Andy Yen’s values are incompatible with Proton’s mission. He advocates for poor security practices, supports fascists, and he verbally abuses his subordinates. As such, I can no longer in good conscience continue to financially support a company with such terrible leadership.
Unfortunately for me, my subscription just renewed last month on a multi year plan, but it does give me time to browse for and experiment with alternatives.
If you’re able, I encourage you to do the same and cite Andy Yen as the driving factor for your decision. We can’t let these tech bro fascists destroy what little semblance of privacy we have left.
Yeah, that’s very unfortunate. I just recently moved everything over to proton and I’ll be spending today looking for yet another alternative.
Please do share what alternative(s) you end up with and what you like about the providers. I had a look at mailbox, infomaniak and tuta for mail and airvpn as a replacement. I think I’l be switching to mailbox.
I’m going to check them (mailbox) out first once I wake up a bit more. I already know I can’t afford tuta on top of everything else I pay for currently. Budget is about stretched to the max but I will update with which one I go with.
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I don’t know, the terms and conditions say that after a year of closing your account, they may give your email address to someone else. That sounds like a privacy disaster waiting to happen.
After briefly skimming their privacy policy and features, gmx doesn’t seem too bad. I’ll do a little more research tomorrow and its on the list.
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For email, have you considered Mailfence, Posteo.de, Fastmail
or Disroot?Disroot is currently not operational due to a server failure
I’ve been using Startmail for a while now with no complaints
I am a mailbox user and have no complaints. It just chugs away. I only use the mail aspect of it though
I’ve been happy with infomaniak. If you host a domain name with them, you get a free email too. I switched from Godaddy, gmail, and protonmail earlier this year all to infomaniak.
I’m also happy with AirVPN, but a lot more sites block it than other VPNs, so be ready to deal with that.
But Infomaniak is an entirely different product to Protonmail.
They offer email hosting and kSuite. It’s an alternative and more.
Protonmail is end to end encrypted. Infomaniak can be decrypted. It’s a less secure product and therefore not an alternative to Protonmail
But I agree that it’s a good product compared to like gmail.
Fair point. I think protonmail is only that way with other protonmail users, and I practically never send personal emails, so I honestly forgot about that feature. It’d be nice if other hosts could integrate with that.
I’m unaware of true feature parity alternatives then. I guess I just tend to use other communication media when I need encryption.
I signed up for tuta right now and I’m currently moving my most sensitive accounts over but I think I’m going to go with mailbox as well. It sounds good for around $13.50 usd.
i finally deleted my ~20 year google account last week, finally migrating every single account that used that old email over to proton. and now, this
It’s still astronomically better than Google. People seem to be forgetting this.
True for now. But it seems headed down a path where it will be competing with Google in shittiness some time in the not so far off future (and I use Proton as well).
This. The Proton suite is very convenient in my use case, I wouldn’t like to switch to all saperate services
Better than Google in terms of ethics and privacy maybe, and not shoving ads in your face when you don’t use an adblocker. But it’s behind in features.
And unfortunately Google caters to the majority, who generally don’t care about privacy, even the ones who say they do but refuse to act on their words (and I’m not even going to comment on the “they have all my info anyway” crowd).
To me comparing Gmail to Protonmail feels similar to comparing FB Messenger to Signal. The former has more features and therefore is chosen by most people despite the enshittification.
It’s not better.
It’s fine, at best, and free alternatives are fine too.
The only thing Proton has is their integrity and focus on privacy… Or was supposed to, anyway.
It is. The direction they are going is shit, but only in isolation, if you compare it to Google, they still look like angels. Perhaps you dont understand what Google is doing.
No, you’re the one that refuses to see where Proton is heading with a CEO like that.
The only reason I’m paying for Proton is their supposed values, but clearly under his leadership they’re completely opposite to what they claim publicly.
If Proton is going to use my money to push out slop, I might as well use any other email provider that at least won’t lie to my face about it.
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FUUUUCCCK. SAME.
And a custom domain so there was no automatic transferring. Had to do the obnoxious mbox import rigamarole for two accounts (mine and my tech-illiterate dad) and talk two friends through the same.
