Welcome! This is a community for all those who are interested in protecting their privacy.
PS: Don't be a smartass and try to game the system, we'll know if you're breaking the rules when we see it!
Some of these are only vaguely related, but great communities.
Gmail's only feature that made it compelling was an inbox of 1GB when everyone else was doing 20MB. Oh, and using Ajax to make it slightly more responsive.
None of the other stuff they added matters, especially if you're using a mail client.
I also think labels are the right way to organise emails. It was pretty unique at the time, and I think it still isn't common.
And frankly, I like gmail's interface more than Thunderbird's, for example.
As someone who hosts their own email server and uses Gmail, I can tell you the biggest feature they offer that I have trouble replicating is labels.
Those in the know are probably familiar that labels are essentially special IMAP folders. The challenge I've had is making these folders work well, finding a mail client (both web based and app based) that works with it, and is easy to manage.
My last attempt to get this to work was setting up a DocumentDB database where the labels were metadata and they were then looked up by Courier IMAP. But it didn't work well.
I've been looking into this problem for over 10 years and it kills me that this simple feature is important enough to keep my personal email in Google.
Like Google is going to do that. The entire reason for gmails existence is to gather data from its users.
You mean to say that if a service or product is free, we are the product?
Ultra Private E-Mail
look inside
The most basic ass unencrypted email
Is Proton still an alternative? I subscribed to Tuta for a year but I'm not too happy with their apps. Feels like low-grade web apps disguised as mobile apps.
Used it for years now, 100% worth the money and the bundled cloud storage and vpn are both great.
I'd say yes. Have been using ProtonMail as main mail service for several years now. There are some limitations because of encryption, but for the most part it's working almost the same as GMail. I've had Tutamail too, but I too didn't like the design of their app, it was very restricted and lacked features of almost any kind.
Absolutely not, Proton’s CEO went on a rant about how he loves Trump. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s all funneled to his dad Putin. I’ve been looking for Proton thats not Proton
He never said he loved Trump. He said he supported the push against big tech which seemed most likely with republicans.
Yes still very dumb and republicans are lying sacks of shit.
I dont use proton and I'm kinda sceptical about them. Especially since Switzerland is potentionaly introducing a very privacy unfriendly law. And also because of said tweet, but please state facts and don't exaggerate since it really doesn't help with anything.
The tweet (can a tweet even qualify as a rant, given the length?):
Great pick by @readDonaldTrump. 10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys [small businesses, n.d.r. as explained on reddit], but today the tables have completely turned. People forget that the current antitrust actions against Big Tech were started under the first Trump admin.
A rant about how he loves Trump?
I think I'm leaning towards your side here. I'm sorry for starting a war in the comments, by the way. 😅 It was a hot topic!
I still find it weird that the Proton CEO is so adamant about pitting republicans against democrats so hard, like it's black or white, red pill vs blue pill. If he supports the choice that was made, he could easily just say that he thinks the choice was good, without putting all the focus on who made the choice. That's the weird part for me. 😓 That's what makes me suspicious of the intentions of the tweet.
But yeah, anyway, it definitely wasn't a love letter like that, no. 👍
I think their new (not so new anymore) mobile app has been a major improvement. It is much faster and usable IMHO. This on Android (degoogled).
I am quite happy with the service, and so is my family (non-techie).
Sadly, that is true for many email providers. I do use Tuta, because I use web apps only. However, a decent provider is Disroot. You do have to set up the encryption things by yourself, but IIRC, you can use any desktop/mobile/whatever client you want to.
honestly i believe the reason so many people are never gonna switch from google is because so many services allow you to use your google as an easy one click register/login. its so convenient that i have friends who'd rather have all their privacy be infringed than to give that up.
not to mention the dozens of services google provides themselves, from maps to mail to search to whatever the fuck
similar to apple, its an ecosystem. one of convenience.
It's called the Googleverse.
Many people don't know the difference between the Google search bar and the URL bar anymore.
100%. it's SO annoying to remember passwords especially when my phone doesn't auto save them 50% of the time because it doesn't feel like it.
Email doesn't need "features." It's been a solved problem for decades.
It does need a PGP integration.
I mean I know why it won't, and never in Gmail, but we do need it.
