Well, I'd say Proton is still better than most other options (open-source software, no ad trackers on the website and in apps). However, specifically for VPNs, I would recommend Mullvad or IVPN. If you are a bit more tech-savvy, you may also take a look at Cryptostorm. Of all three, only Mullvad is police-raid-proven to not store logs or other PII. The most important thing for me personally would be that the VPN company is not owned by a larger parent company, which in turn owns multiple different VPN providers. This alone excludes a lot of the heavily advertised providers (Private Internet Access, NordVPN, Surfshark, ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, OVPN, and probably a few more).
Xamrica
joined 1 year ago
Mostly true, that's why I opened with "I wouldn’t call it writing on the wall." But for me, it shows that they are not as privacy- and consumer-focused as they like to present themselves. Supporting Trump is just five steps further in this direction. (That's just how I feel about it.)
I wouldn't call it "writing on the wall," but they have done some not-so-good things over the last few years:
- Handing over data for their email services (which was legally required) (ref).
- Releasing a Bitcoin wallet. The problem for me is that Bitcoin is inherently not private.
- Lying in marketing. Proton claims "no data or speed limits" for their free VPN (ref), which is just plain wrong. If you download a few gigs, it will slow you down to a few Mbit (if I remember correctly). I even contacted their support about this, and they just said, "They are balancing the servers for the free VPN." But then why was it fast in the beginning, and if I reconnected to the same server, would it be fast again. Just to be clear: I have no problem with the speed limit/balancing itself, just that they are lying about it.
- Proton incentivizing free email accounts to connect to a Gmail account to get 500 MB more storage. (You need to go through the "tutorial" steps to get the 500 MB extra, and one of them is to have a Google Mail account send all their emails to your new Proton inbox.)
This is why I personally decided against Proton.
Maybe take a look at selfhost.de. The Website is completely in German but they have a free tier and their privacy policy also looks good. I used the paid version for 10+ years and never had any problems.
For context: They edited their anwser and said the old one was bad. https://kagifeedback.org/d/2808-reconsider-your-partnership-with-brave
For context: They edited their anwser and said the old one was bad. https://kagifeedback.org/d/2808-reconsider-your-partnership-with-brave
Drive - Selfhosted Nextcloud
Email - Posteo/Tuta
VPN - Cryptostorm (IVPN/Mullvad are more user friendly)
Passwords - Keepass (Sync over my Nextcloud.)