Why are we linking to 3rd party articles with no sources rather than just the horse's mouth?
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Do we like Proton? I never know which VPN company I can truly trust.
They're increasingly divisive I'd say. For me the fact that they rage-quit mastodon after a stint of bad publicity is all I need to know. If they were truly dedicated to a better internet they would be committed to stand up against big tech everywhere, not just wherever there's money to be made from it. I'm migrating away from my proton mail account.
I get my VPN from Surfshark. Not because I necessarily trust them, but because it's cheap and they don't insist on doing anything else than just being my VPN provider. And I trust them more than Proton at this point, anyway.
Don't let me ruin your good time, but my experience with Surf shark:
Used surf shark for about 3 years around pandemic timeframe. Had no complaints (other than it drained my phone battery super fast - didn't test empirically, but seemed somewhat worse than other VPN providers). I was unemployed for a while, so took the opportunity to cut expenses; tried to drop my surf shark subscription. It was a HUGE pain in the butt. I forget the process, but iirc, you had to use their help chat to get the number for cancellations, they kept me on hold for ~10 min, then had a long winded questionnaire ("were required to ask you these questions before proceeding") asking why I was quitting, then made an offer for discounted months before letting me unsubscribe.
Its my understanding regulations have changed such that that's not allowed anymore and also that most VPN can elations are about that bad anyway, but still, wanted to share my experience. Lol, suppose so long as you never quit, you won't have to deal with all that.
Ah, yeah, that sucks. In Europe you can always cancel by just not paying for a subscription, so I've rarely had experiences like this. Only time it happened to me was when I had been stupid enough to have a New York Times subscription (gah) and decided to end it. Huge pain in the ass.
With Surfshark I bought a two-year subscription without automatic renewal, so I get what I paid for and then it's done. But I'm sorry to hear about their bad business practices—it goes well with the overall sleazy look of their website. Hopefully I'll find something better by the time the subscription period is over. :)
Thanks for letting me know! I try to avoid any company that doesn't have open source software as the core of their business strategy, but with VPN that's a bit tricky.
When it comes to VPN my choice is always Mullvad.
No port forwarding
I torrent even without the port forwarding and still get great speeds, and >1 share ratios
Great for you, but most good private trackers will ban you if you aren't connectable. If you're only torrenting English stuff then public trackers are fine, or one's with lax rules like IPT, but for many other languages private trackers are unavoidable.
It's also just against the spirit of the P2P network to not accept connections from others, if your port isn't forwarded then you can only seed to users who have their port forwarded
I use Proton because they are no longer a "VPN company". They are slowly rolling out a suite of privacy tools that compete with Google's Workspace (or whatever the hell they're calling it these days).
If you want a "VPN company" I would recommend Mullvad.
If you don’t need port-forwarding, Mullvad is the best choice IMO. Eggs in a basket as well, if you already use other Proton products but don’t want to lock yourself into one vendor for everything.
Not even sure anymore. Ceo recently said Trump is great.
This is not completely fair or true statement - though it is not too far from truth.
Proton Mail has long positioned itself as an apolitical company, dedicated solely to safeguarding user privacy. That’s why many were surprised when CEO Andy Yen posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the political landscape in the U.S. had shifted, stating, “10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned.”
This was earlier this year. So sure its up to interpretation.
So... He's an idiot, is what you're saying.
Libre office is a fine tool, I use it myself. Calc is a somewhat capable spreadsheet application, although it has its fair share of issues and quirks. But that's true for most software these days, although I do wish the windows wouldn't be on a random monitor at a random location and random size all the time.
However in this case they state their solution is a Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel competitor. These are tools one uses online in a browser to access files stored on the server of the provider. That's pretty different from what Libre Office Calc offers. It's a bit confusing because Microsoft calls their app Excel, which can refer to the online service or the offline local app. But with Google sheets it's clear it's the online service they refer to.
So the comparison isn't a straight one. If a local app is an option, I would prefer that over an online service. So Libre office is the way to go. But many people prefer something that's available on any device, including underpowered tablets and phones, and want their files to be accessible everywhere. For those people it's good to have competition to Microsoft and Google.
Looks to be B2B focused. I don't see a price anywhere, but can request a quote, and their references to data sovereignty makes me think it's "self"-hosted, as opposed to an E2EE cloud solution.
Could be wrong, I was just scanning, but it feels much more focused on big businesses with large dedicated IT departments.
You Stole my comment :D
or only office, or crypt pad.
If they actually cared about privacy, they would just contribute to CryptPad and host an instance.
Proton Mail has long positioned itself as an apolitical company, dedicated solely to safeguarding user privacy. That’s why many were surprised when [Jan 2025] CEO Andy Yen posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the political landscape in the U.S. had shifted, stating, “10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned.”
This statement quickly went viral, leading to further controversy when Proton’s official Reddit account reinforced Yen’s sentiment. The now-deleted post suggested that Republicans were more inclined to take on Big Tech monopolies than corporate-aligned Democrats. However, within hours, Proton removed all traces of these remarks from its social media platforms.
Proton? No.
Yeah, that mess was quite disappointing. I'm still waiting for them to make a clarifying statement on it. I suppose removing it and just not getting further involved in politics is at least "better" than continuing to double down.
Well, hope you like AI shit too because the people at proton are in love with vibe coding. Get ready for your data to be exfilled by a prompt injection in a spam email.
Source?
https://lemmy.org/post/1309818
People found AI config files in their public repos. When they were found, Proton deleted all discussion of it and then altered the repository history to pretend the config files were never there.
Shady, scummy behavior. They've tried to do the same 'delete everything and ignore it' when their CEO publicly praised Trump and the Republican party, and then kept doubling down in reddit and mastodon comments until someone on the PR team wrested the account away from him and started mass-deleting all of it.
Unfortunately news reports- and even people- discussing his praise of Trump and the republican party often do not know that there was more than just the 1 or 2 statements he made, so it seems like it was at least slightly successful in that case.
I genuinely tried to find the source for this but all I got from google were ads for vibe coding and proton's own AI. So take this half-remembered anecdote with a grain of salt, I guess. Best i've got is this
I'm actually hyped for this. A privacy-first alternative to google cloud. I still prefer to self-host all my stuff, but this is WAY more accessable to my less tech-savvy friends
Now all I need is a way to save stuff to my Proton Drive without it needing to sync to a local device...
Privacy first, yes, but who are Proton and can they be trusted? The amount of times they have responded with an immature or unprofessional reaction is too many to believe they are not going to sell or fuck with the data.
Privacy first for the authoritarian mindset is a walled garden, like Apple. They want to prevent anything from connecting or working with stuff because "security" and meanwhile harvest data about you.
Cryptpad?
Anybody?
No?
My go-to online suite, but their spreadsheets, documents, and presentations have some big limitations as they use embedded OnlyOffice.
It'd odd that they don't have a Linux version of proton drive.
Not the exact development route I wanted them to take, but def pleased they're doing something to improve existing services.
Definitely better than the whole (ongoing?) Proton Wallet ordeal.
With Proton Sheets, Proton Drive now becomes a true alternative to Google Drive.
Lol, okay Buddy, y'all still have a long way to go on that point.