Most of you said you’d switch to Proton Mail for the privacy, even if it meant giving up some of the convenience of Gmail.
Gmail’s only feature that made it compelling was an inbox of 1GB when everyone else was doing 20MB. Oh, and using Ajax to make it slightly more responsive.
None of the other stuff they added matters, especially if you’re using a mail client.
I also think labels are the right way to organise emails. It was pretty unique at the time, and I think it still isn’t common.
And frankly, I like gmail’s interface more than Thunderbird’s, for example.
Moving to office, I miss labels. Categories suck and cant be filtered easily.
As someone who hosts their own email server and uses Gmail, I can tell you the biggest feature they offer that I have trouble replicating is labels.
Those in the know are probably familiar that labels are essentially special IMAP folders. The challenge I’ve had is making these folders work well, finding a mail client (both web based and app based) that works with it, and is easy to manage.
My last attempt to get this to work was setting up a DocumentDB database where the labels were metadata and they were then looked up by Courier IMAP. But it didn’t work well.
I’ve been looking into this problem for over 10 years and it kills me that this simple feature is important enough to keep my personal email in Google.
I do not perfectly manage my email inbox, and I’ve become absolutely dependent on their automatic Priority / Updates / Promotions etc. Classifications, as well as their features that surface important emails, or things you might want to respond to that you forgot…
I found their prioritization too biased against people to find it useful. I’ve turned it off as I’ve missed notifications from bots that I need to take action on.
To each their own I suppose.
What features does Gmail even have to sacrifice? It’s just basic email.
Like Google is going to do that. The entire reason for gmails existence is to gather data from its users.
It’s ridiculous how user data has become such a big commodity.
You mean to say that if a service or product is free, we are the product?
No, if a company has shareholders then you are the product
Companies exist only to make profits for the investors.
The users getting any value is just a happy little accident.
and not just that, but to make as much money in as short a time as possible. Fuck the future, short term goals are all that matter.
Samsung: buy device, we collect your data Apple: buy device, we collect your data Google: buy device, we collect your data Tesla: buy a car, we collect your data Uber: pay for delivery, we collect your data Amazon: pay for subscription, buy items, sell items, we collect your data. Netflix: literally the only way to interact with us is to pay a subscription, we collect your data. YouTube: pay more than every other streaming service to get music, video and shorts with no ads, we are still collecting your data.
“If it’s free, you’re the product” has never been and will never be true. You’re the product so long as advertising exists, paying for shit doesn’t change a thing. They don’t care you bought it once because they want you to buy again and again and only from them. It’s a statement to make people think they deserve the treatment they’re getting and its gaslighting.
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.
Ultra Private E-Mail
look inside
The most basic ass unencrypted email
Is Proton still an alternative? I subscribed to Tuta for a year but I’m not too happy with their apps. Feels like low-grade web apps disguised as mobile apps.
Used it for years now, 100% worth the money and the bundled cloud storage and vpn are both great.
I’d say yes. Have been using ProtonMail as main mail service for several years now. There are some limitations because of encryption, but for the most part it’s working almost the same as GMail. I’ve had Tutamail too, but I too didn’t like the design of their app, it was very restricted and lacked features of almost any kind.
I think their new (not so new anymore) mobile app has been a major improvement. It is much faster and usable IMHO. This on Android (degoogled).
I am quite happy with the service, and so is my family (non-techie).
Sadly, that is true for many email providers. I do use Tuta, because I use web apps only. However, a decent provider is Disroot. You do have to set up the encryption things by yourself, but IIRC, you can use any desktop/mobile/whatever client you want to.
Absolutely not, Proton’s CEO went on a rant about how he loves Trump. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s all funneled to his dad Putin. I’ve been looking for Proton thats not Proton
He never said he loved Trump. He said he supported the push against big tech which seemed most likely with republicans.
Yes still very dumb and republicans are lying sacks of shit.
I dont use proton and I’m kinda sceptical about them. Especially since Switzerland is potentionaly introducing a very privacy unfriendly law. And also because of said tweet, but please state facts and don’t exaggerate since it really doesn’t help with anything.
