Hi guys,
I’m currently using Mailbox.org and not using PGP to encrypt my inbox. I’d like to ask why Google Workspace isn’t a privacy option? I’ve checked their privacy policy, and everything seems perfect. And since you have a business contract with Google, I don’t think they’d go back on their word.
Oh honey, how old are you?
Is this what they call rage bait?
Here are some other concerns too for OP:
Their enterprise offerings are a lot better than their consumer ones. They actually offer client side encryption for workspace unlike in regular drive and Gmail. Workspace isn’t a bad option, I just hate their consumer stuff.
It’s also 7 per month (ie $84 per year) to get it for yourself, at which point you might as well get a Proton account, while if you’re on someone else’s the admin can see your data from what I understand. I don’t know how the encryption works with that because the admin did not enable it on mine.
With a lot of these things, it’s not necessarily “X is 100% terrible”, but “Y is much better and in the same price range or cheaper.” Of course people on social media will reduce it to “google bad”, just because people prefer things to be black and white and dead simple.
If groups like Proton didn’t exist, I’m not sure their workspace privacy policy, support for encryption, etc would be there either. The privacy policy now isn’t inherently what they’ll have in 10 years if the competition who pushed these features dies.
My understanding is that Workspace gives you a better privacy policy than regular Google, but not the best. And if you’re going all in and paying for that kind of account anyway, it becomes hard to argue against Proton or another privacy focused option in the same general price range as they are much better for that.
I guess there are some use cases where it would kind of make sense. For example, if your workflow needs an AI and you want to be in an ecosystem, you definitely don’t want to be using something like Lumo if you need something reliable. But again, that seems like some pretty rare use case scenarios.
For a very large organization, like say a university, I’d rather administer google workspace since end users are used to google, google workspace is the most mature technology, etc.
If I had a choice I’d still force the university to use Proton, but it doesn’t mean I’d enjoy being the admin for the first major university to attempt this.
Keep in mind this is a please-eli5 post and OP has self-labelled as a beginner. The whole point of this tag and label is to be welcoming and understanding to them.
Better surely. Great, definitely not. Even microsoft is easier to make agreements with on how they process your business data or not.
I see that. But you can also see how my questions are also warranted, however passive aggressively asked. It’s literally why I asked how old they are to get a sense of where they’re coming from because a reasonably well read adult asking this in 2026 is akin to an adult asking if harming another person is wrong. It’s a face palming question.
Either way, everyone else seems to have taken my comment in jest which is how I meant it. You’re the only one who seems irked by it.
FWIW I found it a bit harsh and tried to use a different tone, but didn’t comment on it since you didn’t ask me.
Even if OP is a 12 year old, I know at 12 I would have preferred to hear “It’s commendable you’re thinking about this at your age. Here’s some history you might not be aware of…” rather than “Oh honey, how old are you?”
The reason being that I had just had 12 years of people treating me almost as subhuman or at least very disrespectfully due to my being a child, which impacts how funny this sort of thing seems.
To be fair, the Beginner label isn’t well-defined. I’ve been doing this privacy journey stuff for nearly a decade and I still mark myself as a beginner.
I may be able to eat, breathe, and sleep the privacy guides recommendations and even be able to offer occasional help or insight. But compared to the developers, professional IT, and security experts that I see on here, I’m a beginner.
Well, it’s kind of defined.
How familiar are you with the topics discussed here? Community members are intended use this to help provide self-described beginners additional context/info in their replies.
The guides are not primarily aimed at programmers, professional IT, and security experts, nor are most people on the forum such a person. If you were one, you could probably choose advanced.
Having “beginner’s mind” is a good attitude, but in this case the label is to request extra info or simpler explanations. That’s fine if that’s what you’re meaning to ask for. However you sound intermediate to me in the sense being referenced since you’ve spent a lot of time learning but aren’t an expert.