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.
Tell me about alternatives that are less dependant on fossil energy sources.
posteo
I almost went with them, only issue last time i checked you couldn’t use your own domain name.
They had good reasons, something to do with German law, but for some it’s a dealbreaker.
I had already made my mind when he called trump’s administration something like “the people’s party”. I’ve been a client since forever, renewing every 2 years during sales, but not this time.
And now reading more about what kind of person he is, ultra capitalist boss talking about “loser” mentality… What a cunt. Reminds me of musk
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.” Yen added, “stop lovingly handcrafting all our code and use AI more.”
I deleted my account as well, citing Andy Yen. Never used Proton that much, more or less just had an account as a backup. I’ve been using Fastmail since the early 00s.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
I did this the first time he praised Trump’s cabinet picks.
I had missed that and that’s a failure on my part.
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?
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
I have two things to add:
- You all rock. Thank you for all the migration suggestions, and tips.
- Fuck Andy Yen, of course.
Hah! Did cancel early in the day before finding this. I was a bit more blunt about reason: “Your psycho CEO”. Found ‘tutamail’ that seems to do what I need (backup email basically if my server is out) and luckily didn’t have anything on proton yet.
They must have gotten so many of these.
I also cited their insane CEO in my cancelation.
“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.”
I walked away from a 2 year proton subscription after using them for only 6 months
Proton are why I would never sign up to a vpn subscription ever again.
I already did that lol
I cancelled it, but unfortunately I pre-paid for 2 years and there’s still a long way to go.
Same boat, but at least they’re getting the message.
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.
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.
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.
Nah. I’m going to keep the subscription
I just switched to Migadu. Super good plans and very good if you have multiple domains.
When I canceled Proton, I put the reason, “Your CEO is a lunatic.”
Name me a VPN that is comparable to Proton and I’ll move to that and Tutamail in a heartbeat.
IVPN, Windscribe VPN, Obscura VPN, Air VPN
If you’re leaving proton because of their AI use, Windscribe is a bad alternative. You can’t even directly reach their customer support anymore, you have to go through their AI and it decides if it’s worth getting a human involved. Yes, even for paying customers.
If you raise the issue on their subreddit, the CEO encourages you to resign.
Good to know about Windscribe, one less company to research, solely for the poor support. I’m leaning more towards IVPN anyways because they have some add-on features that I’m interested in.
I’m not a purist, I don’t expect everything to be AI free, that’s just unrealistic unfortunately. It’s a shame though because it’s built off of the theft of open source work. My issue is Andy being a fascist, being verbally abusive to his employees, sacrificing security for speed, all for the sake of saving a few dollars.
Thank you. Checking these out.
They don’t have as many access points.
