Is that a good enough reason to partner with a browser, if it’s not typically recommended by the privacy community?
Who forced Vivaldi to give up a partnership with a better VPN? And why?
Even so, to me, Vivaldi would have to stand strongly as a privacy browser in order to justify a partnership with a respected company like Proton, and from what I can tell, they don’t. Firefox, and many Firefox based browsers, are customizable. I just don’t get Proton’s decision on this.
I meant that the service provider shut down their service and left Vivaldi without a proxy integration.
Got it. Thanks for clarifying.
I’m curious and so would like to ask, how much is the Visionary plan for Proton’s suite? A surprising number have claimed to be on this plan which seems too many for how expensive I thought it was.
I suppose it makes sense if some have been grandfathered into it at lower pricing. Maybe a CheapPrivacyGuides is also in order.
The pricing has changed a little bit, depending upon when you joined, I was an original visionary member, but I downgraded at some point. But I did go back after they opened it back up, and I pay $40 a month for it.
Having 6 TB of storage is pretty great, but unfortunately, drive I feel has some pretty significant issues, so I barely even use that and just use another service for files I need frequent access to, and only keep my sensitive files over there.
It is not about failing to retain you, its about making it hard for you to leave. For most people it would be relatively easy to leave an ecosystem if they only rely on it for one service but, if you rely on it for 3 or 4 or 5+ services all of a sudden the switching costs (and a lot of the time financial cost) to switching becomes much more in Protons favor.
Forcing people to buy more services then they need, increases the chances dramatically that people will end up using those services because they paid for them and in doing so, they become more reliant on Proton as they integrate more into Protons ecosystem.
I dislike ecosystems that lock people in. It leads to problems like this: Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help | Hacker News
Ideally, if Proton offered an easy way to switch away from them (CLI and GUI ways to do automated backup/export) and open sourced their implementations (to prevent them from arbitrarily changing their license and locking users in one day), it would reduce those anxieties for me.
Since it does neither, and in fact makes it actively hard to export data and use their apps on platforms like Linux, I advise everyone against them.
Offerings like Ente do what Proton does, but 10 times better with better cross platform support, open source implementations, sustainable pricing, and hyper focus on improving application for feature parity with established applications (Ente works better for me than iCloud ever did, eventually helping me ditch that platform entirely).
Proton is also bad faith when it comes to claims, with open source plastered across their websites yet their calendar was closed for a while, their repos lag behind in updates, and some claims like Lumo being fully open source are easily verified to be false. Their backends are closed source, their infrastructure is unknown, their default connections and telemetry is undocumented, their apps are not reproducible, their servers are not verifiable, and yet they claim to be able to support at risk people. This is dangerous rhetoric that seems irresponsible overall, especially with their issues with the French activists, the Phrack incident, and other accidents which do not evoke trust. Proton either needs to overhaul their offerings, or tone down their marketing. Doing neither leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
Proton seems to have mostly open sourced most of their clients now. It sounds like you’ve seen: Proton Mail · GitHub They have a mail export script here: GitHub - ProtonMail/proton-mail-export
I do think you have a point about them not making it easy to switch away. You need to use a custom email domain, export your emails with that script above and use third-party proton drive Proton Drive stuff if you’re on Linux. Not a great experience.
I don’t think server code being closed source is a flag. They’re a business, so why would they open source the entire platform for somebody to copy/paste? Also open sourcing server code does not prove that, that code is actually running in prod.
Note that this is exactly the case for Bitwarden, Ente’s suite, Peergos, Addy/SimpleLogin, AmneziaVPN, Adguard, LanguageTool, Standard Notes, ForwardEmail and more. If anything, in an ideal world you might only recommend services that also allow you to migrate to your own self-hosted instance.
I get that, but a paying user who only pays for one Proton service, and wants to pay for a second is entrenching themselves even more into the ecosystem, so why force them to dig their heels deeper than they want to, when they are already making a stronger commitment than before.
So why not do the same with SimpleLogin, Lumo, and Standard Notes?
They’re not being consistent.
This why Disroot’s mission with Lacre is far more noble in my view than Proton’s encrypted email service. Disroot is trying to make something that everyone can benefit from regardless of whether they use Disroot. Meanwhile Proton is trying to make something for Proton users and only Proton users.
In other words projects like Disroot want the world to have privacy. Proton wants the world to use Proton.
There’s also cryptpad, to add one more to your list.
I don’t know what kind of worldview you hold to say it like that and think of it in those terms. Proton has a for profit wing within its non profit to make money. What’s wrong with that for the tools they provide for your privacy and security needs?
I don’t think you understand what I meant. There’s nothing “wrong” with Proton tools purely from a privacy and security perspective. But their mission is not as noble as Disroot because they don’t share what they create. Much of Proton client software is open source, but they don’t follow open source philosophy in many ways. Disroot’s main goal is to create tools that enhance privacy everywhere. Proton’s main goal is to improve the privacy and security of Proton, and then for as many people to use Proton as possible.
That’s exactly what I was trying to bring attention to. Why must one think of it in terms of nobility? Why frame it or ask it or think of it like that?
There’s a case to be made that they follow enough to be labeled as a company providing open source tools. But some of the purists may think unless absolutely 100% of everything is open source (server side included), a company should not claim it is providing open source tools. This depends on your philosophical bend.
