My grievances with Proton

Off Topic
1

To new readers: Please read this post for clarifications on what is meant by “alias”, since it has been a prevalent source of confusion throughout this thread.

I ended up paying for Proton Mail, and it’s something I ended up regretting. When I subscribed to Proton, I pointed all of my online accounts, and registered further new ones, with their generous email aliasing service. Proton lets you have an unlimited number aliases, with the express purpose of servicing one per each online account, so that you can compartmentalize your online identity.

But as someone that can no longer afford to pay for Proton’s premium plan anymore, I have found myself in a predicament. Some of the things they offer, are only offered under the condition that you remain a paying customer – even things that are expected to be long-term foundations to online identity, like aliases.

For example, if you have gratuitously used your @pm.me or your aliases to sign up on various important websites, then if you decide to downgrade your plan to the Free plan, your aliases will be deactivated until you become a paying customer again. Which is to say that Proton will essentially hold your online accounts for a ransom, from my perspective.

This is not to say that this is unexpected business practice, but neither is mass data harvesting. The point is, it’s a type of vendor lock-in, it’s shitty, and I want nothing to do with it. I plan to move away from Proton soon, once I figure out how I’m going to deal with my aliases.

Further, the emergence of company cultism such as “Reserve your child’s Proton address” in their “Born Private” campaign, constant shoehorning of new suite products while neglecting critical bug fixes and important features, like Proton Drive for Linux. It reeks of everyday corporatist disconnect from customers. It reminds me that Proton is a company run by money, and all gross things that necessarily come with it. I may just bite the bullet and end up self-hosting.

Let me know what you think, or if you have had a similar experience with Proton. Or let me know if you disagree, up to you. Thanks for reading my blog post.

8 Likes
2

Well, you should have used a custom domain.

6 Likes
3

Now or never.

1 Like
4

The issue is that using my own domain, at least for sign-up aliases, is that all aliases can attributed to me by virtue of being the only person that uses that domain.

My threat model includes protecting my information from being aggregated by cross-referencing dark web leaks, where email addresses and phone numbers are the most common linkage points.

Say, for example, there is a leak for abc.com and xyz.com. abc.com knows many things about me that xyz.com doesn’t know and vice-versa. A malicious actor in possession of the data of abc.com can initiate a search for other leaks containing an email address, or my email domain, and find more information about their victims across leaks. This is what email aliasing can avoid, and why I used them in the first place.

2 Likes
5

Yeah so if you dont want that, you have to pay for that service, obviously. Things cost money. Busineses charge money. Sorry i think your complains are quite ungrounded.

19 Likes
6

I don’t know any provider who offers significant number of aliases in their free plan. Anyway, nothing stops you from changing your account info of all those services you used your aliases with. Some can be shared, for some you might use free accounts, even google or yahoo, for some temporary mails, maybe firefox relay. Or find some cheaper provider. I think Runbox is one of the cheapast with 100 aliases on their domain, unlimited on yours, for 3€ per month

1 Like
7

It costs nothing to the provider to maintain aliases. Not any additional concrete cost over the cost of providing a free service. Perhaps an imaginary cost – a very “ungrounded” one.

3 Likes
8

Is this problem still evident if using Simple Login for aliasing? I seem to remember reading that if you stop paying for SL you still keep the aliases, you just can’t create new ones. Maybe a better way to do it as opposed to using Proton domains.

I still haven’t found a better balance than a custom domain for accounts you care about and SL (or addy, etc…) for everything else.

3 Likes
9

Good news is that it looks like the Proton Pass aliases continue to work, since they’re backed by the SimpleLogin infrastructure. You just can’t create new ones after you downgrade to the free plan. So it just looks like that the standard Proton aliases are the ones that will stop working completely, which is far less egregious, but still bad. This does actually make me feel a little bit relieved in that my online presence won’t be completely dysfunctional once my plan expires. Just going to have to get around to updating all those aliases, I suppose.

