The CEO of Proton recently came out as a right wing partisan who supports American neofascism. I would look elsewhere for email providers, Proton is not as trustworthy as they purport to be.
this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2025
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I would say he's a right-wing "Libertarian" not a maga supporter. People like him say dumb things all the time, Andy Yen is also not an American, so he might be just ignorant to what republicans actually do. If you check his twitter, he posted some pro-ukraine stuff, and has donated to Ukraine, and also is pro- Hong Kong protesters, anti-censorship in Russia and Iran.
Besides, he may be CEO, but he ain't a dictator of Proton.
Yeah, gotta find a new VPN also. What an asshole (the CEO).
It was completely shocking, I would expect him to be smart enough not to make statements like that but I guess it's masks off now that their guy is in power.
We're probably on a list now, for besmirching him.
Dude got a college degree in particle physics and thinks he so smart 🤓, that he think he also knows about American politics (a country he doesn't even live in) 🤦♂️
cough Mullvad cough
Proton is not the sum total of one of its board members.
Do you have any sources for that?
It was discussed in real time across Lemmy with links to Mastodon and Reddit where the CEO and the official Proton account made various partisan statements that have destroyed Protons reputation. I didn't save links but I'm sure you can dig them up easily enough.
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Omigod.
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Buy a domain name and put that on the service provider of your choice.
I have no basis by which to choose a service provider.
The advantage of this approach is that you are not tied to a service provider indefinitely. You can keep the same email address when you change providers.
The stakes of selecting a "wrong" service provider aren't as high. If you find you chose the "wrong" one, you can change it in the future.
I personally use Migadu for email + Porkbun for the domain, prices and service are great imo
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Fastmail has been great for me for years now
I use Proton, but I also use their VPN and password manager. Aliases are also nice.
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This. Always use your own domain.
Bring your own domain.
You don't want to be locked in to one mail provider for life. Just bring your domain when you leave.
I've had mine since 2010. First on Gmail, then proton and now purelymail. Gmail is evil. Proton is pricy, and more so if you have several domains. Purelymail is very affordable in comparison.
As always, I recommend Posteo. It's cheap (1€/mo), allows third party apps and at least their website doesn't have any trackers or ads. Probably the best paid one out there.
Personally I've heard very good things about mailbox.org
It can be paid anonymously, if you want. There is no (real) free option, and you didn't mention if you were only looking at those, but your examples are mostly free.
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So when it comes to encryption for digital data there are really two concerns:
- encrypted at rest
- encrypted in transit
Your options for encrypted email providers are limited:
- https://www.privacyguides.org/en/email/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_webmail_providers#Features
and Protonmail seems incorrect for this because it largely wouldn't be encrypted mail.
I'm curious why you think so?
Proton's inboxes are encrypted, so that's (1) handled.
For (2), Proton-to-Proton emails are automatically encrypted. Proton-to-WKD-enabled-services are also automatically encrypted:
Proton also supports automatic external key discovery with Web Key Directory (WKD). This means that emails sent to other providers which use WKD will be automatically encrypted with OpenPGP as well, without the need to manually exchange public PGP keys with your contacts.
And finally, emails to non-secure services can be encrypted, but you must provide the decryption password to the receiver through some other method. These emails can also be configured to automatically delete after a set expiration time.
This is the most feature-complete encrypted email service that I'm aware of, it basically covers all cases that it is possible for Proton to cover on their own service, anything more would require cooperation from the other service(s). No email service could possibly force an inbound email to be encrypted in transit, the sending service has to do that, and that's really the only part that Proton doesn't have a feature for (because it's impossible). If encryption is your concern, I don't think there are any better options right now.
No email service could possibly force an inbound email to be encrypted in transit, the sending service has to do that, and that’s really the only part that Proton doesn’t have a feature for (because it’s impossible).
This is what I meant by "it largely wouldn't be encrypted mail." I'm looking for an email address to open a Pixelfed, Peertube and probably Mastodon and Loops account, among others. Trying to separate "content creation" from my personal accounts and email address. This account will likely be public-facing and will receive normal everyday email, from the various instances I sign up with plus maybe a viewer if anyone ever watches anything I make. The automatic encryption features of Protonmail don't seem that useful for this use case. Just need an email address that my bank hasn't heard of.
Hmm, I'm not sure what you expect... if an email service sends in the clear, the only place that can be fixed is at the service itself.
Having the inbox for these accounts encrypted would seem to be important though, so that you can maintain control of them.
I don't care if messages are encrypted at all in this case, the entire reason I mentioned encryption is to say "I don't need the feature this service is most known for."
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I use Tuta for multiple domains and it's been an amazing experience so far.
cock.li
If you want a standards-based service without bullshit and with custom domain support, I can recommend Purelymail.
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Note that Proton is cool even if not encrypted. I have pretty much a single contact who uses it and all the other messages are thus unencrypted. Still feels good to not use Gmail.
Depending on how you feel about current leadership, you should probably be aware of comments made by Proton’s ceo
I know, but I'm tired of it. So he's a rich dick. Everything I do gives money to some rich dick. Everything you do does so as well. And I'm tired of making my life harder just so a different rich dick gets my money.
Emails between a Proton address to another Proton address are encrypted, except the subject line (idk why they don't encrypt that too? 🤷♂️)
I use mailbox.org with my own domains. And I encrypt my inbox using a PGP key I manage myself.
My setup is pretty much the same what Proton gives out of the box, I just manage my own keys rather than replying on the company.
Yes, my provider can see my unencrypted mails before my key encrypts it, but I trust them enough and I don't pass sensitive information using emails.
I run https://port87.com/
It’s not quite ready to bring in your own domain, but it works for an email on @port87.com, and you get basically unlimited email addresses. I’m trying to grow it by word of mouth for now, and when it’s ready for business class email (own domain, user management, etc) I’m going to advertise it.
Namecrane is hella cheap for lifetime rnow 70$ 250gb storage 15 sites, or 10$ a year reocurring 100gb storage 15 sites (I have this one), fast and easy to setup.
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I'm happy with Fastmail. Making masked emails is great to me, and you can bring your own domain with you. It also is integrated with 1password.
Iirc my email on proton is encrypted. I believe I set it up that way. Good provider for me.
Before the CEO of Proton came out as a nutjob I might have been inclined to agree...
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