I've been using Proton Mail and VPN for a while now, and I'm just wondering how everyone else feels about them. I have this kind of inherent alight distrust of them just because they seem like they offer a lot for free and kind of have a Big Tech vibe about them, but there's nothing for me to really substantiate that distrust with, its mostly just a feeling. That being said, I do use their services as mentioned and they work pretty well, even on the free teir. So aside from that one instance where they gave that guy's info to the feds, is there any reason not to trust them with my data?

  • Cyberflunk@lemmy.world
    98·
    1 year ago

    Why is anyone using email anymore? (He said with a straight face)

    Personally, email exists solely for merchant receipts, and IRS collection notices. I don't use email with any family or friends. Matrix, signal, session, most any messenger but I prefer e2e.

    Maybe I'm internetting wrong.

    • online@lemmy.mlEnglish
      71·
      1 year ago

      I agree with you. Email is flawed and not appropriate for modern communication.

      If you want the messages to be written in letter-like format, then you can write them that way. No need to make it chatty if you don't want to communicate that way.

      Email shares far too much metadata and should be used just for account-updates, account-control (password reset, MFA, and so on), etc.

      Otherwise I just push everyone to Signal, since it's normie-friendly and already using quantum-safe encryption.

      –

      To the OP's question: yes, I trust Proton. They can't access my data if they wanted to. They're a lot better than competing companies.

      Check out some of the steps they've been taking to improve OpenPGP and go down to "Upcoming improvements" to see their future plans: https://proton.me/blog/openpgp-crypto-refresh

      And, remember, they are more than just an email company: https://proton.me/blog

      • Joseph Finger@freiburg.social
        51·
        1 year ago

        https://piped.video/watch?v=iH626CXyNtE

        1. Dont use webmail, the purpose of a browser is to execute foreign code of unnown sources -> they can serve you any website they would like
        2. dont use Email, it's all plain text on the servers (unless you insist on using pgp, yet still a lot of metadata is plain text)
        3. dont use centralised communication ie. Signal. You're creating societal habits that wont be easily changeable if you start to distrust them. Matrix and IRC etc. dont need a phone either