Privacy

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Folks who moved from Google to Proton: What do you wish you'd known at the start? (lemm.ee)

submitted 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm getting ready to move off of Google (and Private Internet Access), and Proton is looking like the best option. But I'm nervous. Some of the things I worry about:

Calendar support: I rely really heavily on Google Calendar. How will I share events with others? And what will I do without Google Tasks?
VPN App Quality: Seeing some mixed reviews on Proton VPN Android app.
Proton ethics & politics: Look, I really don't want to open up the holy war here. My big stipulation is: I don't want my money to go to a company that will donate its money or services to fascists. To my knowledge, Proton does not do that. I know they made a post that seemed to praise GOP antitrust efforts. I do not believe that that is the same thing as lending material support for fascists. (And, as someone who is very well read-in on antitrust issues, I'll say that -- for a lot of complicated reasons -- there is some truth to Proton's post, but I wish they had framed it as a critique of the corporate wing of the Democratic party and not praise of the GOP.)
Anything else I haven't thought to ask.

So, folks who have made the switch: What do you wish you had known? What do you wish you had done to make the move easier?

Thank you for your advice.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

I only ever used Proton for a few secondary email accounts (compartmentalizing between personal and online) and I started transitioning shortly before they got in the news for statements.

My main problem was that I realized that I couldn't use email forwarding (or at least without paying for a plan, I forget), and I couldn't manually handle it with a third-party client without paying for their bridge, so unless I wanted to have to open and log in to an old email address for the rest of my life, I basically had to pay to deprecate an email address or move to another provider without risking any future emails to the protonmail address being lost, and I wasn't in a position where paying was an option for those addresses. Now I only register single-use throwaways on Protonmail (despite their efforts to detect and stop it).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago

Now I only register single-use throwaways on Protonmail (despite their efforts to detect and stop it).

That kinda sux. There are plenty of other, more suitable, services for that. I would recommend not wasting this great service for such purposes.