Ok, thank you. A sensible response.

I think their appeal and approach is to target newbies to the whole privacy thing. They can replace much of the “Gooplesoft” ecosystems (just made that up that word lol) with their own version, offer support for those who’re learning/trucks migrating, etc. Maybe they overheard someone talk about it, are curious, or don’t know all the terminology in the FOSS community, or get overwhelmed easily.

I will forever plug Proton (unless they change) to friends and family as it’s a “big name” doing big tech, better… then they have proton support to rely on, not me lol.

Hahaha, please, do share why their products suck, especially the people running it! I’d love to hear something fresh other than claiming the CEO is some trumpster because of some ruin fill interpretation of a god damn tweet… Petty

Lol at you both! First, I think you need help with your dictionaries because you’re using the complete wing terminology… That or you’re super dramatic calling it ransomware LMAO. You’re probably also those types who jump to comment at anything CG just to post AI slop… Like how back in the day it was cool to post “first” on something.

There are free tiers and paid tiers, and sounds like OP was trying to work around those free tiers to get a few extra benefits. If not, and genuinely trying to use a certain way, why not contact support to try and get access to that data even temporarily, or go to community forum to see if it’s by design? Why not look for a proper resolution vs just complaining about it?

BTW I can completely understand the frustrations, but you gotta also understand not every single company or dev is going to use the same exact method, designs, goals, etc. Proton, starting from scientists not business entrepreneurs. They decided to build a suite of apps as alternatives to the popular big brother versions, the paid tiers help support the free ones so everyone could have access. The money also helps fund staff support, devs, qa, etc. Just saying. There’s a lot more polish on those apps than pretty much any actually free and private so out there. And having the support there to answer questions vs rely solely on wordy documentation or community forums is now speaking to the average Joe.

So then, like many people, make the switch without being so vocally negative? Or post a comparison on how KeePass vs Proton- KP wins, etc.

Even more, Proton and other companies like them are a good popular gateway to introduce “the masses” to privacy and what it feels like to reclaim their personal lives. It also gives them a “big” name they can put some faith into that the apps will work/won’t crash, and aren’t invasive. So much other marketing and money is spent telling everyone the little guys are the hackers and data thieves, etc. So don’t trust them. So, the mentality is hard to shake.

I sound like the kind of person who understands how business models work (to an extent). Not every single person is going to setup full homelab environments to run all these locally hosted services, or spend a while researching and testing various FOSS applications to try and get "the very best"one. You sound like the kind of person who has a very stern opinion and gets upset when others don’t agree or your shouting doesn’t get them to understand why an alternative is better.

I work with a lot of users who don’t understand the basics of privacy or how data is sucked up at every corner of the Internet. I slowly plant the seeds to show them big names aren’t always better. Little by little they’re finding these things (popular little guys) on their own, and in that discovery keeps their interests piqued vs being told what to do.

You have to admit, there are plenty of people either on Reddit (especially) or Lemmy, that seem to crack on/bash on certain companies or views on topics as a heard mentality. I’m guilty of it in the past bc I wanted to trust the heard, but after doing my own research have found whatever it was to not be so bad.

I’ve not been here long, but man, the amount of hate I’ve seen towards proton so far is crazy.

Dude, jfc calm down. You pay a little money to get premium services, instead of them monetizing user data. This is the way the world works with paid software, except they’re not making money on your data and you, just you.

Maybe some context in what exactly you pay for would help too. I’m assuming you pay for a base tier of mail, bc I use their password manager too but pay for the full suite, and don’t have this issue.

Maybe also a chat with support might find this to be an unexpected bug, but instead you’re coming to Lemmy to the echo chamber of hate on proton which won’t help.

Quad9 DNS is where it’s at.

It’s a solid mix of having a lot of the privacy settings enabled, but without fully disabling all services that a majority of people might like or use (having a Firefox acct to sync favorites might be one). There are auto updates and patching that’re pretty quick to get released too.

I found a reddit post from the dev commenting on it a while back. Seemed like a sensible balance. https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/14seevh/comment/jqwuan8/

Either way, Librewolf and Waterfox seem like they can accomplish the same things, but just have a few default settings that differ. LW eliminates all possible Firefox account sync and services, but the fact I don’t use them, they’re not enabled. WF unfortunately leaves the default search to Google instead of startpage or Ecosia, but that’s a simple click at the top or change in settings. LW has Duckduckgo. LW has strict cookie settings enabled by default which might break some sites that require it for full functionality. Some people might not like that or want to whereas WF didn’t mess with settings. I’m more so talking about the masses or someone just starting out getting into privacy stuff that might prefer these things, but by no means are th either bad or worse than Firefox or Chrome.

Idk, primarily bc Lumo was a part of Proton, which I use, and I liked the ability to do offline searches and searches that delete ASAP after closing the tab. Plus honestly I’ve not specifically checked out lechat, so maybe I will!

I would recommend Ecosia as a search engine, Waterfox as a browser, and Lumo as an AI chatbot if you’re fixed on using AI.

Waterfox is Firefox with all privacy settings on. Simple enough.

Ecosia is a German-based search engine company that uses profits for replanting trees and reforestation. They use several resources for search results, so understand it’s not 100% based on pushing full privacy. I just figure they’re doing good with their money.

Lumo is the Proton-based AI that’s Mistral at the heart (French-based ai company focused on privacy) with some other tools under proton’s belt too.

Combined, I think this gives everyone/anyone a potent level of security/privacy with out-of-the-box use and no special tweaks or settings required.

You could go one step further and use 9.9.9.9 for DNS either at the browser level or gateway level for the whole home!