Whatever. I’m sticking with it for a couple years, I don’t have it in me to do it again.
You’re good—it’s still one of the best options out there right now. Even if it gets shittier, unfortunately, it’s still a way better option than almost any others out there. Which is depressing. But don’t beat yourself up for staying.
I have yet to delete my gmail account but I soon will make a new one to run on my phone until I can get a new phone with grapheneos or some other OS that uses microg instead. I feel you on that 20 year account thing though. I think I made mine about 20 years ago as well. It was my very first “grown up” email after my silly kid named ones like Skaterpunkxxxxx@aol and such.
I deleted mine several years ago but my employer just added Google dependencies to their app so I can’t install through Aurora anymore and have to go and buy a new phone and a SIM card, and make a new Google account…
After decades on Gmail I finally stopped procrastinating and moved almost everything to proton over the last week. I had made a Lemmy post asking for service recommendations. Almost everyone said proton except two jerks who railed against it but had no interest in explaining and they made no alternative recommendation, just railed against proton.
Reading this article right now sucks.
Yeah, I don’t get why some people don’t elaborate. Just before I deleted tiktok and reddit, Proton and Tuta were the 2 everyone was recommending and I went with proton bc of the easy move feature which didn’t actually work for me for whatever reason so I ended up moving the most important accounts first and then all the ones that mattered one by one. I recall seeing some people do the same as you claimed; railing against proton without explanation but the looks of it and ease of use were what got me. Tuta doesn’t have that “easy move” feature either but it might be my go to. I thought all of their tiers were paid tiers but it looks like they have a free tier with twice as much space as proton.
Yeah, not only do people who do that not elaborate, they often insult you for even considering something they’re judgy about. Proton in this case. That was how both commenters approached it. Telling me I’m an idiot if I go with the recommendation that actually existed. They could’ve at least said what they use. One (non rude) person did mention tuta but I figured the bigger company would be more reliable to stick around 😭
You can probably not worry about this and be fine. Email is insecure to begin with.
I’m not gonna fight anybody about this but the proton ceo is making the right call telling everyone to just spam fixes out there without testing. The security environment has gone from the old way of making sure the hole is patched perfectly to the new way of making patches live immediately.
The reason is that ai automation makes exploitation of a vulnerability incredibly fast. Used to be if you and the opp both found something at the same time they’d have to spend a long while figuring out where it goes, what it can be chained to (this was a big one because they had to carefully interact with someone whose knowledge domain was different from their own to hook their php deserialization fuck up to someone else’s use after free etc), what that gets them and how theyre gonna use it to accomplish what. So there was plenty of time for you to patch the bug while they get their ducks in a row. Now that’s all automatable and they don’t have to deal with a different criminal in a careful and safe way.
Idk how much computer security news you get, but it’s been non stop insane banger one after another and proton has a target on its back. I’d tell people to get in line and ship the fixes too.
The way I see it is that proton’s mission hasn’t changed. I pay for their products, which remain secure and privacy focused despite their asshat CEO.
Security is suspect because the CEO is pushing devs to release code (AI-generated) to production without testing.
Fuck! Me too…
I did this the first time he praised Trump’s cabinet picks.
I canceled my renewal at that time but had just reupped for two years. I was hoping the foundation board would do its job and reprimand him if not oust. Their inaction and silence has been the most disappointing part of this and the real reason I’m following through on ending my 10+ year account with them.
Exact same. Mine had also just renewed for two years. I cancelled the renewal but hoped sometime in the last two years things would have improved. I’ll be losing that in January along with the more than half a tb of drive space I had racked up for being a long time customer.
They’ve got 28 days to oust Yen and make a really good PR statement or I’m gone for good. This damage control by Yen isn’t cutting it.
I had missed that and that’s a failure on my part.
I also cited him back then. Interesting to pay attention to reddit comments but not to your own cancelling subscribers.
Yeah I told them exactly why I was leaving in my cancelation, and I never heard anything back from anyone there.
What Email provider do you use now if I may ask? Do you use password managers and/or VPNs? If so where did you switch to? Because when I look at alternatives it’s damn bleak out there.
