Idc if I likes Trump or not (even though Trump is garbage); but I do care that he says the Republicans - the party that has spent years attacking encryption and privacy, who has sued to obtain private medical records of women and trans people who see doctors, and who is funded by billionaire big tech moguls - is the better option for privacy.

Also just taking ANY position for a leader of the US - one of the biggest parties to the Five Eyes agreement - just leaves a bad taste.

Do you have any recommendations for someone who just uses them for email?

Does Proton really support Trump? A deeper analysis

One thing to note is that while on Reddit, people are alleging that Proton is a company run by a fascist, pro-MAGA, pro-dictatorship CEO, users on X are accusing Andy and the company of being anti-MAGA/anti-Trump.

So, in the face of all the evidence I’ve found, to compare Andy to a tech oligarch like Zuck and Elon, who are now bootlicking on display for all to see, is not supported by the evidence.

[…]

However, being disillusioned with one party on one issue doesn’t mean that all of a sudden Andy Yen changed all of his stances and that now he’s actually pro-Republican or pro-MAGA. All of the evidence gathered suggests the exact opposite.

Considering how many users here have expressed similar disillusionment with the current Democratic party, it seems a bit hypocritical to judge Andy Yen for having the same feelings (or expressing them on occasion).

This whole “Proton supports MAGA” thing is another example of internet mob-think where everybody has an opinion informed by no facts at all, actively ignores or dismisses the larger context in order to protect that fragile opinion from reality, and most haven’t even looked at the original statements that sparked the controversy.

Any alternatives for their VPN service with port forwarding?

There is not and never was any endorsement of Trump. I wish people would stop spreading such wild disinformation.

He also never backpedaled.

It’s a sad day when “you can find us over on Discord” is a better option.

I suggest you give a read to “Privacy is power” by Carissa Veliz (on the board). She also gave a very good interview on the podcast “firewalls don’t stop dragons”.

I also don’t think “cryptonerds” applies to people like Tim Berners Lee.

FYI i use a degoogled FP3 with microG and I don’t have any problem.

We have to wait and see what the next audit is going to find, that will give us more security than any kind of information provided from Proton themselves.

The Swiss laws are also helping to make it so they keep the privacy standards high.

But I would definitely use your own domain for your Proton mail currently

Unless you use a custom domain. That way you only need to update everything once.

I do think the second part of your statement was unnecessary.

I don’t use email for any meaningful communication where I expect privacy. It is essentially the way for companies and a few other organizations to send me low priority information and/or confirm my identity to reset a password or whatever.

As a privacy enthusiast (expert seems too much), this immediately stood out. Privacy is the context of emails means that all my data which includes the content of the messages but also the metadata (who I talk to, which services I use - like in your example -, when I communicate, how often, etc.) is kept private, meaning not used for anything else than providing me the service (i.e., let me send and receive emails). From this point of view, even if you consider the content of your emails not sensitive, already the fact that you do use company X (because they sent you a password reset email) is data about you, and as such can and will be mined by Google to profile you or to sell it.

Am I risking too much if I use it as the corporate contact point that it is? Am I just letting my white/straight/cis/male privilege show through?

Nobody can tell you this, because risk in this context is purely a subjective estimation, and you are free to do what you please. However, I do care about my privacy, which means that I want to minimize the amount of data about me available for sale or to others in general. For me the motivation is quite simple, while I do block ads everywhere too and I generally don’t have an impact in terms of getting personalized ads, once the data is collected I have no idea what will be used for, by whom and for what purpose. It doesn’t even matter if the data actually allows to infer accurate things about me, it’s enough that someone (e.g., insurance company, employer, bank, government, etc.) is gullible enough to believe that inference is correct. In the book “Privacy is power” (written by Carissa Veliz) she also develops a very interesting argument about the fact that violating your privacy usually means also violating the privacy of the people near you (the people with whom you share demographic, the people you communicate with etc.). This could be another point of view to consider.

Anyway, if for you the above is fine, there is no other significant risk you are taking, and you should keep using Gmail if that suits you.

A technical note. Secure email providers generally can have technical controls (i.e., encryption) to protect the body (content) of the email, and in some cases some small amount of metadata (e.g., Tuta encrypts also the subject). Generally though, you are still trusting the provider to perform that encryption (especially because a mail from Gmail -> Proton/Tuta would be encrypted by Proton/Tuta) and to not use metadata for any purpose besides delivering the emails. So privacy here doesn’t mean absolutely removing the data from a third party, but it means giving it to a third party who uses it (due to contractual obligation, business incentives etc.) only for the intended purpose in a privacy-preserving way.

And I’d have thought the potential customers segment are exactly the Mastodon users.

I think the reason is that every time they post something, someone there points out the Andy Yen thing. Thats basically the only comments. So its detrimental to their business.

Yea this is worse. The politics thing could be brushed off as Andy Yen being uneducated on American politics. Moving away from an already established fediverse platform is contradictory to Proton’s mission. It doesn’t take more than a minute to copy paste their xitter posts to Mastadon.