The article is from December, so the interviewer couldn't have asked about their CEO's recent betrayal: https://insights.priva.cat/p/does-proton-still-stand-for-anything
this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2025
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Nothing in that article suggests Proton doesn't care about privacy. Every country has laws that must be abided by. Their verbage on not logging IPs was misleading but not inaccurate as they weren't until ordered to by law. At that point the law was able to find the person because of lack of opsec on the perp's part.
Besides that, to my knowledge all of Proton is open source and encrypted. It has been audited and proven to be secure.
Quit letting politics ruin our collective privacy by suggesting to people that Proton is now an evil company. They support Trump because they think his business policies will benefit their company. True or false as that may be their company is still great for privacy and we shouldn't be infighting about that.
Proton has a business model where they want the user to put their eggs all in one basket. If you want that kind of userbase you need to leave your personal politics out of it. The problem isn't that the CEO is right wing. It's that he is very publicly right wing. Supports a known huckster. And lastly could be vying for a role in the administration. All of this calls into question just for how long Proton will be secure before they are selling user info to the state.
Politics are very fucking important in terms of security for whistleblowers and dissidents. They are the canaries in the coalmine as far as personal liberties go.
This is the importance of it being open source. If they started shifting away from that then it would raise eyebrows
Umm... open source doesn't mean a lot.
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Most people don't compile their clients, Proton could potentially compile a malicious version.
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If you ever use the web version, they could send you a malicious javascript.
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Sure, you can compile your clients, but even then, most incoming email are not end to end encrypted, Proton has access to the plaintext of almost every email you receive, things like password reset links, verification codes, etc...
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They could also log any metadata. IP addressed, time of access, email address that you sent to and receive from.
Quit letting politics ruin our collective ability to drive by suggesting to people that Volkswagen is now an evil company. They support Hitler because they think his business policies will benefit their company. True or false as that may be their company is still great at making cars and we shouldn't be infighting about that.
Please summarize in what way he betrayed anyone?
Because I see nothing in that article.
People and businesses are allowed to have political opinions. I can disagree with them (or not) while still respecting the service they provide.
Please summarize in what way he betrayed anyone?
People feel betrayed that he kissed Trump’s ring, so to speak. But that’s CEOs for you. The bourgeoisie have class solidarity.
I didn’t realize that. What’re the best Proton alternatives?
Personally I've been using Tutanota and bitwarden happily. I guess it kinda depends on what you're looking for alternatives to, I don't know if anyone else offers as comprehensive of a complete suite of stuff
Convenience shouldn't be prioritized over distribution of services one uses. Single point of failure and all that jazz.
- Tuta
- KeePass XC
- SyncThing
- VeraCrypt
- pCloud + Cryptomator
- Mullvad VPN
- Librewolf
- IronFox
- openSuse Tumbleweed
Those recommendations would probably be more useful to the person who was asking for recs, though it's worth pointing out your solutions to certain things aren't really 1 to 1 alternatives and may not be suitable for someone who's looking for services akin to proton
+1 for tuta and bitwarden.
I won't touch anything microsoft with a long pole, so no bitwarden
Just use KeePassXc/Dx as you were meant to
Bitwarden is associated with Microsoft...?
Edit: I wasn't able to find anything suggesting they're connected, I'd love to know what you mean... I don't keep up with stuff super closely
At most I think it's hosted on azure. That's it.
Ah, gotcha. Yeah I can't say that really bothers me too much... 😅
I'm not sure there are really any big names in that space that don't suck anyway. Like the other two I'm familiar with are google and Amazon, and they're hardly saints.
A "roll your own" solution with keepass and something to sync might sidestep that problem but is hardly a drop in replacement that appeals to all the same users
Locked with your master key so... no biggie? Or did i miss anything?
Not that I can see. I assume it's just an aversion to anything Microsoft profits off of?
Did you misread Bitlocker? Or was Bitwarden bought my Microsoft? If the latter, i can't find a source.
"Betrayal" might be a wrong word for it, but I find this disappointing because the current events are the reason I have tried using Proton instead of Gmail. A tweet wont ruin the functionality of Proton, but it goes against my personal rationale for making the switch.
Many feel betrayed because he (partially at least) politically aligns with someone (and something) they loathe intensely. The feeling of betrayal probably comes from an implied idea that because they align on the issue of digital privacy they naturally do so in other aspects, and with the comments made by the CEO that idea is burst and someone who once felt familiar is now foreign.
From a previous reply that I made :
@anonymous comment still stands. Your previous comment doesn't indicate how he is incorrect, if that is what you're suggesting.