I use Fastmail now. I know it doesn’t have the encryption that Protonmail has (what does, aside from Tuta anyway?), but the alias feature is great and integrates directly with 1Password (my PW manager). I chose 1P due to a blog post by Troy whatshisname a few years back and have been happy with it since. I have 15 days left on my Mullvad VPN sub, and I honestly don’t know what I’ll switch to once that’s over (since apparently that CEO is a fascist too).
It certainly is bleak out there. I self-host quite a few services, and I used to roll my own VPN, so I might just do that again.
Heyyy, sorry to bring more bad news. But 1Password is also a fascist company. They donated money to DHH through Omarchy, and the CEO is already known for not being cool.
It’s a shame, because I liked the keyboard navigation on their password manager.
Fuuuuck. This is exhausting. I was already salty about having to move my VPN but changing password managers means migrating my family too. So annoying. Any recs for ethical and good VPN and PW management?
My recommendation is that you stop doing that.
The tools you’re using to stay private and secure online need to be chosen for functionality first and foremost. Do not be driven away from effective tools by controversy.
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.
Sadly I’m still looking for alternatives on the VPN front.
As a password manager I use KeePassXC and keep the password file synced between computers using rsync. But the KeePassXC dev is also vibe coding parts of it now, and I’ve heard the same about the rsync dev. I’d still rather stay on vibe coded software instead of vibe coded and fascist supporting software, but I’m looking for alternatives.
JFC. That one will take longer to switch away from.
Get something offline-by-default like KeePass, and then if you want to you can backup/sync the database file with whatever cloud storage provider of your choosing
I’ve tried that before (KeepassXC) and the lack of convenience is not worth the added security to me. I totally understand why people would make that choice though.
I had just swapped over to proton at the time so I didn’t want to go through that again but if both ethics and security aren’t priorities then I’m out I’ll probably just self host half the replacement services on my VPS anyway.
That’s when I bounced as well. Luckily that came out while I was still testing it out and before I spent any money.
When people show you who they are, listen.
There was a lot of copium flying around after the first red flag. I told people then, best case scenario is he’s a naive idiot to think a Trump cabinet pick is good for anyone other than Trump and his cronies. Worst case scenario he was trying to cosy up to an anti-democratic fascist.
Here we are with red flag
23. How many people are going to keep injecting that copium? Or are we finally listening to the man when he tries to show us who he is?Edit: I was unaware Proton got caught sponsoring Fascists on YouTube.
Emphasis: listen the first time.
And this is red flag number 3. Don’t forget about Proton sponsoring fascist Youtubers.
This isn’t a red flag, it’s a red banner parade, holy shit
You’re right, this is “why did you make me do that” level of warning.
Holy hell… I was expecting it to be something AI related but Yen is straight up acting like a Musk wannabe. And I was seriously considering a switch to Proton but I think I’m going to bin that idea now
It really does show a complete lack of understanding of his own userbase. We don’t want new useless features fast. We want secure, private and reliable services.
They rolled out lumo chatbot. I just wanted decent linux support for VPN and drive, especially as a years-long visionary-tier supporter. I overpaid for years because I shared the same vision but its was always a second class experience on Linux.
I cant believe yens henchman is named bart butler lol
Proton is fucked if this article is true, andy is so obviously trying to chase profits in a market that isnt in line with protons core, and there doesnt seem to be anyone with enough company power that is willing to stop his psychosis
He would fit in better with company culture at instagram or tiktok
What the hell is going on? They are a privacy focused company. Why do they need to chase increased recurring annual revenue and ship features as fast as possible if they aren’t publicly traded? Andy Yen can spout his corporate jargon, saying “the company is underperforming” and “not reaching it’s recurring annual revenue goals”, but why does that matter if the company is healthy? Does he want to make the company more profitable to fill his own pockets with bonuses? I would think as CEO of Proton you would be somewhat committed to the cause, but this restructuring and AI push flies in the face of that. It must be a healthy dose of AI psychosis as well.
They can just be like Valve, do nothing while the competition shoots themselves in the foot and profit.
Being a CEO is a terminal fucking disease nowadays.
