Genuinely why are so many privacy focused tech companies making such stupid ass decisions recently
this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2026
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The fact Andy Yen has not resigned nor the board removed him, shows Proton can no longer be recommended in good faith, IMO. They have lost their way. Also find it logical that many of Protons top talent are pursuing alternative employment. Being called losers is high motivation for people who take pride in their skills.
This wasn't the first time Andy showed us who he is. Won't be the last.
I didn't know their top talent is leaving. Do you have an article?
It would be very risky to not be looking for a new job after your employer schedules a "re-interview" and threatens your "continuous employment".
Yeah. I get that. I would leave too. I just thought there was additional info suggesting high performer bleed
While I would definitely leave after this - were I of course a top performer at Proton - I would not make it public until I get to actually hand in the notice.
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"shows Proton can no longer be recommended in good faith, IMO."
That's been clear for a good while before all this.
I just found out about this. I guess I’ll have to start migrating everything again Proton doesn’t seem as trustworthy anymore.
Really wish I didn’t have so many proton aliases now. Went to cancel just now and realized how many things I’d need to locate and swap over.
Switching to monthly billing and starting the process, I suppose. Really disappointing all around, but it’s not like the writing hasn’t been on the wall for a while.
Buy a domain and apply it to your proton account. then update all your account's email addresses. Then migrate.
Next migration will be much less painful
If I have a bunch of aliases created in SimpleLogin for my personal domain, what do I actually need to do to migrate? Since I'll lose SimpleLogin if I leave Proton too.
It's a lot easier to enable catch-all on the mail system, rather than manually creating aliases on a service like simplelogin.
If you do that then that's all you need to do for a migration.
Create a catchall address for your domain, and update the MX records on your domain to point to your new email provider. It doesn't matter that you were using simple login previously. Fastmail offers this for example.
I have about 8 months left on my family plan, and I'm already changing those aliases, which has allowed me to go over some abandoned stuff and some things I didn'tknow that I want to eliminate. Already test-driving (and hammering hard) stalwart for email on a VPS, and just 2 days ago I finally finished deploying Psono in my proxmox (way harder than I remember vaultwarden, but bitwarden is no longer an option for me because it is on a different path to the same exact bullshit).
My main friction will be moving my wife yet again from one workflow to another (Fuck Proton for putting me through this shit again).
Still no idea what I will use for geographic VPN, but that's nowhere near as important for me as password manager and email.
We already have everything on my server with nextcloud for files and immich for videos and pictures, so that's a non-issue for me.
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I use mailbox.org instead. Works well. Forget proton.
How do you do monthly payments though? It's manual right?
I pay by year, so I don’t know. I only use their lowest tier plan so it’s only like 12 bucks for the year. But I do think you have to manually do month by month. Sorry I can’t help. But the service has been very good. I just need a basic email account that’s private.
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That's about the worst way for them to respond.
I'm paid up for like 10 mo. But I disabled my renewals. And have started the move to Mailbox.
I believe in giving ppl and co's a chance to learn from mistakes. But you pile more mistakes on those mistakes? And censor customer feedback about them? Well ... you have competitors.
If you cancel they give pro-rata refunds I believe.
Oh good to know, thx! I will try that as soon as I'm totally switched over.
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Yeah almost every top post on General Ideas was related to getting rid of the CEO, yesterday when I checked, almost all of them were gone 😅
You know what that means, time to make some new posts
Wow, there were a ton of posts asking for Andy Yen’s resignation and now there’s no trace of any of them. So much for transparency. What else are they sweeping under the rug?
Nov 3 snapshot of the General Ideas page, showing top post calling for Yen's departure: https://web.archive.org/web/20261103153135/https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/945460-general-ideas
Nov 7 snapshot of the post with 2457 votes: https://web.archive.org/web/20261107022144/https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/945460-general-ideas/suggestions/51869994-andy-yen-ceo-should-step-down-completely
Current link to the post bounces to the list with message "That idea has been deleted" https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/945460-general-ideas/suggestions/51869994-andy-yen-ceo-should-step-down-completely
These should all be referenced when writing to the Proton Foundation until a response is issued.
I emailed the foundation last night, replying to my original email from last week, and cited these links. Thanks for sending them.
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They have also been purging messages on the ProtonMail subreddit which they control. The community-controlled alternatives like ProtonPublic have been unaffected.
I deleted my Proton account back when this started and it seems like that was the right move. This company is fucked.
Is it fucked? Or it it about to become one of the most successful companies in the world, given the apparent requirement to be terrible and exploitive in order to be a giant company.
I don't think people were joining Proton because it was giant or the most successful...
Man, I miss being employed!
I wish that I could afford to onboard to a new service and leave these guys behind. Problem is that I have one of the earlier tiers and it's far cheaper than anything else I'd be able to afford right now.
Stick with them purely out of necessity, I guess
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It's not the only one that was taken down. Some of them have just been tagged as "deleted". Others, perhaps those with more traction, have been disappeared completely.
I contributed my opinion to one of these posts and it has completely vanished without a trace.
The 'justification' theyre using is, "We run this forum to manage feature requests". The implication being that a stable, secure, trustworthy product is not a feature we can request.
Thanks for keeping tabs on this OP and posting an update.
I am genuinely surprised, although I shouldn't be.
I'll be sure to include this in my reasons when I cancel my account next week. Proton has been such a huge disappointment.
I finshed moving to Tuta this weekend and cancelled my Proton subscription. I was sure to mention Andy Yens behavior and reactions like this as the reason.
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I'm a Proton user too and I use all the available tools/services. It was a hard job to switch from Google to Proton, now it looks like I'm fcked again. So I don't know where I can go to receive the same kind of tools + where ethics still mean something.
So I don't know where I can go to receive the same kind of tools + where ethics still mean something.
People have been posting alternatives the past 2 weeks
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Proton is Israel and the US' bitch. They aren't trustworthy. Taking blacklists at face value with no appeal options, and banning accounts handed to them by the US.
Proton enthusiasts almost always downvote me when I point this out. It's not my fault they are fucking stupid.
I think people (including me, until recently) give too much benefit of the doubt to business people, just because they'd rather believe they tell the truth when spousing ideals. Of course they'll be shady when it makes financial sense, and even be dumbasses when it makes no financial sense.
Our system selects fairly well so that people like this end up being the primary decision makers, and it's a very rare occasion when someone with morals makes it high enough and manages to stay there.
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What the fuck did you think was going to happen lol
So everyone supporting this petition is now cancelling their subscriptions, right?
I am not renewing mine, for sure.
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Alternatives time! I know I'm two weeks from my renewal, def need ALTs for my torrenting vpn and mailbox now. Any reccs from lemmy?
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