Only a suggestion but PG could put a potential new addition on like a watch list for 6-12 months and see if they truly uphold the values of being a ‘privacy first’ product. If they fail the standards then they can be removed. Tuta and Proton get enough crap thrown at them but at least they listen and adjust their approach accordingly.
I completely agree with the GDPR sentiment.
That alone should’ve kept them off PG’s list and Skiffs attitude towards privacy first leaves a lot to be desired. I feel like a lot of the time any issue thrown at them they pretty much respond with ‘It’s not a bug but a feature’ lol
Well not being GDPR complaint isn’t necessary a problem for US citizens if at least privacy uphold. I jusst take issue with the false promise that could lead to trouble for smaller companies who do not know to do due diligence.
I like your suggestion of a new/debute label. Actually that corresponds with a different suggestion that was once made to make it clearer to see what is new. The counter argument was that this would add maintenance. I suggested back then to add an added on date field. Which could be used to show the new label for a certain time that way it doesn’t need to be removed manually.
I see hmm that would create more maintenance but I wouldn’t consider that a downside as the community has been fantastic at finding flaws in the products we use today and we can then open the discussion further.
Hmm perhaps PG could explore the label option or even do a pilot test on an extremely small number of the most popular products?
It would be a good idea to be less keen on adding recommendations which are suggested by the service representatives given the obvious conflict of interest. Some of them may just use this as a free PR opportunity to bait more users. For example: Skiff is on PrivacyGuides - Read more.
My first thought when I read this article was “did they also buy PG?”. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s aware of the PrivacyTools situation and feel discomfort reading articles like this.
Perhaps you are right. I do really appreciate them answering questions from the community and improving the service though. I see that as a very positive outcome of the discussions.
About the post on their website. I understand they are proud of it. Nothing wrong with that. They really had a long breath to get listed. Regardless of what we think I understand they were super excited to get listed.
I would rather see them on the community forum like this than a review website. I don’t see this as a conflict of interest. The criteria for getting listed is specified by the community anyway. If being listed here is very important for them, they might even have to fix their services to meet our criteria, which would benefit a lot of users.
I don’t believe Skiff for now because of mentioned above privacy issues and extremely unclear marketing. IMHO for now you can use them but I wouldn’t recommend using them for anything important
I’m honestly surprised there hasn’t been a team response to this. The things mentioned seem pretty bad to me, but I guess they aren’t explicitly breaking any of the criteria, just being a bit shady.
as they say they quite new and had to add all these technologies quickly, and so haven’t had time to implement the log out feature properly yet. I.E. it’s not mature yet.
And in my opinion they should not have passed the audit criteria if it’s true that they haven’t actually published the audits.
I’m in agreement that they probably were added too soon.
I honestly think that currently, Skiff doesn’t meet the minimum requirements at least when it comes to the marketing section of the Privacy Guides criteria for email providers, and thus should be removed from the recommendations.
PG requires that “The provider’s site must also comply with DNT (Do Not Track) for those who wish to opt-out.” This is listed as a minimum-to-qualify requirement, meaning that if you don’t respect this, you won’t get listed. On their privacy policy, Skiff clearly says that they do not respond or honor this.
Also, as I said in my previous comment, Skiff’s marketing has not been responsible, which is another requirement for being listed, even though spreading disinformation about your competitors hasn’t been listed as an example of irresponsible marketing.
This is pretty insane TBH and a massive security issue. The fact you need contact support, and they think that that is speedy enough is even worse. Once again shows that they do not understand their own product and need for security and privacy by design
Skiff also doesn’t seem to stop spreading false information on their blog posts:
“More importantly, crucial security options are locked behind more expensive subscriptions. ProtonMail doesn’t have built-in 2FA for any individual tiers, premium or not—the feature is only available to business users.” - https://archive.is/KntXk
Post is from last year. I was just pointed to this when talking about the other misinformation they distribute which was discussed on the forum earlier.
At this point I think the argument can easily be made with the above evidence that Skiff was not only added prematurely, but should be removed. I’m shocked that the team STILL hasn’t responded to this, but maybe that’s because of this posts title. Not sure if titles can be changed or not, but if they can I propose that it is changed to “Remove Skiff”. Also add “Tool Suggestions” as a category.
Looks like I can’t change the topic title. Would anyone from the team advice on whether mentioned here issues warrants Skiff removal and whether the team would be keen on discussing it?