He thinks he’s not rich enough, so he’s looking at rump, mush, and alt-man, and suck, and going, you know, those guys are really, really rich. What are they doing? Give me all of that. I’m not just going to follow their path; I’m going to trailblaze ahead of them, and I’m going to do it without the trained staff or unlimited funds. I’m just going to do it because it’s magic and my AI tells me I can do that.
I know that because it’s exactly what my CEO is doing.
…and when that (or any) archive.org link returns
429 Too Many Requestsbecause of your VPN, pull it up in Tor Browser. Bless 'em for still allowing Tor exits, fuck 'em for blocking VPNs.
Does this count or is was this too aggressive? I’ve been known to be a little too angry when it comes to things like this.
On line 4 you opened quotation marks at ‘"re-interviewing’ but never closed them. For that reason, I am afraid it is a failure and must be re-written.
Ahh shit
If anything, it’s not aggressive enough! Everyone is so apathetic about everything compared to 20-30 years ago. Between the rise of Fascism and the cost of living, life has never been shitter yet no one seems to give a fuck. Why aren’t we rioting and revolting until shit stops sucking so god damn much!? Where is everyone’s passion!?
I’ve been on this planet for four decades. It used to not be this way! People used to care! Now it seems like all of society has become emotional zombies, and if you dare to step out of line and speak up about some injustice, you get labeled as “crashing out”. It’s such fucking bullshit! I’m not crashing out; I’m pissed the fuck off that the world is run by evil men and no one is doing anything about it!
Oh I like you
I agree. However, I think the best ways to fix Proton are to send endless complaints until Yen is removed or to establish better competition with stronger morals.
You’re mad as hell and you’re not going to take it anymore!
See? This is what I mean! People like you are part of the problem. Nobody takes this shit seriously. You just mock me when I get mad for a valid reason. I really hate how apathetic everyone is compared to 20-30 years ago. All you care about is being clever and funny enough to get upvotes while the world burns. It’s fucking pathetic.
It feels pretty balanced, to me. Nicely done.
I keep seeing folks mention that at least it is a good and secure service why should I leave? this should be why: via: https://www.404media.co/manifestos-fear-and-loser-thinking-inside-protons-ai-reckoning/
Andy Yen, the CEO of Proton, had a message for an employee in the company’s security Slack channel who urged the company to at least take a few days to pentest newly written code before pushing it live. “That’s bullshit and loser thinking. Of course it’s possible to be fast and secure,” Yen wrote in the channel at the end of August. “Stop thinking always of how to be slower, and focus more on how to be faster.”
I think they’re thinking of how to be securer dumbass. Which is probably smart considering everyone and their uncle is using AI to find vulnerabilities everywhere they can these days.
I did exactly that a few days ago when I read about the AI interviews. Using Tuta now.
Tuta seems good, but it just don’t work in my language at all. Sounds like really, really stupid and it’s already hard to explain that proton-me is a real email… (“Tuta” or “saada tuta” would be like “you gonna get beat up”)
Out of curiosity, which language?
Finnish! Also there is option for keemail-com when setting up Tuta, but that would be even worse as that’s the same as how we pronounce gmail…
- My email is lantsu-at-keemail-dot-com
- Uhhuh, so lantsu-at-geemail-dot-com
- No uh… keemail… with like koo and ee ee
- Gee and ee ee?
- Koo and ee ee! Or I can just write it myself?
…
- Oh, what kind of email is that? Why don’t you have a real email? Is that even a real email? Why? Gmail is good?
Yeah, I’ve heard before that Tuta is a problem in Finnish. (I wouldn’t know.) So that sucks.
I don’t think the keemail thing would be such a problem though. Maybe it’s different for you, but I’m never asked to speak my email address. It is always written (usually typed). So mishearing it is a complete non-issue. Also, it’s keemail.me, not keemail.com. Not sure if that’s better or worse… but from my point of view, it doesn’t make much difference. It’s just an address; like a street name or something. And for me, no one else is ever typing in my email address. So there won’t be any confusion about that.
