He seemed like a decent guy and that was enough for me to finally make the switch from Gmail to proton and buy prem.
They have some shady (or at least questionable) enough actions in their past, some even covered by mainstream media, that made me dismiss them as an option. I went with the German hosted mailbox.org instead. Swiss law (where proton is hosted) is actually quite a bit less protective of privacy than EU/German law, or maybe just protected in other ways. The international reputation of privacy protecting character of Swiss law seems to be outdated?
Just to be clear, I can’t remember exactly what the specific events were that caused me to reconsider back when I switched years ago. When I just did some quick (!) searches just now, I found statements that they would only record ip addresses in “extreme criminal cases”, but examples include cases of trespassing and property damage. Not exactly child molesters and serial killers (example source). I also understand that the (Swiss) laws relevant to them probably forced them to, but at the very least that seems dishonest or misleading advertising.
Enjoy pop-up ads trying to sell you a subscription when you just want to view your inbox! The one bad thing about their service.
I pay for the subscription and if I didn’t I do not mind free services asking for money. If you are giving me a free service and not data mining me then you have every right to nag me.
Gmail litterally puts ads in your inbox that look like emails so I doubt any service is gonna be worse than that.
Yeah if you don’t pay its fine, but if you have mail plus, they will have pop ups advertising premium. Once you get premium? They start advertising family!
They mentioned that they bought premium, so they won’t be seeing ads. Edit: Multiple people below are telling me that purchasing premium does not remove all ads, so that’s actually quite annoying.
As an aside, I really don’t get the logic of using a service like e-mail and just expecting it to be free - it’s very bizarre to me.
If it’s something important to you (as I assume e-mail is), pay for it - or stop whining about ads/nagging pop-ups.
And if you can’t pay for it, download Dovecot and try doing it yourself - it’s a fun experience, and will make you appreciate the work done by email providers. Spoiler alert: it’s a massive pain in the butt.
You get premium ads if you are on a plus subscription or a free account. Once you get premium though, then they start advertising the family pack to you!
They still put unremovable ads in your inbox when you buy premium. They’re fairly subtle but still incredibly frustrating.
My problem is that I only need to use the VPN, but I get pop ups all the time asking if I want to subscribe to their all in one plan or buy their black Friday deal. When all I want to do is connect to the VPN.
So yes, even when you subscribe you still get pop ups (and in their apps too so you can’t even use ublock origin to block them).
Gmail has far worse ads that crawl your inbox. A free service asking me to pay for hosting isn’t the end of the world