Gladly leave Gmail, but DEFINITELY not for Proton
Some food for thought, (excerpt from Louis Rossmann's reply to the top pinned comment):
"with regards to products: if you want to only buy shoes, razors, cars, caulking materials, etc, made by companies & people who support all of your political beliefs, you're going to lose that game very fast. you will waste your life doing the following:
The moment you go down that road of throwing away software products and services because they are made by people whose political beliefs do not reflect yours, you are going to end up living in a cave. That is a lonely world. It doesn't even work!! People who bought the Tesla Model 3 a few years ago would have Ford F-250 Turbo Diesel drivers speed up in front of them and roll coal in their face. And now that same person is getting called a Nazi!!!
the political beliefs of the software i use are irrelevant to me. They only become relevant when these questions arise:
for gnome, #2 is yes. gnome was bad 10 years ago,it was bad 5 years ago, and it's bad now. i used gnome for a very short time period earlier in 2024 out of morbid curiosity. my machine had 128 gigabytes of ram, rtx-2080, threadripper 2950x processor and gnome still lagged. XFCE just worked! on top of that, gnome sucked to use. i am not using gnome: whether it's "woke" or "anti woke" or whatever else.
if we're at a point in the world where we choose our web browser by the political views of its programmers... we're screwed"
This argument is so weird to me.
Maybe I’m a huge nerd, but I love researching who I’m supporting behind the products and services I use, just in general. If I happen to learn someone has weirdo politics it’s not “researching everything to death,” it’s being careful with my hard earned money.
Like most things, it's not so black and white as Louis paints it. What products you buy and use absolutely is a political choice, but perfection isn't the goal. No one has to be a "perfect" consumer to avoid the low hanging fruit like Chick-fil-A or today's Tesla if those are important issues to you.
Well louis did switch from GrapheneOS tbo BC he didn't like the dev lol
But fair points
With that being said, Proton is not some sort of gold standard, it is a good email service. There are others.
It's not like Proton mail is the only alternative. And like the article points out, you don't get encryption anyway, since almost no one else you'd be communicating with is going to be on Proton. I use (and recommend) posteo.de but there are other good alternatives for email. But if you want encrypted communication you'll need to use an app designed for that, not email.
I never quite understand why people use Proton. It just automates the exchange of PGP/GPG keys, but only if the other person also uses Proton, right?
Anyhow, +1 to paying a small amount of money for email. I was with posteo.de myself for many years. I heard mailbox.org is even better/safer and has slightly more features. Both start at 1€/month.
BTW, I set up an eternal redirect email address a long time ago, so I can change the actual provider without having to tell all my contacts.
To be precise, even when an email is not from Proton user, they encrypt it with ypur public key, send it to you and delete it (they call it zero access). Which is the best you can get. Also managing PGP keys, especially on multiple devices is a pain.
It also encrypts your emails automatically (both incoming and outgoing) and lets you set PGP keys for any address you want, and fetch/manually trust Proton Mail users' keys.
Gmail has features? Fucking where?
What features does Gmail even have to sacrifice? It’s just basic email.
Moving away from gmail is one thing, but Proton's CEO is a massive cunt that I wouldn't personally trust anymore. I have an ongoing subscription for some of their services (including email, but I don't really use it), and I'm going to move on from there after the subscription expires.
not to mention Proton's PR team has mod positions in the subreddit and lemmy community and like to do some pretty aggressive censoring of anything that refers to the CEO's support of Trump in hopes of gaslighting everyone to forget about it.
I got banned from the lemmy community recently and my posts removed as 'misinformation' for talking about it... like man the entire internet saw him say this shit.
Rocking postfix and dovecot with opendkim.
Andy Yen tipped his hand, he’s a trumpbitch. Money you pay them supports a facist fuck
Fun fact: Fascism is not thinking republicans will do better than democrats in pursuing antitrust battles against big tech for the benefit of smaller businesses.
Please don't use this word at random, plenty of people in my country (and many others) died fighting fascism.
I highly recommend Disroot.org. I switched as part of my deGoogling and I am very happy.
I’ll never understand why Facebook didn’t just offer opt-in privacy features to placate the small percentage of the population that care and make noise about these things. They’d likely still be a major hub and would’ve lost a small slice of a much bigger pie.
Because Opt-in is their kryptonite. They know very well that 99% of their users never change the default settings. They will fight tooth and nail against privacy by default because it's against their business model.
Yeah that’s what I mean. Add privacy features but make them opt in.
