In this world of enshittification and organizations becoming more and more aggressive, it's so nice and refreshing to see proton doing the opposite and moving to a better model :)
this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2024
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Privacy
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I think proton was never going to function as a profit-first business. Too many enshittified rival businesses. Kinda the natural outcome.
This makes me want to upgrade my plan.
Same. I'm admittedly mostly a freeloader right now but this definitely will convince me to buy in.
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The opposite of the OpenAI.
Support the apps that protect you. I recommend Signal and Proton VPN.
Honestly, a very impressive move. Makes me way more confident in the trajectory of the company and I'm happy to have been a visionary user for multiple years.
I wonder, though, just how much of Proton A.G. does the foundation now own? They say it's the largest shareholder, but they didn't say "majority shareholder".
It is a nice PR but for me I am not impressed. Rolex is also a non profit organization in Switzerland and and mostly help hiding there finance.
Correct me if I am wrong but all I see is words and promises. I would trust them if they release the yearly finance transparently.
For now the only act I can judge them on is their collaboration with police to give ecologist activists IP.
It is a nice PR but for me I am not impressed. Rolex is also a non profit organization in Switzerland and and mostly help hiding there finance.
Okay but Rolex is Rolex. There are uncountably many non-profits, and many (most?) do good work. I don't think Rolex is representative of your usual non profit.
Can you elaborate on that? They turned over an ecologist activists IP?
You can search it online : I don't know any good media so here's the first result on DuckDuckGo https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/6/22659861/protonmail-swiss-court-order-french-climate-activist-arrest-identification
Just because it's still in my clipboard from another post:
https://proton.me/blog/climate-activist-arrest
Long story short, they got ordered to do so by a court, which is legally binding and they won't go to jail for you.
They won't go to jail, period. No company owners never go to jail, kinda ever. This phrase is out of proportion. At worse they would have a fine.
Also still in the blog everything is words and very opaque like " We do this not only through technology and advocacy (Proton has contributed over $500,000 toward defending these values around the world)" : like where, what, when?
"There was no legal possibility to resist or fight this particular request." : I doubt very much unless Switzerland is a dictatorship in disguise.
"Switzerland generally will not assist prosecutions from countries without fair justice systems." : clearly not.
Every webprovider or server in the EU is forced to reveal datas of an user because an court order in a criminal investigation, with even the risk that the service will be closed, apart of high fines if they don't. If you are an criminal, it's better to message with paper and pen, otherwise they'll find you, independent which online service you use.
Also still in the blog everything is words and very opaque like " We do this not only through technology and advocacy (Proton has contributed over $500,000 toward defending these values around the world)" : like where, what, when?
Should they always go into a downward spiral and explain everything they did? Check out the Proton Christmas fundraisers, that's what they are talking about
There was no legal possibility to resist or fight this particular request." : I doubt very much unless Switzerland is a dictatorship in disguise.
No legal system in the world allows you to fight everything all the time. Get to reality.
Switzerland generally will not assist prosecutions from countries without fair justice systems." : clearly not.
Wasn't that case in France? Don't remember exactly. Not sure if you're calling France to have unfair justice systems, but then you should probably look for a new planet, because nothing is 100% fair unfortunately.
You can still distinguish between very bad, kind of bad, okayish, and mostly good.
Damn that's so fucking sad.
"Crucially, the order did not provide the contents of the activist’s email, which are encrypted and cannot be accessed by Proton. Yen said a similar order would also not be able to provide ProtonVPN metadata, as VPNs are subject to different requirements under Swiss law."
From the verge article
Non-profit and all this stuff is nice, but where is the dark secret?
No dark secret, Proton products are OpenSource, made by cientifics of the CERN in Swiss. They make its incommings with the premium products, serving the free ones without ads and trackings or loggings.
Makes me even more suspicious, I have to comprehend this.
More suspicious than an American commercial company offering the services? Proton is not a commercial company, they really do not need to make money with their services, all they charge you is the use of servers and hosts based on a certain amount of data that you claim, in the VPN they are one of the few that offer you a use of unlimited data with a more than acceptable speed in the free version, without ads, logs and military-level encryption, the only thing is a limited number of countries in the free version (23 server in three countries).
The same with Mail or the cloud service, where space is naturally limited in the free account, but privacy is the same as in the premium account at a very high level. If you don't trust it, you are also free to host the services yourself, since they are all OpenSource.
Sounds like a gigantic honeypot. To good to be true, it can’t be that I finally found someone I can trust, or can it?
You can, every product of a company which are not profit centered apart being OpenSource, by definition is way more trustworth than proprietary soft of big US companies. Proton services made it's fame because of its known reliability since a lot of years.
Protonmail, their flagship product, actually treats 99.9% of emails in clear-text. You can't have end-to-end encryption if the other person at the end doesn't support it. There have been (unverified) rumors that Proton could be a giant honeypot. They did help authorities in the past. Maybe we will understand better who they are in the future
They did cooperate with authorities, but they also took their time in disclosures to explain precisely what the user did wrong, and how you can avoid making the same mistakes. At the end of the day, Proton only has the information you provide them. And if you don't encrypt your stuff, it's not safe.
Proton serves privacy, not anonymity. They will not collect, harvest, analyse or sell your data. If you however use their services for illegal things they will forward whatever - usually little - unencrypted information they have about you.
I'm surprised people would expect them to behave differently. Do they expect Proton to not comply with lawful warrants?
I was this close to upgrade to the paid plan, and this is the final push I needed
Nice !
Maybe that will allow them to get rid of their marketing habits !
Would be very nice, that's one reason I use Tuta and not Proton
I was sketched out by their move to get rid of inactive free accounts, but this is nice to see. Really hate the idea that if I'm unplugged just for a bit I lose a ton of contacts.
You need to be unplugged for 12 consecutive months for Proton to delete your account because of inactivity though, which seems fair for free tier accounts. A simple login is enough to prevent this, you do not need to send an email or whatever, simply log in once a year. You also get reminders sent to your recovery email before this happens. Data storage for inactive free tier accounts isn't free for Proton.
We recently purchased the family plan even if it is quite expensive for a couple. Reading this of course made me feel better about it.
Welp, that's one more reason not to use proton
What? Why?
Because non profits are not universally good. With a company the objective is clear.
I don't terribly care for proton or any other "secure and private" email. I think it is mostly snake oil.
Could you clarify what you mean by snake oil?
Email is insecure by default. These companies play on wishful thinking to make people feel better about using it.
My admin friend told me that all email is now secure and encrypted by default.
Of course you have to trust whoever is hosting your email though. Don't trust Gmail, yahoo, hotmail etc
Fun fact, it isn't. Not compared to Signal Simplex or any other massager with strong encryption
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This. The best you can do is encrypt your messages locally before sending. But then your email service provider still knows where you are, when and to whom you are sending the message to, and how long is it. And so does the recepient's email provider and anyone in between. Best they can do is to promise not to keep that data. But it's just that - a promise, which there is no way to verify.
Are you a bot?