this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024
1025 points (98.8% liked)

Technology

59699 readers
5170 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] crystalmerchant 183 points 10 months ago (12 children)

Yeah no shit, and you do think I have a single goddamn bit of influence over my corporation's choice of email client??

[–] [email protected] 145 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

They can leech all the data they want from my employer. I don't give a fuck. Never use company assets for personal business as an addendum.

Just be a little more careful with your own stuff, s'all.

[–] requiem 61 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Depends on your sector of work. Imagine you’re a therapist or a lawyer…

[–] [email protected] 40 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (10 children)

A lot of healthcare and education institutions use Outlook as well, so I wouldn't be surprised if mental health or legal uses it too. There may be rules about what kind of client/student/patient information can be sent over email, and often there are healthcare/institution specific variants of the office suites which (are supposed to) meet regulatory requirements

I think the other comment applies regardless. Do work things on the work device/account and let the workplace handle any other concerns. When it comes time to discuss alternatives, you can make a case for something else

[–] requiem 17 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I mean it even harvests typing data and Outlook also includes calendars etc… It’s really bad.

But yes, I just suggested a re-evaluation of the use of Microsoft Outlook to my company …

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (9 replies)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago

There are different versions of Outlook depending on your subscription. Companies that do things properly, never see the problematic, "free version" of Outlook. They have very fine control over the features and data collections they enable.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (11 replies)
[–] Dehydrated 86 points 10 months ago (3 children)

What part of Windows (or Microsoft software in general) is not a data collection service?

[–] [email protected] 42 points 10 months ago (2 children)

If you aren’t using an insider edition then Notepad is still safe

[–] d3Xt3r 16 points 10 months ago (3 children)

... for now. They've already replaced the old Notepad with a bloated UWP version, so it probably won't be long before it starts sending telemetry as well.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (1 children)

When I look at my Pi Hole dashboard while my girlfriend's Mac is booted, I'm surprised by how many requests are blocked, given that apple somehow has the reputation of respecting their user's privacy.

And when she boots into Windows 10 MS's data stealing gets downright creepy.
I am lucky enough not to have a Windows 11 PC on my network but I think I would see even more denied requests.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] PlantObserver 74 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Hey Proton how about you quit privacy-washing and actually prioritize and release feature parity products for Linux so your customers aren't being herded onto windows' data harvesting platform just so they can use your supposedly privacy forward products

[–] [email protected] 33 points 10 months ago (7 children)

I don't use proton so forgive me if this is a stupid question...

But do you need an app? Can't you just use whatever browser you want for their services?

[–] mr_robot2938 30 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Of course you can access everything through the web on Linux. I really like Proton's web mail interface. Unfortunately, Proton does not have a Linux analog to their windows client that provides automatic file syncing. I think that what the commenter is complaining about.

There is a dedicated Linux client for Proton VPN and in my experience it integrates quite well on Debian-based distributions.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (6 replies)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago (4 children)

I finally said screw it and am leaving Proton for a proper paid service. I never upgraded Proton to a paid tier because it never matured enough for me to use for real. I never once migrated contacts over to it (just a couple people who understood I was testing it).

Yea, so there's a connection to my credit card. At least it's with a professional org that has proper modern mail management (something post-2000), and gives you tools to manage your email.

I really wanted Proton to work out so I could recommend it to friends and family. But it's a terrible user experience. I missed 50 emails because it keeps moving them to spam even after I set the sender as not spam. Oh, and spam management requires (according to support) logging into the web, not thru the mobile client. 🤦‍♂️

Can you imagine telling a customer this with a straight face and not seeing a problem with it? I'm using your app and can't manage spam?

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 62 points 10 months ago (16 children)

No shit. There's a reason they are killing the nice and simple Windows Mail app; it allows you to sync with your email without Microsoft servers between.

Also, the biggest issue for me is the UX. I use outlook for my work email and like to separate my work and personal life, so soon I just won't have an app for my personal email on my PC.

If anyone knows of a similar windows mail app with good touch support and without such a traditional mouse designed UI, please share it.

[–] [email protected] 55 points 10 months ago (4 children)

The new thunderbird UI looked neat and modern.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago (3 children)

They're still working out some kinks, but yes, the new UI of Thunderbird 115+ is pretty good.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 25 points 10 months ago (5 children)

I've been using Thunderbird since forever. It's not perfect but I like it better than bloated and laggy Outlook.

load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments (14 replies)
[–] gedaliyah 43 points 10 months ago (10 children)

Outlook honestly was not that bad for a while, but of course Microsoft does what Microsoft does. I've been using Thunderbird for about a year now and it is very full featured coming directly from outlook.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago

I use Outlook on my work Mac, and am forever amazed at how hard they pushed on getting me to switch to "New" Outlook, but how many features they never bothered to port over. Like, I can't export my mailbox without having to switch it back to 'old' Outlook. Calendars straight up don't work half the time and there's no obvious button to switch from a list of events for the month, back to a monthly calendar view.