The tweet (can a tweet even qualify as a rant, given the length?):
Great pick by @readDonaldTrump. 10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys [small businesses, n.d.r. as explained on reddit], but today the tables have completely turned. People forget that the current antitrust actions against Big Tech were started under the first Trump admin.
A rant about how he loves Trump?
I think I’m leaning towards your side here. I’m sorry for starting a war in the comments, by the way. 😅 It was a hot topic!
I still find it weird that the Proton CEO is so adamant about pitting republicans against democrats so hard, like it’s black or white, red pill vs blue pill. If he supports the choice that was made, he could easily just say that he thinks the choice was good, without putting all the focus on who made the choice. That’s the weird part for me. 😓 That’s what makes me suspicious of the intentions of the tweet.
But yeah, anyway, it definitely wasn’t a love letter like that, no. 👍
Most companies don’t have these PR problems
I know the facts.
And that’s why I am calling you out for misrepresenting the facts. There is just no way that tweet can be interpreted as a “rant to say he loves trump”.
So, “there has been a controversy about a tweet from the CEO who praises Trump’s pick for antitrust and saw it as a confirmation that republicans are more likely to pursue antitrust battles against big tech, compared to democrats” =/= “the CEO went on a rant to say how he loves Trump”.
Disagree, it completely reads as a tweet supporting trump, and the “official response” that was later contracted by a more moderate official response definitely felt like a rant.
I’ve been watching Proton since then and they’ve very much backed away from the ceo’s pro-Trump pro-Republican position, so I’ve continued to use their services, but mostly because I’ve already invested time and money into using them. But they lost my trust and I have not recommended them in the same way I used it before this happened.
There is not a single comment either on reddit or elsewhere that shows love for Trump. Supporting a Trump’s choice doesn’t mean supporting Trump.
Supporting his choices and the Republican party at large is the problematic part. I don’t care if he loves Trump or not.
“Here is our official response, also available on the Mastodon post in the screenshot: Corporate capture of Dems is real. In 2022, we campaigned extensively in the US for anti-trust legislation. Two bills were ready, with bipartisan support. Chuck Schumer (who coincidently has two daughters working as big tech lobbyists) refused to bring the bills fora vote. At a 2024 event covering antitrust remedies, out of all the invited senators, just a single one showed up JD Vance. By working on the front lines of many policy issues, we have seen the shift between Dems and Republicans over the past decade first hand. Dems had a choice between the progressive wing (Bernie Sanders, etc), versus corporate Dems, but in the end money won and constituents lost. Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.”
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.
The outgoing email leaving the server isn’t encrypted.
The copy that’s stored on your account is encrypted on device with your PGP key.
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
But if you have a redirect isnt that service the issue? As in your gmail forwards to proton?
What issue?
I didn’t mean to say that my eternal email has anything to do with Proton.
Sorry I am trying to understand the usefulness of an eternal redirect email address? Im just not familiar with the set up or reasoning.
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.
deleted by creator
Goodluck with spam and your mails in spam
deleted by creator
If any of y’all could show me how to auto forward mail to a more private and secure mail hosting service I’d much appreciate it. I’m trying to de-Google my life and Gmail is the only one that feels far too embedded to drop
Generally you can do it from settings with automatic forwarding feature.
See this article for actual instructions.
Consider that:
- this means google will know your new email address
- obviously google will keep accessing your data
For the first point, Proton migration tool (from gmail) works flawlessly and doesn’t disclose your new address (plus it moves all your previous emails). I didn’t try similar tools for other vendors but I am sure they have similar options.
For me it took months to get the bulk of the services moved over, I added a label to all emails forwarded and I periodically reviewed them. It’s a perfect occasion to change password or delete the account.
When I switched from Gmail to Mailbox.org, they had a migration to transfer all my existing data over.
From there, you can either set up gmail to forward emails to your new address.
Or you can use your new service to pull email from Gmail.
Either way is easy to do.
Congrats on wanting to make the switch!
Proton literally does it as part of the signup process, you just log in and it does it for you
I send all of mine to a specific folder I can check later
Rocking postfix and dovecot with opendkim.
I highly recommend Disroot.org. I switched as part of my deGoogling and I am very happy.