I have to pronounce my email outloud everytime I visit goverment offices or doctors, or when in job interviews and such, and sadly I gotta play along with them pretty often, monthly if not more often, so no, not very interested in explaining same things to them every single time. But I still kinda feel the keemail-me, might make the transfer if I can workout other Proton services I use.
How’s the Android app for it?
Good. Not as many features but I’m happy with it. You can make a free account to try it out.
How is tuta getting money? I don’t see pricing info.
The “free forever” model is troubling.
Pricing is available right on the pricing page: https://tuta.com/pricing
Thank you.
When I searched the first result is just a login/signup page with no links to anything but their privacy policy and apps.
On the free version of Tuta, You cannot use the search feature for messages older than a few months or so. You need to scroll through the messages.
Oh, that’s not good.
The free tier is somewhat limited. Many users choose to pay. So with enough people paying, it really doesn’t cost them anything to give away small mailboxes for free to those who need it.
EDIT: The thing is done.
Up until recently, I was willing to roll with Proton since the product itself is so good, but who knows if that will remain with the reckless charge into LLM integration? We’ve been watching Microsoft and Google enshittify their products at a rapid pace in order to force people to use their chatbots, so Proton’s likely up next.
I’ll spend part of my day researching alternatives, but for those of you out there doing the same, just keep in mind that your best bet for privacy is Non-US tech services, especially if the country in question doesn’t comply with the CLOUD Act.
I hate the fascists too.
I was looking into Windscribe as an alternative to Proton VPN. I’ve heard good things from others and the fact they threatened to pull out of Canada if meta data collecting legislation goes through is a good sign. They allow port forwarding as well I believe. I haven’t had time to look too closely yet though.
I’m still looking for email providers.
What did you move to?
Have not decided yet. Thankfully there are a ton of Non-US options.
Not many with port forwarding though.
I was looking at PIA: even though it’s USA-based they can not produce logs or any other type of info even if they get a subpoena, and they have port forwarding. Know anything about them?
I wouldn’t trust any company based or heavily operating in any country under fascistic leadership. Even if they’re doing their best to do things right, all it takes is a gag order alongside a subpoena or other “legal” demand, and they’re forbidden to tell you that they actually are required to maintain extensive logs.
Fair point, thanks for bringing it up
Fuuck moving email is such a bother. Thankfully I do have my own domain, so it’s not that bad, but looking for a new provider sucks.
What’s the recommended alternative?
If you use an email alias software like addy.io, email basically becomes ephemeral. Change providers whenever you want and just change the forwarding address for the alias.
Also helps with internet hygeine to have a different random email for every account.
I’m basically doing that with my domain. Have a vaguely corporate sounding domain, and just generate random firstname.lastname per service, on a catch-all address.
Unfortunately that just moves the single point of failure to the aliasing service.
I use SimpleLogin, which was bought by Proton a while back.
Email by its very nature has several single points of failure, but having the ability to use aliases to move email around to different mailboxes and even entire services is still neat. You can present the world with your own domain, while routing the resulting email anywhere.
Is that not the same thing as Addy.io?
Or are you just pointing out the unfortunate part but also do the same thing with a different service?
It’s a different service that does the same thing. What they do is awesome.
I’m saying that while it makes it easy to move email providers, it makes changing the email aliasing service just as hard as changing the email provider would be without the aliasing service.
I’m on a Proton-owned service, so to switch to addy.io, I have to do the same thing I would have to do with just a normal email account.
Since nobody mentioned it here yet, Mozilla has a similar service called Firefox Relay and it’s super straightforward and a joy to use. I used it to create an alias for every service (some 400+) that has my email address and now I can just block emails going to any alias of a compromised account and set up a new one.
I had a problem with these services where like 0.1% of emails would not go through. They got stuck or something. Unraveling all these aliases sure was a pain
Migadu. They measure by quantity of email traffic and not by aliases or email addresses. Easy to set up a dynamic system of adddresses however you may want.
Been with them about 8 months. No complaints.
Tbh I do remember hearing a few providers in the numerous “I’m leaving Proton” dramas in the last few years, and I hoped people will remind me of what those names were. This one does not ring a bell, and in the age of many AI new projects, I am sceptical.
