Welcome! This is a community for all those who are interested in protecting their privacy.
PS: Don't be a smartass and try to game the system, we'll know if you're breaking the rules when we see it!
Some of these are only vaguely related, but great communities.
What features does Gmail even have to sacrifice? It’s just basic email.
Gmail has features? Fucking where?
honestly i believe the reason so many people are never gonna switch from google is because so many services allow you to use your google as an easy one click register/login. its so convenient that i have friends who'd rather have all their privacy be infringed than to give that up.
not to mention the dozens of services google provides themselves, from maps to mail to search to whatever the fuck
similar to apple, its an ecosystem. one of convenience.
100%. it's SO annoying to remember passwords especially when my phone doesn't auto save them 50% of the time because it doesn't feel like it.
Why doesn't everyone just use a better manager like Lastpass or Bitwarden, it's super easy to use.
I do use Bitwarden, and in my experience of >1 year, it's good enough. It sometimes doesn't save automatically and if you save (for example) a McDonalds login on PC, it won't offer to fill on their app. Also you cant save new passwords offline which is a pretty rare situation but it made me want to rip my hair out (granted I didn't have enough food that day so I was angry to begin with).
Minor gripes for sure, but Google doesn't have the same annoyances. Not worth going back to Google though.
I guess I've always just made the new passwords in Bitwarden and have it fill in the form rather than fill in the form and let Bitwarden save it. Do you not use generated passwords? Can't help you on the offline thing, I see how that would be annoying.
It's called the Googleverse.
Many people don't know the difference between the Google search bar and the URL bar anymore.
Email doesn't need "features." It's been a solved problem for decades.
It does need a PGP integration.
I mean I know why it won't, and never in Gmail, but we do need it.
You'd be surprised how seamlessly https://flowcrypt.com/ integrates with gmail. Been using it for years, zero complaints.
I agree.
I guess most of these people don't understand the difference between the protocol/server and the client software, and most of those use the web ui anyhow.
Moving away from gmail is one thing, but Proton's CEO is a massive cunt that I wouldn't personally trust anymore. I have an ongoing subscription for some of their services (including email, but I don't really use it), and I'm going to move on from there after the subscription expires.
not to mention Proton's PR team has mod positions in the subreddit and lemmy community and like to do some pretty aggressive censoring of anything that refers to the CEO's support of Trump in hopes of gaslighting everyone to forget about it.
I got banned from the lemmy community recently and my posts removed as 'misinformation' for talking about it... like man the entire internet saw him say this shit.
It's not like Proton mail is the only alternative. And like the article points out, you don't get encryption anyway, since almost no one else you'd be communicating with is going to be on Proton. I use (and recommend) posteo.de but there are other good alternatives for email. But if you want encrypted communication you'll need to use an app designed for that, not email.
I never quite understand why people use Proton. It just automates the exchange of PGP/GPG keys, but only if the other person also uses Proton, right?
Anyhow, +1 to paying a small amount of money for email. I was with posteo.de myself for many years. I heard mailbox.org is even better/safer and has slightly more features. Both start at 1€/month.
BTW, I set up an eternal redirect email address a long time ago, so I can change the actual provider without having to tell all my contacts.
It also encrypts your emails automatically (both incoming and outgoing) and lets you set PGP keys for any address you want, and fetch/manually trust Proton Mail users' keys.
encrypts your emails automatically (outgoing)
How does that work for recipients I haven't shared secrets with?
BTW any decent email client has an option or plugin to do that.
To be precise, even when an email is not from Proton user, they encrypt it with ypur public key, send it to you and delete it (they call it zero access). Which is the best you can get. Also managing PGP keys, especially on multiple devices is a pain.
This is actually good to know. OTOH, aren't all messages transfered using encryption with most email providers/clients anyhow (TLS/SSL)? This is mostly about making sure your data on the servers stays safe even if someone gains access, right?
So, TLS is just a point-to-point encryption protocol, it doesn't prevent anybody of the parties involved from having access to the content. Once the email is encrypted with PGP, Proton loses permanently access to this content.
So this is pretty much what happens with a Gmail <-> Outlook and a Gmail <-> Proton email.
Gmail to outlook:
A writes the email in their editor <- TLS -> Google servers <-TLS-> outlook servers <-TLS-> B reads the email. While every communication is encrypted with TLS, every server has access to its content. Every time B accesses the email from outlook servers (I.e., their inbox), the data is transferred with TLS, but outlook is the "other end of the tunnel", so it has access to this content.
Gmail to Proton:
A writes the email in their editor <- TLS -> Google servers <-TLS-> Proton servers -> encrypt original message with B's public key and discard original -> send to B inbox -> Proton client decrypts email -> B accesses it.
So yes, it is
about making sure your data on the servers stays safe even if someone gains access
As long as you consider the email provider part of those potential "someone".
The way I would say it essentially is that PGP encryption (even in cases where the original messages was not using it) still gives you the confidentiality property of PGP, even without the integrity and non-repudiation properties (which are not possible to guarantee with respect of the original message of course). In other words, the biggest difference is that the email provider doesn't have access to your stuff.
Thanks!
Yeah same, so I went with Tuta which is a bit cheaper and encrypts more.
Yes, tuta encrypts the subject, which is not encrypted in Proton for example.
I just created an account with mailbox.org - now I just need to spend the next months transferring all relevant emails.
spend the next months transferring all relevant emails.
Why don't you just keep them on your machine? No need to clutter online storage with old mails.
Oh wait, you probably don't use email client software.
I think you've misunderstood, and my writing was bad. I meant transferring all my accounts to the new email domain, not move all emails (I have already downloaded them) 🙂
You must have a lot of email accounts.
My password manager has more than 600 accounts stored... Though, I'll only transfer the ones I still use lol
Yeah, this isn't really scientific or anything. The details of he survey aren't really discussed in detail, and its not random sampling... Its readers of android authority.
That's nearly equivalent of saying, the majority of people in this privacy group care more about privacy than google features.
I'd be interested to see a broad survey like this though to get a real sense of how the general publics views on privacy are changing.
I highly recommend Disroot.org. I switched as part of my deGoogling and I am very happy.