Privacy

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Is the Proton (Mail, VPN, Password Manager) ecosystem any good? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 5 months ago by CatLikeLemming@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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Due to the recent announcement of Proton moving to a non-profit structure (although not becoming fully non-profit) I've decided to take another look at them and really, Proton Unlimited is an enticing offer. However, the fact of everything from mail, to accounts, to storage being in one place is somewhat disconcerting. Also I recall them being decent, but not particularly outstanding at refusing to provide data to outside sources, there was a situation a while back where they handed over information of a climate activist.

To be fair, mail is insecure by default and if you're going so far as to write to another Protonmail user you might as well use something actually secure and I am not exactly planning on breaking the law so I'm not too worried about data being handed over to authorities, yet it still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth and with the state of politics where I live there certainly is a concern that, being queer, I should also be a bit weary of governing bodies as well, as laws may change in the future.

Basically, by switching to Proton I'd be putting a lot of trust in them, instead of splitting it up between things like Mullvad, Bitwarden, etc. and besides a password manager (and to some extent my email provider), while dramatic, a single failure at any point wouldn't be a total disaster. Are they trustworthy enough for the convenience benefits to be worth it to any of you?

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[–] NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I can't speak to their Password Management as I use Bitwarden for that

But I am slowly but surely migrating myself away from gmail to (my own email at my own domain routed to) Proton. The webmail is very much comparable to gmail and, if you communicate with like minded people, it has decent support for signing and even encrypting email both to other proton mail users as well as to complete randos with just a password that you can send later. My only real complaint is that (... for some really good reasons) there is no easy to use exchange server and I need to run their mail bridge to use a desktop client like Thunderbird to send and maanage and (one day) back up emails.

VPN? I switched over to this around the same time I decided I wanted to "take control" of my email and it works pretty well. Very easy to get some openvpn credentials that I can plug into whatever setup I want. And no extra fee for port forwarding unlike SOME providers. That said, my main complaint is that the port is semi-randomized which doesn't play the nicest with my totally legit linux iso torrenting setup... But a quick docker ps and docker logs and then updating the config is pretty trivial and I only have to do it maybe once a week?

The big elephant in the room is that, as you rightfully understand, you are still putting a LOT of trust. But that is actually why I like Proton. Because other companies pretend they are going to knife fight the CIA and the US Government on your behalf all while actively not acknowledging anything until we get a post mortem. Proton are VERY open about just how far they are willing to go to protect you (not very) and what YOU can do to mean that Proton can't provide much useful information once the appropriate paperwork and legal actions have been filed.

I wouldn't trust a paid account with anything more sensitive than what really innovative stuff a friend did with a bun in the dumpster behind the Wendy's the other night. But, hypothetically, if I needed to send an anonymous email? Third party VPN/Tor, clean hardware, and a free Protonmail account works great and I do trust Proton to give the absolute bare minimum in that case.

And just for a bit of context. My "grand plan" is to migrate the vast majority of my correspondence and accounts to email addresses tied to one or more of my own domains. Currently I plan to use Protonmail for the mail server because I don't want that smoke. But the point is that I control the email address so I can get my Heat on and walk away in 30 seconds (actually more like a few hours but...).

Which is why the other aspect of that is that I want to back up the emails I actually want to save (rather than just EVERYTHING like those of us with older gmail accounts do) via a local client that I then archive to an encrypted volume on my NAS and (REDACTED) after that.