So, I’ve been de-googling, and moved my email and calendar to Proton, and I’ve been using their VPN for a while as well. I really like it, and it works extremely well for me.
But I am slightly annoyed by Proton’s choice to stop posting to Mastodon, and their CEO’s Trump comments. And I do like Tuta’s support for the Fediverse, and their better open-source implementation. But I’m wondering if it’s worth it to bother switching again. I tried making a ones month payment to try out both, and my card doesn’t want to pay for Tuta (It’s finicky about stuff outside the US).
So would it be better to just stick with Proton? Or try to manage to go over to Tuta?
Transitioning Email is a hard thing to do. I suggest doing so gradually in a multi-step process:
- Start using disposable emails for signing up for things TODAY. Addy.io, duckduckgo, mozilla, proton, whatever you trust. This can easily be switched from your Gmail address to your new address later.
- Purchase a domain. Think hard on this, you want to keep this forever. Don’t forget to check those renewal costs. Buy several years. Just forward it to your Gmail or other free email account at first, and start sharing it instead of your Gmail address (you won’t be able to send with it yet).
- Look at switching to a mail client for your day-to-day email use. Every device has decent multi-account mail client available. Add Gmail to it and start getting used to not using Gmail’s web interface anymore. This drastically reduces the amount of behavioural information you are sharing with Google.
- Switch your custom domain to a paid mail provider. Lots of options in this thread. You can change this again at any time, as you are using a custom domain. Connect it to your multi-account mail client on your devices alongside Gmail.
- Never delete your Gmail account -because then someone can scoop it up and impersonate you with that service or contact that doesn’t know you switched. Delete all your old mail from their system, and unsubscribe and disconnect everything sending mail to it -remember about 2-factor authentication. Eventually you can take it out of your mail client so Google no longer sees your device activity - just log into the web interface at progressively longer intervals to verify you didn’t miss anything important.
Good luck, and take it one step at a time. Perfect is the enemy of good and all that.
Proton is fine, the whole ceo comment situation gets way overblown. Tuta is also great.
But if u just want a convenient ecosystem go for proton.
I just started using Runbox.com so far I’m happy with them
I did a lot of analysis paralysis and comparisons when I was looking for a very low cost provider that works with my own domain so I can get off Gmail and avoid future vendor lock-in. I wanted 100% standards compliant email hosting that will work perfectly with an actual, old-school email client workflow, plus some sort of web client I can fall back on if needed.
I also wanted EU or Canadian hosting and a non-US corp I’m sending my money to, plus lots of online indication they have been reliable for many years and have generally very good community reviews. I don’t actually see the value in the provider-based encryption of Proton/Tuta and think it creates a false sense of security because there is basically no reasonable threat model where their system seems to actually protect you - okay, come at me ;)
In the end, it was down to Runbox and Migadu. Both are 20-ish bucks a year with my custom domain and satisfy all my requirements. Migadu seemed very good, and comes with more storage space, but I prefer to migrate my archived mail off the mail server over time anyway.
Runbox has a really slick web client, doesn’t have the silly-low 20-email-a-day sending limit, and the clincher for me was that I can add secondary accounts on my domain for $8 a year! I may actually make some accounts for family on my domain at that price. I switched the domain over to Runbox a few months back, and regret all the time I procrastinated doing it.
It depends what you want
If all you need is zero access encryption then Tuta is fine but if you would like to use OpenPGP more like u did in Proton then maybe mailbox.org and posteo would be better choice imho
And if you want to control everything, selfhost stalwart would be nice
I do not like either, as you get locked into their app ecosystem. No standard imap and no self-hosted archive is no freedom for me.
I went with puelymail.com, one of lesser known cheap standard mail providers, and am very content for a couple years already.
mailbox.org simple bring your own encryption
Have an acount on both and use them to verify each other.
I have a Proton mail account. While I’m ready to scold them for stop posting on Mastodon while still posting you know where!!.. I think the stupid tweet that Andy Yen posted got way too out of hand. It was one tweet. You should find the tweet and read it yourself. It’s just a dig at the “Left” in the vein of “wait, since when is a Republican defending small tech from Big Tech more than the Left?” It was tone deaf, and dumb and calls caution to the fact that this may be another dumb tech Bro who likes to tweet irresponsibly just as much as the idiots we know too well. But it wasn’t any form of endorsement at all. Just a tone deaf attempt to create social pressure for the supposed “Left” to do what it is supposed to do. And oh boy, did the tone deaf tweet backfire.
But anyway, I belive, like many people here do, that one shouldn’t put all of one’s efforts to just one bet. That is how we got Google in the first place. You should also have a Tuta Mail as well, especially if you seem inclined to and don’t have an alternative mail to Proton. I’m always ready to jump at any time that I find something that displeases me. And that includes Proton.
There’s also personal preferences at play. What works really well for one person, might not for another.
We should try to spread our choice amongst all the villagers. Do not replace your entire Google suite for the Proton one. That’s how we get another powerful conglomerate.
Indeed. That tweet was just the icing on the cake. I agree that Proton is an issue in that it is far more vendor-locked-in than a standards compliant mail service, but in addition to that, over the years, they have very much over-sold the degree of security their system provides (military-grade encryption anyone?). Read any honest security researcher’s review of Proton and it’s full of caviates about a system where they both hold your keys and provide you with a web interface. If their marketing was more reasonable, I would maybe trust them more.
If you absolutely need end-to-end encryption and have the ability to direct your correspondent to a particular service (like Proton), I wouldn’t choose Email at all. If it had to be Email, you are looking at PGP or S/MIME in a client, but an e2e messenger that is hard to mess-up and has some metadata protections will be far superior in practice.
I went for Tuta and never regretted it. First as a free user, later I decided to subscribe to the old premium plan, where I pay 12$/year, mainly because I wanted to use a custom domain.
I also made a free Proton Mail about a year ago as a secondary mail account but I rarely use it. They are just way too pushy when trying to sell me their premium plans.
Proton is better. It supports PGP, the search function is nicer, and there was a third reason I can’t quite seem to remember.
You could give Tuta a try if you like, though.
Bought my own domain, then bought a webhotel I trust, and set my up my own system. Works really well.
+1 for Tuta. I have a free account with proton but I pay for premium Tuta. They have deeper ideological connections to the open source world and release many of their apps on F-Droid. Proton has only released their VPN app on F-Droid and seems to have no interest in any further activity there. Basically I think Tuta edges ahead in the morals and heart department, though they are a smaller company with less resources.
Personally i would go for Tuta, but try both!
You should consider getting yourself a domain and linking it to your email. That way, you don’t have to continuously switch email addresses. You can just switch service providers and point your domain at the new service provider and keep all of your same email addresses.
With that said, there’s a good potential that Proton is going to be adding the ability to pay with Monero in the near future, and Tuta can be paid for with Monero using proxysto.re.
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