Outlook for Mac is a fucking mess. I really do need to switch over to Thunderbird.

load more comments (9 replies)
[–] [email protected] 36 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I got a popup saying "wanna try the new Outlook app"? So I did and the fucking thing immediately inserted ads that resembled email into my inbox. If this is the future I'll install Thunderbird.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] RememberTheApollo_ 35 points 10 months ago (8 children)

I tried the new outlook for about 30 seconds. They injected ads into my mail.

Instantly uninstalled it.

[–] balazs 15 points 10 months ago (4 children)

I hope you changed your email account passwords after. What many people don’t realise is that when you fill out the “configure your email account” form, the details aren’t kept local to your PC. You are giving Microsoft the login details to your email account. This is a major departure from how Outlook and Windows Mail used to work.

So you’ve uninstalled the app, but how can you ensure they aren’t still polling your emails?

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] KneeTitts 13 points 10 months ago (3 children)

the new version of thunderbird is amaaaazzzzing

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (6 replies)
[–] [email protected] 33 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (7 children)

For a few years, I had hope that Microsoft would become a respectable, user-oriented, even FOSS-friendly company, but they finally seem to have settled on AI enshitification as their main business model.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago (3 children)

FOSS friendly company

I'm not sure what you are smoking but you're high as balls dude. If there is any company that has as it's motto "fuck and destroy open source" and as slogan "fuck everything for money", then it's Microsoft.

Microsoft paid SCO to make false claims against Linux in an attempt to destroy Linux and extort large companies away from Linux. The destroy part failed, but they got multiple large companies to steer away from Linux. Normal people would go to jail for that, Microsoft execs not so much.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (6 replies)
[–] [email protected] 30 points 10 months ago (2 children)

TBH when I got this exact pop up on my last windows laptop (dell xps13) I actually panicked and installed PopOS on it.

I didn't feel like distro hopping, I just needed it to work. I guess that shows how I feel about PopOS at the moment.

[–] Lemminary 28 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

I always chuckle at the name PopOS because in Spanish that means poops. I'm sorry.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] popekingjoe 30 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 26 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Thats what i thought but holy shit its so much worse.

Its not even data that is needed for outlook but like pretty much everything on your pc.

including your username and password, send in clear text

I agree with the article’s statement. How the fuck is this legal.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 25 points 10 months ago (4 children)

As someone with an iCloud account, every time I try to use Outlook it randomly deletes emails from my iCloud account. I’ve posted this multiple times on Microsoft support site with others confirming and since it’s been more than year with no acknowledgment or fix I am convinced it’s a feature not a bug. YMMV.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago (4 children)

"I heard you like data collection so we put data collecting email app in your data collecting OS so we can collect data about our data collection"

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago (2 children)

It’s basically gmail. It’s a web/email server that you give your creds over to . It has an offline mode that I guess makes it an app.

Yeah they read your shit.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

Uninstall that shit.

Edit: if you HAVE to use Outlook (because of work, etc), use the web version of it exclusively.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] Dagamant 20 points 10 months ago

Yeah, that update was the final push that moved me to Linux on my primary computer. I’ve used Linux for about 20 years on everything that wasn’t my gaming PC and between the advancements made by Valve and the increasing invasive nature of Windows put an end to my relationship with Microsoft.

[–] Nahaelem 19 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

As if the old outlook app wasn’t as …. Oh Shit! This is more egregious

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This is why I don't get excited when I hear some software that I already use and works fine gets an update. More often than not the update makes the software worse.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] OrangeCorvus 19 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I am aware this comes from a competitor and they want to go all out. However, what is unclear to me, does this also happen to paying users?

For my small business I use Office 365 Business Essentials, whatever it's called now, the cheapest one. Been using it for many years and for the price/features, it's pretty unbeatable. I use the new Outlook on my workstation since a few months, it's pretty slow and not feature complete but was ok. I'm in the EU and haven't been prompted with that window where it talks about advertisers. Will check Monday if I see a list of advertisers but I think for paid users it's not the same.

For personal mail, I use Thunderbird, I even donated to them. I like it but would have been great if it had a view like Outlook. At the moment it has table view and cards view. Wish the cards view would more customizable.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago

It's almost as if Microsoft doesn't do that already!

load more comments
view more: next ›