Slop article for justifying sloppy political stances.
Leaving Proton Mail
21–30 of 37 posts
Re: Leaving Proton Mail
#22Here’s some shocking facts: emails aren’t anonymous as a protocol, neither private too, stop trying to find an email like that. VPN as the commercial service isn’t anonymous either, there’s always a “trust us” factor, and in this ever changing world, your policy should be always zero trust. Neither proton, nor mullvad, nor signal, none of these popular platforms provide the anonymity and even the privacy you are expecting. If the protocol itself wasn’t designed with anonymity, privacy, and security in mind, everything follows is just marketing and maybe worse, a honeypot.
Re: Leaving Proton Mail
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Moved from Proton to Fastmail a couple of years ago and couldn’t be happier.
I also made this switch a year ago, in part because I'm Australian and so is Fastmail. I miss some of the Proton bells and whistles, and my visionary plan had some great inclusions, but Fastmail is great. I just use the web app on my graphene phone and it works fine
>because I'm Australian and so is Fastmail.
That seems like the worst reason to use a product. If I had the funds for a non free mail host, I would choose one thats not going to be easy to target with a TCN or TAN.
Re: Leaving Proton Mail
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't be fooled by the technical-sounding article that leads with software/licensing/product-related rationale but buries the real reason: > After one too many PR scandals though, there was one that I just can't stomach as well as the rest. Which is... The CEO being a Trump man. These are starting to pop up on HN (another example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49585161 ). Outright political posts get flagged h…
I was disappointed to learn that the article from 404 media about a "Proposed Nuclear AI Data Center" in Ypsilanti, Michigan wasn't actually a data center with an on-site nuclear power generator, just one that Los Alamos is partially funding and will use. Anyway I think the concerns of everyone opposed to data center construction in Ypsilanti mentioned in that article are stupid, I consider 404 media to be poltically…
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Re: Leaving Proton Mail
#25There are two themes in this article that end up both being flawed:
- Proton’s not an honest/forthright company in terms of open source and for-profit status
- Proton is flawed technically and isn’t really encrypting your data.
Starting with the former, I think the author is letting perfect get in the way of good. Proton has a whole lot of open source going on with their products and that is a whole lot more than anyone else in the space considering the breadth of their products. I don’t blame the author for misunderstanding some complicated technical concepts, but they are sound concepts.
Yes, a service like this needs to make money to be viable long-term. Having a non-profit parent company is way better than being a public company with public shareholder pressure or being owned by Bain Capital.
As far as the second theme here, the author is just plain mistaken on Proton’s encryption. The author is just misunderstanding the technical aspects of the services and goes further than that by accusing Proton of AI marketing copy, which I am personally not seeing. It looks like normal, sensible, and pretty easy to understand writing to me. I can understand if these concepts are difficult to grasp for the general public but I’m not seeing any problems, and there’s also a lot of third party auditing transparency as well.
It might be nice if Proton offered a more user-friendly alternative to PGP encryption for non-technical non-Proton email recipients, like using some kind of secure temporary link inside an unencrypted email, but also, Proton doesn’t have to be the one to provide that service. The author is asking Proton to do the impossible and fix the flaws of email. And you still have a really nice benefit that every Proton user you email has e2e encryption baked in. There’s really no other service with as significant user base offering that.
The author goes on to accuse Proton of spreading themselves too thin despite having a really strong product portfolio. There’s really nothing that their apps are missing besides strong photo organization in Proton Drive similar to something like Ente, Google Photos, iCloud Photos, Immich, etc. They’re pretty much a one-stop shop for everything you could want and are a drop-in replacement for big tech cloud suites with a very respectably better privacy footprint.
Finally, I’ll address the political bit even though I shouldn’t: I’ll just say that a company’s CEO having opposite political beliefs of you is a very legitimate reason to not patronize that company. If the author feels like they can’t be a Proton customer because of public statements made by the CEO, good on them. That’s why CEOs pragmatically shouldn’t talk in a partisan way so they don’t alienate customers. With that said, good luck finding a company with a CEO who isn’t right-leaning. Sometimes a perfect choice isn’t available on the market and you just have to go with the best available one.
Re: Leaving Proton Mail
#26Maybe Proton’s copy needs some work, but another page on their website very clearly explains that emails aren’t encrypted when an email leave the ecosystem. Because, as the author points out, they can’t be. Also, I hate Trump too, but a broken clock is right twice a day. It’s possible to agree with some of the things he says while not being a “Trump man”. Why should we be surprised that the company founded on anti bi…
Disagreeing politically is a perfectly valid reason to avoid a product, though the author will have a very hard time finding alternatives with CEOs that aren’t right-leaning. Not a lot of CEOs are on the side of labor.
Sometimes you really have to pick the best available option after weighing all the factors.
Sure, the CEO of Toyota wore a Trump hat to gain favor. That’s a heck of a lot different than the laundry list of distasteful things Elon Musk has done as a CEO of a Tesla like running an illegal government agency and trying to buy votes. I’d pick Toyota over Tesla just like I’d pick Proton over Google or Microsoft, and that’s not only a political choice but a product quality choice as well.
Re: Leaving Proton Mail
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
I also made this switch a year ago, in part because I'm Australian and so is Fastmail. I miss some of the Proton bells and whistles, and my visionary plan had some great inclusions, but Fastmail is great. I just use the web app on my graphene phone and it works fine
>because I'm Australian and so is Fastmail. That seems like the worst reason to use a product. If I had the funds for a non free mail host, I would choose one thats not going to be easy to target with a TCN or TAN.
Mail just isn’t something that’s built in a way that it can be a private service. I think most people should choose a provider based on price and features.
Yes, it’s nice that if everyone you know uses proton then you can send end to end encrypted emails with zero friction. But I consider that more of a side feature rather than a reason to buy it.
Purely Mail is a nice provider in that regard. $10 a year!
I do like FastMail a lot, though.
Proton mostly makes sense if you’re going to use the entire suite, which helps spread the cost and make it a good value.
Re: Leaving Proton Mail
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
I also made this switch a year ago, in part because I'm Australian and so is Fastmail. I miss some of the Proton bells and whistles, and my visionary plan had some great inclusions, but Fastmail is great. I just use the web app on my graphene phone and it works fine
>because I'm Australian and so is Fastmail. That seems like the worst reason to use a product. If I had the funds for a non free mail host, I would choose one thats not going to be easy to target with a TCN or TAN.
Maybe so, but I just assume anything I write is being read by multiple different parties anyway. I use Signal too, but I don't trust that either. Face-to-face communication (inside my portable lead chamber) is the way to go
Re: Leaving Proton Mail
#29An additional factor for me leaving was the board member (Rosemary Leith) who was part of the WEF. It seems to me that Proton has been co-opted
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Re: Leaving Proton Mail
#30An additional factor for me leaving was the board member (Rosemary Leith) who was part of the WEF. It seems to me that Proton has been co-opted
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