He doesn't have to be incorrect in order for people to feel betrayed by his comments. The commenter was answering the question of why people felt betrayed. Demonstrating the incorrectness of the CEO's take is out of scope.
(Although, he definitely is also incorrect. Republicans love corporations and monopolies even more than Democrats do. They're slightly more nationalistic about it though, which is the only reason they ever make noises to oppose corporations that aren't sufficiently US-owned.)
I think the "he" there was @[email protected], not the CEO of Proton.
The comment from anonymous implied that there was no real betrayal. Just because someone fights for digital privacy does not mean he's on the same side for other topics. Feeling betrayed and actually being betrayed are not the same thing.
I think everybody is focusing too much on the word betrayal and not enough on the being a syccophant to a would be fascist. If you don't think thats a problem because, "business," that makes you also a fascism enabler. Just because they are good at the privacy part, doesn't mean a company that cow tows to fascism can ever be seen as safe for antifascists. Currently there is a good alternative; tuta. So why contribute to a company like this. There is massive potential to betray users if they are ideologically opposed to things that proton is coming to represent. If there is the option to divert resources away from projects that express fascist sympathies, its probably wise to do so.
This specific comment thread is focused on that because that was the topic started by the choice of words of the first comment.
The conversation would not have continued in that direction if instead of doubling down there simply were an admission that what really was meant to say is not that Proton betrayed some hypothetical anti-Trump principles they had, but that they have proven now being sympathetic towards Trump and this made people feel unsafe (and some branches of the thread implied that conclusion).
What's being argued is that this is not surprising. This is as silly as thinking that Zuckerberg is a betrayer because of the recent changes in moderation policy, as if Facebook was ever on the side of any particular political ideology other than their own interests.
What makes you think tuta is against all and every policy coming from the far-right including the ones that align with their stated goal of digital privacy? If (hypothetically) tuta had some level of relationship with a left-wing party (pick your favorite) and made a post about how they are happy about certain changes that party is pushing that are beneficial to privacy, would that be a betrayal of their own principles? I would say it's not, regardless how many alt-right customers might "feel betrayed" if they had some parasocial alt-right image of tuta.
Unless I'm missing something, didn't Yen just praise 🍄's pick for antitrust AG? I forget her name, but her Wikipedia page didn't make her sound all that great, so I'm not sure what exactly he was praising her for. If that's all it is (and it might not be!) that hardly sounds like a betrayal.
EDIT: I was missing something! See this.
Praising the pick wasn't so bad. The issues really arose when he was called out on it and chose to use Proton's official accounts to affirm his view and went on to state:
- the republican party is now the party of the people and most likely to crack down on big tech
- The democrats have effectively betrayed their voters in favour of corporate donations
- This was Proton's official stance
It was insane boot licking and incredibly poorly thought through. It's fine for him to have an opinion but completely inappropriate to use their official accounts to spew such drivel and to state it was the official stance should have resulted in him being fired for damaging their reputation.
edit: I was asked to provide sources so please find them here: https://feddit.uk/post/23386970/14888441
the republican party is now the party of the people and most likely to crack down on big tech
yes🤡
The democrats have effectively betrayed their voters in favour of corporate donations
yes🐸
the republican party is now the party of the people and most likely to crack down on big tech
yes🤡
Why do you think that?
This guy is a fascist, and nobody should be using proton.
Making a dumb tweet doesn't make you a fascist and doesn't invalidate the years of hard work people put into a non-profit swiss company, you should get over yourself.
No indeed.
But supporting an administration (in any medium) whose inauguration included a Nazi salute does, in fact, make you a fascist.
And no: it doesn't matter if you previously did something good.
It's really not that complicated,
Tbf, the nazi salute happened after he did that tweet
Fair point. But no adult who is paying attention needed the salute to understand the contempt that Musk has for the rule of law.
He marshalled an attack on the capital. No non-fascist does that.
He marshalled an attack on the capital. No non-fascist does that.
uh, you sure about that?
Yes. We all saw it on national television.
Then he pardoned the offenders.
GTFO with your stupid pretend skepticism and gas lighting.
The question was whether you are sure that only fascists marsh on capitals
Martin Luther King marched on the capital.
But if you think I'm using a definition that makes Martin Luther King a fascist then I'm going to conclude you're not discussing the issue in good faith.
The tweet he commented on was indeed a nice idea, but a CEO should have more foresight that the things Trump stated in it would not be true. When you look at it now, it looks like it was more or less a threat that led to a closer relationship between "tech bros" and the current administration instead of the "take down" of them.