I still don’t get why you think Proton’s goal is not to provide privacy and security forward tools for all and why you think the primary goal of the company is to safeguard themselves and then the users. To me they are doing the same as any other company making privacy conscious software in the space. There are some differences in approaches but the end result benefits everyone who chooses to use them. I don’t see a need to further fragment the how’s or why’s or what’s within the approaches each may have that differentiates them from others in the same space.
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I think we’d be overthinking unnecessarily to be this pedantic with an evaluation of this. But that’s just me. From a consumer POV, they all make great tools. And I’m happy they exist for all to use.
I got into privacy and open source software because of my politics. I won’t get too deep into that, but essentially I don’t choose what software to support purely based on privacy and security. I choose to support the software I think is most aligned with my vision for the world. It’s called prefiguration.
Again you’re not understanding my meaning. The ethos behind open source is creating tools that anyone can use and benefit from. Because Proton server software is closed source, you have to sign up with Proton to benefit from the work that Proton is doing.
Because most of their tools are only available to those who give Proton money and whom Proton allows to use their service. And they are in practice just a for-profit company.
Alright. Duly noted. I won’t say too much on that and derail the discussion. Thought I disagree with how you’re seeing it.
And isn’t this objectively incorrect? Every tool they have can be used for free to an extent and only for free for those who do not or cannot or are unable to pay for it.
There is no exclusivity here from Proton with their tools such that only paying users can use them.
It’s great that people can use Proton for free to an extent, but as we have seen, that is conditional. You have to follow their rules and their terms of service. If you have higher needs but you can’t afford a paid plan, you’re shit out of luck. If Proton gets acquired or changes direction or shuts down, all the work they put into creating secure and private software can be easily lost to the world. If someone has an idea for how to change Proton’s software and make it better, they can’t without building their own version from scratch. Your freedom to use the software Proton creates is significantly curtailed by the limitations they impose.
Yet delays in source release abound, check:
And calendar and Lumi both were not open source all the while they shouted across their socials that they were. It is, by definition, lying.
Not even a new issue, Proton has always kept source code in bad condition.
No way to setup automatic exports. If you use the tool you will find the output in generally messy (threads lost, conversations split).
There is no experience available on Linux at all. Second class citizens across products.
Plenty of successful products with open source backends. This always confuses me about why people evangelize for it.
Why is Proton hogging all the grants and user money by advertising “fully open source” when it is not? Seems like the kind of deception Microsoft pulls with .docx format.
There are actual projects struggling with money that are doing meaningful work this whole time, but Proton dunks on them constantly by citing stuff like audits (left plaintext backups in their authenticator, and XSS on their web crypto vulnerabilities despite all the pomp and show), not giving them user mindspace using their platforms (Ente’s friends initiative is excellent, so is Tuta’s advertising for others (as bad as Tuta’s technical posts are)), etc. is just pathetic.
This is not Proton being a better product too, this is Proton just constantly lying and unaware users being held hostage by a company that can rugpull any day. They have also embraced the extend embrace extinguish by buying Standard Notes (competitor of Pass), hijacking and splitting openPGPjs (breaks compatibility with other versions)
There are genuinely users out there who think Proton will save them from NSA, that their VPN will hide their activism, and that their stack is open source. This is a fraud on users, but because it is one of the biggest privacy companies around most people in the space do not want to confront them.
Their marketing, and their proponents, seems misleading at best and complicit at worst to me.
This is unrelated to it being open source or not. I do not have to certify their servers are running the correct code when I can just hold the threat of forking against attempts at enshittification. Open source servers solve a different problem than the one you point at. Server verifiability is also something Proton should do since they advertise to at risk people, but that is neither here nor there in a discussion about open source servers.
First, can we admit you were factually inaccurate with what and how Proton offers its products seeing how you said it?
This literally applies to every company and their products. Nothing new here. Why are you saying it like this is news? Also, so? You’re literally describing an issue of… life. If you don’t follow the rules set by the society, you’re either forced out or are forced to behave. Same analogy/principle applies here with any software or product or tool one uses.
This cannot happen by law because of their transition to a non profit. Read more here: Proton is transitioning towards a non-profit structure | Proton
I believe you are misguided in your beliefs and thinking to some extent.
If I want to go out and hurt a person, my freedom is curtailed by the rules imposed by the laws and society in which I reside. Do you not see the fallacy in your argument or logic? Also, that’s exactly what software licenses are meant for - to allow or now allow you to do things with it.
I don’t know where you’re coming from with these views. But I don’t wish to continue on this further. I’m not here to convince anyone of anything but I believe I have pointed out enough for you to at least see where you’re misguided. Please reformulate your thinking is all I’ll say.
Can we stop inserting the word factually for no reason? I don’t mean to be rude but it really doesn’t add anything. I’m also not sure what you’re referring to.
Not Disroot, because even if you can’t use their service for some reason, you can use the software they create and other services can host the software they create. Same with many many other open source projects.
A nonprofit owns the for profit company, which I believe does protect the for profit entity from being acquired in the traditional sense, although I’m not exactly familiar enough with Swiss law to say so for sure. But nonprofit leadership can easily change hands or change direction and Proton could shut down for any other reason, so that doesn’t really change the point I was making.
Same