[-] yonder@sh.itjust.works 23 points 3 hours ago

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.

[-] hperrin@lemmy.ca 39 points 6 hours ago

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.

[-] Landfill@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 hours ago

This fucks. Joined your waitlist!

[-] recklessengagement@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

I like this organization method, feels very ADHD-friendly

[-] xnx@slrpnk.net 5 points 3 hours ago

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!

[-] marcie@lemmy.ml 88 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

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

[-] tomatol@lemm.ee 5 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Thanks for this post. Any alternatives for Drive specifically?? Including self-hosted options

[-] xnx@slrpnk.net 4 points 3 hours ago

Immich if you want really good photo backup. Nextcloud if you want a full Drive replacement

[-] Charger8232@lemmy.ml 60 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

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.

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[-] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 203 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

Misinformation. OP is advocating that you shoot yourself in the foot.

The CEO said something silly on Twitter which revealed either that (a) he shares an exceedingly banal opinion with literally half of America or (b) he's not above a bit of preemptive sycophancy to advance his (positive) anti-trust agenda.

There's nothing particularly scandalous in the offending tweet:

  • Implying that the Democrats are now "the party of big business" is arguably true (and very boring)
  • Implying that the Republicans now "stand for the little guys" is dumb but also arguably true, unfortunately - the working classes swung to Trump in the recent election while the Democrats are fast becoming a party of high-earning elites (which is why they lost)
  • Saying that the antitrust actions began under Trump I is, well, true

Proton is not owned Zuck-like by its CEO. It's controlled by a foundation with other stakeholders on the board, including the inventor of the Web himself. In its niche it is still by far the best option. Ditching it for a nebulous non-existent alternative because the CEO expressed a dumb and extremely commonplace opinion is just silly and self-defeating.

PS: to be clear, OP is peddling misinformation because it's not true that "Proton took the stance" of anything. It's the personal opinion of the CEO that's at issue. It's a major distinction. I find it disappointing that people interested in privacy would have such little respect for a private individual's right to have their own thoughts.

PPS: to be extra clear, my comments are about the post above, not stuff that people are reading elsewhere. But the substance stands. See discussion for detail.

[-] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 11 points 2 hours ago

OP is peddling misinformation because it's not true that "Proton took the stance" of anything.

Except Proton's official Mastodon account made another post afterwords doubling down on the CEO's comments. They ended up taking down the post due to getting a ton of backlash

[-] ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 hour ago

Implying that the Republicans now “stand for the little guys”

How is it true exactly? Republicans do not care about the little guys in any way lol

[-] leraje 8 points 2 hours ago

The privacy community is always told to verify, not trust. The board of Proton have decided to publicly state something that leads a lot of people to be unable to trust them - namely supporting the choices of an extreme right wing leader who has repeatedly demonstrated the foolishness of trusting anything he says or does.

This CEO is totally free to have their own thoughts but its verging on the ridiculous to think that other people aren't going to have a negative reaction to them and seek alternatives. Its next to impossible to trust a company that express approval of Trump decisions because its impossible to trust Trump. And Proton going out of their way to publicly state their approval when they are not even a US org and would've lost nothing by simply not saying anything suggests a board that was keen to publicly express support for Trump. It inevitably makes people who are already on the receiving end of Trumpian hate legislation, or who soon will be, wonder what else Proton might be willing to do for Trump in the future.

[-] 800XL@lemmy.world 34 points 5 hours ago

Implying that the Republicans now "stand for the little guys" is dumb but also arguably true

No, no it isn't arguably true. It's just flat out incorrect. 100% of people could vote for him or others like him out of fear of disappearing in the night if they don't. That doesn't make him or the party "for the little guy".

It doesn't matter that 51% of the country votes for the Republicans. The party has consistently shit all over "the little guy" and made him eat it for over 40 years, telling him he's eating shit and then said only the party can fix it.

All the while the party's been giving tax money to their friends and saying "don't worry, we're here now. you can feed him as much shit as you want. we'll find someone cleaning up shit and make the "little guy" think that person was making it instead. that way when you get caught doing it no one will believe it"

[-] anothermember@lemmy.zip 22 points 6 hours ago

As a non-American I don't normally care about US politics or what "literally half of America" think but I am concerned with far-right politics spilling over in to my country. So I would naturally want to resist organisations aligning themselves with those politics, whether they are scandalous to Americans or not.

[-] CatsGoMOW@lemmy.world 143 points 11 hours ago

I largely agree with what you’re saying, except the official Proton Mastadon account doubled down on that personal opinion. That seems pretty clear that it’s endorsed not just by that one individual on the board.

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[-] Siathes@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 8 hours ago

Sooo, can we not create and/or finance our own? Please be gentle…but…is there not enough of us paying for proton and other privacy apps to fund a floss or non-profit version? I mean there are tech nerds all over this place, along with law nerds and political nerds…etc..(meant with love btw) that would have an instant user base.

I pledge here to sub up to $15usd/month for any lemmy person that starts an entity that provides us with what we need with ethics and morality of lemmy common.

[-] IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

You need a domain with enough reputation to not just get immediately flagged as spam, or sites outright refuse letting you use the email because they detect the domain as "invalid".

[-] Jimmycakes@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Man you mean a handful of companies control email rules? Lol isn't this what the proton guys are saying?

They might be going about it the wrong way and in the interest of self profit, but there is truth to their points (on this one very specific thing).

Democrats are absolutely not your friends either. They take money from big tech, isp, telecom lobbyists and anyone else with their wallet open same as Republicans.

[-] MrMcGasion@lemmy.world 5 points 4 hours ago

If your mail server is configured correctly this generally isn't that big of an issue. You need a DKIM service on your mail server, and with that add some dns records (SPF records and DMARC) to the domain As long as those are in place and configured properly, you should be able to avoid most spam filters considering your domain invalid.

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this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2025
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