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Proton is trying to become Google without your data

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Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#52

This is a rather interesting interview style, it seems as if the interviewer is presenting the viewpoints of the national security state complex ("we need total access to all data to prevent terrorism and child abuse") and of the major tech conglomerates ("competition reduces privacy"), aka Big MAMAA (FAANG is obsolete), but it does provide the interviewee with opportunity to counter those points, so I guess it's a d…

MAGMA is still a better acronym

But now we can talk about "the outsized influence of Big MAMAA on the tech industry", which has a nice ring to it. MAGMA has a decent ring as well, though.

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#53

This is a rather interesting interview style, it seems as if the interviewer is presenting the viewpoints of the national security state complex ("we need total access to all data to prevent terrorism and child abuse") and of the major tech conglomerates ("competition reduces privacy"), aka Big MAMAA (FAANG is obsolete), but it does provide the interviewee with opportunity to counter those points, so I guess it's a d…

What was that in the news a year or so back about the FBI having a significant number of Tor endpoints, making the routing effectively transparent? I would imagine if the FBI pulled that off, so did many other state actors.

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#54
post #30

> The analogy to terrorism is interesting because, during the Bush-era War on Terror, there was a sense of literally anything being justified in the name of stopping terrorism. The US government was secretly spying on its own citizens. Yeah, Wired, they only did the spying during the Bush era... edit: I guess it was less secret after the Bush era > It's even harder to say, look, we've got to accept that some amount o…

> we've got to accept that some amount of child exploitation is going to happen

Funny, that's the exact deal with have with guns - we accept some amount of mass child murder as the cost of the 2nd Amendment.

Another datapoint that the 2nd is now considered more absolute the 1st.

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#55
> We believe the best way to protect user data is to not have it in the first place

I like the exchange of value that comes from paying money for a service. With free products from companies like Google you do not pay for the service and there is no exchange of value. This results in the myriad of HN threads discussing how Google Docs did them wrong (locked out, privacy violation, etc.)

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#56
Asserting "private email" is a modern litmus test for someone's technical understanding and capabilities, or lack thereof. Snake oil companies will always hide behind "it's encrypted" and "it's hosted in Switzerland" tropes that mean nothing to anyone who has done a modicum of research. Real privacy is not the result of some product, especially not when its so desperately and obviously shilled.

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#57

But they'll give your data away if asked.

I mean, they are legally obligated to. At least they are not selling my data to advertisers or arbitrarily locking me out of my account like google. Hell, i'd pay for their premium service if wasn't so expensive and they accepted anonymous payments through monero or something. I mean, this is what email has basically come to. I've tried to host my own email server, all my outbound mail ends up in spam. If you want pr…

> At least they are not selling my data to advertisers

That's almost never what actually happens, though. They sell access to you and use your data internally to target ads.

A law enforcement request does literally release your data.

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#58
post #43

Proton is mired in shenanigans. Evidence points to ProtonVPN being a white-labeled version of Nord VPN. Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23571653 and https://archive.is/iZ2l2 (archive of relevant but broken [2] link @ HN thread) Protonmail has its own issues that have been discussed on HN. Source: https://encryp.ch/blog/disturbing-facts-about-protonmail/ Obviously Gmail and such are piped directly into gl…

"Obviously Gmail and such are piped directly into global intelligence databases"

Wait --- 'obviously'?!? Do you have any info on this because that is a wild claim.

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#59
post #33

Definitely plan to stick to proton for the long run. Don't think they'll keep me private & safe...but I do think they'll try harder & more earnestly than the rest of the gang attempting it.

> I do think they'll try harder & more earnestly than the rest of the gang attempting it.

Why, though? What do people base this assertion on, other than clever marketing materials which extol virtually meaningless controls like "it's hosted abroad" (which is actually much worse for foreign nationals' privacy, for example)?

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#60
post #43

Proton is mired in shenanigans. Evidence points to ProtonVPN being a white-labeled version of Nord VPN. Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23571653 and https://archive.is/iZ2l2 (archive of relevant but broken [2] link @ HN thread) Protonmail has its own issues that have been discussed on HN. Source: https://encryp.ch/blog/disturbing-facts-about-protonmail/ Obviously Gmail and such are piped directly into gl…

"Obviously Gmail and such are piped directly into global intelligence databases" Wait --- 'obviously'?!? Do you have any info on this because that is a wild claim.

Snowden docs
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