But thanks, I will check it out
Personally, I will stick with Proton for now because they are the least fascist option I have found for my use case that suits my standards of security. As such, I would not consider myself able to cancel my subscription.
But I do deeply dislike their CEO, Andy Yen, and will send a complaint regarding his conduct and recommending his removal. He is a danger to his own company’s mission and to Proton’s user base.
I agree with everything you said in this post. I will add that:
- Proton’s insistance on using Electron applications for their “standalone” apps is a major issue as well.
- I recommend using LibreOffice instead of their rather trashy office suite.
- Lumo also needs to go. Ethical software cannot be developed with—or in support of—LLMs.
Yea it’s a swamp. Mullvad’s co-founder Daniel Berntsson is a fasch blockhead too.
I’m leaving protonvpn and thinking about a local VPN provider. Non profit, more expensive, only one country (the provider’s).
Which won’t fit most people’s needs, but for me it’s 99% of what I need.
Also I hope being a small organization the IPs won’t be blacklisted as much. Using a VPN full time in the last 2 years has become increasingly annoying.
My fallback was Mullvad, but yeah not really an option anymore. I’ve used Azire, much smaller but kinda similar, it worked ok. Could go back. I’m open to suggestions
God damn it. What’s wrong with Mullvad now? They were my fallback when my Proton plan runs out.
Mullvad’s other co-founder gave half a million dollars to a small populist party in Sweden. Not as egregious as some other examples, maybe, but up to ya to see what you think.
company’s security Slack channel urged Proton to at least take a few days to pentest newly written code before pushing it live. “That’s bullshit and loser thinking. Of course it’s possible to be fast and secure,” Yen wrote in the channel at the end of August. “Stop thinking always of how to be slower, and focus more on how to be faster.”
If that suits your standards for security, you might want to reconsider your standards for security :)
Yen should be fired. But what exists of their VPN codebase has survived some good audits so far, and I don’t have better options.
Have you tried AirVpn?
I also plan on sticking with Proton for now. It works well for me and I just migrated to it. I don’t have the time or energy for another migration right now. I also paid for a 2 year subscription, so I will use that time to eventually migrate to something different. I just need a break from that kinda work for a bit.
I have two things to add:
- You all rock. Thank you for all the migration suggestions, and tips.
- Fuck Andy Yen, of course.
where do you migrate to? especially password manager and web storage?
I used to self host those, but nextcloud is a pain to keep updated, and password management is to important to do half assed.
edit: thanks for the suggestions. i’m gonna try out filen, and after that maybe keypass via filen
I said this before, will say it again: do not migrate to another subscription service.
People went through all the trouble to migrate from Google to Proton, then now they must migrate from Proton to whatever else, and the cycle will repeat again.
Subscription services, cloud software, they all strip you of agency and control. You don’t have direct access to the files, you don’t control the GUI, they are filled with proprietary formats, you are at their hands if they decide to change something you like, or pricing, or if they simply go nuts.
Keep your things in your computer. Need they synced? SyncThing will do that for you on any device imaginable.
Totally disagree. Self hosting a mail server is a world of pain, and not all subscription services are equal.
If you’re a masochist try self-hosting your own email service. Otherwise, shop around and find a service that is compatible with your threat model.
Nah let them find out. Leave proton and host their own mail server
I give it a month max
Hosting your own email is actually not that hard. It takes a fair amount of initial setup but if you do it right, it is very stable and functional. Email servers are very mature, and things like Postfix hardly need anything once set up. Getting a static IP is the hard part, but if you run it on a VPS with a good IP you can just hang onto it.
Filtering traffic via (e.g.) pfblocker feeds and spamassassin kills most spam, and it is awesome to just create and destroy your own mailboxes at will.
the problem is that your outgoing mail will be rejected every now end then. and its a major hassle to get unblocked, if you end up on some blocklist accidentally, which will happen occasionally over the years, even with no fault of your own.
Never had that issue except once - if you have an IP with a good reputation, a domain you haven’t been abusing, and all your DMARC/DKIM/SPF records set, you’re good. I had one short problem when I moved IPs and the new one was on Google’s list, everyone else was fine but Google. Instead of a new IP I emailed them and they took it off after a few weeks.