1 Like
10

Protonmail doesn’t provide unlimited aliases, you need proton pass for that.

I’m a long term free proton mail user and it is unusually usable, unlike Tuta free which has no search.

Additionally it seems quite a strange expectation that you can carry on using a system when you stop paying for it.

4 Likes
11

This is such a non issue and a nothing burger of a “problem”.

It’s a digital product. You get access by paying for it. You lose access if you stop paying for it. There is no ransom.

You agree to all the terms and conditions for this when signing up. And you still complain?

You have an objectively incorrect understanding of what’s going on here and why. Labeling it as an issue or a ransom or a grievance doesn’t legitimize it.

6 Likes
12

Yeah, I agreed to the Terms and Conditions, much like all of the people used by Gmail agreed to their Terms and Conditions. And yet, people are time and again bewildered when their email had been spying on them! How ridiculous, they should’ve known that!

Notwithstanding those ridiculous claims about the validity and legitimization of abusive Terms of Service agreements, have you even reviewed Proton’s Terms of Service? It actually makes no mention of alias deactivation in case of a plan downgrade! So their decision to revoke your access to your aliases is entirely arbitrary since those actions are not established in a legally binding document. And let’s not forget that it costs them nothing to maintain those aliases!

Will you defend this?

3 Likes
13

Says who? How does a system that relays emails could cost nothing?

Are you saying that other similar aliasing services don’t do the same?

6 Likes
14

Nothing comes at no cost. There is always a cost involved.

2 Likes
15

There is no additional cost of maintaining an existing alias, no cost beyond what is already entailed by providing a free plan. The relation of an alias to an email address is simply a mapping of names. It’s a record with no operational cost. And the alias already exists, and Proton does not recycle aliases by policy, so it’s not like they can be reclaimed by other paying users. The cost is literally zero.

4 Likes
16

No, I’m not saying that. But yes, free aliasing services typically restrict the amount of aliases you can have as business strategy to encourage users to pay for the service.

The difference is in that that model invites prospective customers to join, while Proton’s model discourages people from leaving.

1 Like
17

I believe anything of value especially from a private y product should cost money. However nominal. Otherwise I’m simply not going to trust it or use it. Especially from a well established company like Proton.

Thats the hill I’ll die on. I suspect many others more or less feel similarly.

I know no one likes to hear this. You’re wrong here. I suggest moving on but you can continue to keep grieving. But you won’t have my sympathy here.

2 Likes
18

This has nothing to do with email aliases but I’ll entertain your post because I’m bored.

And what of Proton’s free plan? Do you trust that? It doesn’t cost money. If you trust it, that wouldn’t make any sense because you supposedly believe that private things should cost money. And if you don’t, then you’re for some reason distrusting a “well established company like Proton”, in your words, for your seemingly arbitrary belief that privacy services should necessarily cost money.

In either case, your position collapses on itself because in its foundation lies a dogma. I sincerely don’t think I’m in the wrong here.

3 Likes
19

For all this talk, you’re forgetting that while a basic Proton account is free, you’re forgetting that the company has a proper business model with many products and services.

Selectively talking about facts is a mark of one who has nothing else left to explain their POV such that it would make it a legitimate case of a problem with Proton.

1 Like
21

I mean, you’ve basically changed the subject entirely to Proton having a “proper” business model, whatever that abstract “proper-ness” may be.

And how could my posts be even remotely selective, while your posts have consistently ignored every single rebuttal I have made? There is nothing to select, because nothing I have said has been addressed with any substance.

For example, the ToS makes no mention of disabling aliases, despite your post having claimed that I “accepted the terms of conditions”, which would somehow have contradicted this, of which I am apparently incognizant and hence I’m laying unjust words upon Proton itself. Turns out they mention nothing of it!

Then this post completely ignores the rebuttal with a random slogan. Maybe stating an old, wise saying? Who knows?

And further, my posts stating that the continued maintenance of existing aliases cost nothing, have been completely ignored!

3 Likes