Sure, that might be true for email, but definitely not for the rest of the list that you conveniently ignored
On top of that, while shopping around dont look for one service doing it all
There is absolutely 0 reason for my email provider to also handle my passwords and photos, but many reasons the opposite way
I wasn’t ignoring anything or suggesting people should put all their eggs in one basket. Doing that would be ridiculous. Im assuming people would have the common sense not to do that.
The vast majority of people don’t know the difference between 2FA and passkeys, and you want them to manage their own self hosted solutions for everything? Yeah, keep repeating this I guess…
You might as well move out to the mountains and live off grid and pretend like that’s a real solution.
they replied to me, where i said “I used to self host those”, so it’s fair they suggested to selfhost some other service
That’s fair enough, I paid more attention to the “I keep saying this” part.
The vast majority of people don’t know the difference between 2FA and passkeys, and you want them to manage their own self hosted solutions for everything?
I didn’t mention self hosting nor do I think it’s necessary, unless you consider any service running in your desktop as “self hosting”.
People need/want/are used to active sync. For that one either needs a true self-hosted solution and/or a service that requires opening port(s) on the firewall/router, which most people either have no idea how to do or can’t due to ISP lockdown. Self-hosting can very quickly turn into a 2nd job and not everyone wants that. Or they have no required techical knowledge and no desire or time to learn. Plus, you still have to set up proper backups, even if the service is just running on your desktop. Unless, of course, you’re fine with a single point of failure.
On the topic of mail hosting, as someone who works in IT and self-hosts a whole stack of things: I do not ever want to self-host my email. Personally, I was considering just getting another domain for email and switching backend services as needed, but I liked the package Proton offered, so I chose that instead. I might need to rethink that domain option, but at this rate, soon no backend service will be safe from fascists and/or AI.
It is if you want to access it from anywhere on any device. I know SyncThing makes that a lot easier, but not exactly a set and forget kind of thing.
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Need they synced
yes. at least desktop <-> notebook <-> phone. Also I want friends to send me files and vice versa.
SyncThing
I tried that when before i migrated from selfhosted nextcloud to proton. it was pretty annoying to keep running. And I couldnt easily use it to send files to friends. That was some years ago though. maybe things changed idk.
Will SyncThing sync photos from an iPhone to a Linux desktop?
Yes, with Möbius Sync. You’ll have to copy the photos on the iPhone to a directory where Files can see them because of a security thing on Apple’s side, then connect Möbius to the Linux desktop running syncthing, and point Möbius to the photos location in Files to make the share.
You need subscriptions when you are getting an actual service. Cloud storage isn’t cheap, it will always cost something and offer unique redundancy you can’t get storing everything at home.
Things like cloud storage, VPNs and VPSs will always cost something.
That said you don’t necessarily need any of those.
Keep your things in your computer.
That advice is not helpful, though. Most of us used to store passwords on our computer: In our internet browsers. In plain text for anyone to grab. It was the dumbest idea ever and password managers became popular quickly in recent years as more people realized they need to protect their credentials somehow. So no, I genuinely do not believe in just storing passwords somewhere without any safety measures.
hat advice is not helpful, though. Most of us used to store passwords on our computer: In our internet browsers. In plain text for anyone to grab. So store them in a safe password manager in your computer.
See? You’re almost helpful. But I do have to ask you if that password manager has a name? You see, at this point most people would’ve already given up or just ask ChatGPT or Google AI about it, which in this case would be hypocrite but I digress.
See? You’re almost helpful. But I do have to ask you if that password manager has a name?
Sure, had you asked about a solution rather than trying to write some sort of gotcha. KeePassXC is a fully complete password manager, better than whatever subscription crap you’d rather push, and it stores everything into an encrypted local db file you control. Now guess what I’d recommend for syncing that file across other devices.
better than whatever subscription crap you’d rather push
Okay now you have to give me a source on that too.
Do you understand a source is? How can one provide a source to a subjective statement with a comparison that doesn’t name a particular service? Provide me a source that my favorite dish is yakisoba.
Depends on what you’re trying to defend against. If it’s against a burglar, full disk encryption is plenty, and you can go ahead and save those passwords in the browser and it doesn’t matter at all. If it’s against your own government you’re probably screwed no matter what you do, just a matter of how long it takes them to notice you. Eventually you’ll get tired of being in jail and will cough up what they want to know.
I’d definitely use some way of encryption and never store anything in a browser. Nearly nobody does keylogging anymore. Trojans just get your emails and passwords from the browser files and bounce. And you can never be sure if someone might sneak something in. Not as a regular user. Maybe one of the mods in that Minecraft modpack you play with friends suddenly has something in it and you won’t know until notifications are rolling in about attempts to log into your accounts. So I definitely would never save passwords in a browser in 2026. Now, I know there are looooots of password managers out there but you need one that can be trusted.
So yeah I want a handy tool that can quickly fill in my credentials but encrypts everything just well enough to protect me from automated kind of attacks and maybe a burglar too just to be sure. Lots to choose from but I loathe doing all the research to get something that is actually safe, user friendly, reliable and works on Arch. Everything comes with it’s up and downs.
especially password manager
KeePassXC on desktop, KeePassDX on a phone. The KDBX files are encrypted, and unless you store other files inside of there, they are also pretty tiny (<1MB), so you can put it anywhere. Of course, in that case, don’t store cloud login details in that password database.
can i sync pw between desktop and phone automatically?
I’ve heard someone using syncthing for that, but I haven’t used it. I prefer everything to stay manual.
I use Syncthing for KeePass and Obsidian across Linux boxes and iOS. Works beautifully.
I was considering moving to it but was unsure if KeePassDX was as reliable for the phone. Kinda annoys me how many different apps there are and why KeePassXC doesn’t support one within.
I dont want to use Valutwarden and be dependent on Bitwarden in any way. Private equity will always enshitify and I’m not gonna wait to find out.
- Filen.io encrypted notes and camera roll backup and cloud drive
- Tuta email
- Bitwarden password
- Aegis 2FA
- Windscribe VPN
- Addy.io email alias
- privacy.com credit card aliases
- Cryptpad productivity suite
Yeah, as for Windscribe and Tuta…
I was considering Windscribe, but Canada’s new Bill C-22 is making me reconsider.
https://windscribe.com/features/no-identifying-logs
Do you think the bill would bypass the no-logs privacy protections?
Thanks. I am gonna try out filen.
then ill try keypassxc with sync via filen. (Bitwarden seems to go a little downhill recently)
I don’t know yet, but I got 600+ days to figure it out 😬
Vaultwarden.
Self hosting vaultwarden is pretty easy, standalone, and lightweight. It doesn’t need anything like next cloud and has an alpine container option
If your server is down you just can’t save new passwords but the local copy on your phone or computer is still up
For webstorage Ive been using Tresorit. It belongs to the Swiss Post. I expect some solid neutrality from the company at least.
Apps and cli tools work well enough.
I had a feeling Proton was no good. I don’t like walled gardens.
They are good if you just use them for one of their services like VPN or their password manager. Because ya, you just end up trapped in their ecosystem instead of Big Tech.
I use IVPN and Bitwarden. I think using ndividual, specialised services is better overall.
That seems familiar…
Damn. It’s the Unix philosophy.
Did Andy Yen do something stupid again? I think I’m out of the loop.
EDIT: Just saw it. Ugh. Why can’t we just have nice things not run by jerks?
This time at least was just tech bro AI crap, not fascism crap. Progress??
Well, the way he seems to treat his workers…
I have less of an issue with his desire for more AI use at the company than I do for the whole “you are an idiot if you disagree with me” vibe and making everyone re-interview, seemingly for a job they already have and have been doing successfully up to this point. That sort of way of managing and doing business is just immature and childish.
Since my multi-year membership isn’t up for another year I am not planning to completely pull out yet. But the CEOs actions have put a stop to my willingness to further entrench myself in their offerings for now. When renewal time gets closer I will decide if I want to walk away completely or keep the mail and calendar services and pull back on the service plan I do end up renewing.
