this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
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[–] Geek_King@lemmy.world 117 points 1 year ago (13 children)

I recently switched my email from gmail to proton mail, because fuck google's.. well... everything. Glad to hear that Proton Mail keeps fighting for privacy!

[–] RanchOnPancakes@lemmy.world 31 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I changed back when google got rid of the free "mail for your domain" and frankly its been a great thing for me. They keep announcing new things that replacing my existing apps.

They have a password manager now that I use. They are finally adding actual fuction to their online drive storage so I can sync files and backup photos.

Its been well worth the price for me. If only they had an office suite lol

[–] EatYouWell@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I really wish their password manager used a serif font, though. That's pretty unacceptable if you're generating secure passwords.

[–] Sproux@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Could you explain why them not using a serif font is bad?

[–] porksoda@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Generally speaking, serif fonts make it easier to distinguish between visually similar characters like o, O, and 0 or 1, I, and l.

[–] theherk@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah that’s true, but I can’t see why distinguishing is required of a human. I use my password manager to generate and input passwords for me. I don’t even know any of them.

[–] rolaulten@startrek.website 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It's not uncommon for the password manager to not be on the same system as where the password is being entered - hence a human needs to type. For example: consumer electronics with their own dinky little screens. Smart TVs/game systems and servers where remote access is not possible (or copy/paste does not work by design).

[–] theherk@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Oh yeah that makes perfect sense; I just hadn’t thought of it because those scenarios haven’t applied to me for a bit. One solution would be to generate readable passwords like discernible sentences. Longer in most cases so more entropy, and less chance to confuse characters.

Some password managers provide this as an option, though some authN systems require special characters because they think it improves security.

[–] pdxfed@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Or if you have to do business with a dinosaur company that won't let you paste in the PW field.

[–] randint@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

Please don't use serif fonts for UI elements. Imagine the buttons on your file manager being Times New Roman. (eww.) I think what you're looking for is a monospaced font that's designed to distinguish O/0, I/1/l, etc.

Plug for one of my favorite fonts: https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/mono/

[–] Geek_King@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The only thing I haven't found a good replacement for was how G Drive also handles Office style documents. I make use of that a lot, especially from my phone. But I agree, Proton Mail hasn't been painful one bit.

[–] blind3rdeye@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago

Seriously? My workplace uses google drive, and many documents are made with word. ... A very common problem is that sometimes someone opens a word doc from the web interface of google drive - which automatically can conveniently opens it with google docs, which totally screws up the formatting and then autosaves it.

(I hate google, and I resent that even after I've removed all aspects of it from my home & personal usage, I still have to use it at work.)

[–] RanchOnPancakes@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I wish I could integrate it with like onlyoffice or something like that. Would be perfect.

For now I have to be happy with saving to my documents folder and knowing its backed up.

[–] mjhelto@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Dude, that email alias feature is the best thing about their password app! I've started using it all the time for services, new and old. Will make it easy as hell to find those selling my info.

[–] RanchOnPancakes@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah the email alias rock. Especially when I was car shopping recently.

Want my email? Sure, here you go. SPAM? BEGONE, FOREVER BEGONE!

[–] helenslunch@feddit.nl 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Proton's feature set is very limited and kind of all over the place depending on platform, and development is incredibly slow, especially for Linux, but I do believe they're committed to privacy and they do have a whole suite of products now under a single, very reasonably-priced subscription.

[–] EatYouWell@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's only slow for Linux because they can't find Linux devs. If you know any, tell them to apply.

[–] helenslunch@feddit.nl 4 points 1 year ago

I dont believe that for a second. It's slow because, like most things Linux, almost nobody used it.

However, it is undoubtedly the most private and secure desktop OS.

[–] pineapplelover@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

I use the web mail client and thunderbird client and it works fine. Protonvpn works fine in arch linux, there's gui and cli, I prefer cli. Drive isn't on linux yet but web client works wonderfully fast.

[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What part of Proton’s feature set is limited and compared to what other service? You can do a whole lot more with proton than with Gmail for example.

[–] FoD@startrek.website 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Couldn't forward emails until about a month ago.

Their drive app backs up only the computer it's on and other computers cant access that backup. It's like a sectioned off part. Or I can upload files that any of my devices can access.

Their calendar has some problems with compatibility of run into and it's things that the person on either side can't change. Not world ending but it's really annoying.

They literally just added the ability to automatically add holidays to the calendar. And of course I had set it up about a month prior so I manually entered everything.

The proton drive app for your phone doesn't automatically back up anything.

I'm not shitting on proton because I'm an active proton unlimited subscriber and I use a bunch of their services, but I also recognize the flaws and how it's not as seamless as Google yet, which I don't expect it to be.

I also wish they had some better Linux support in preaching to the choir with that.

Love their vpn and the netshield features. Email works great and I love knowing I can read an email and automatically have trackers blocked. Aliases are great but I use their simple login site free with my proton subscription too. So my point is I like them lots, but it's not a complete Google replacement yet.

[–] RecallMadness@lemmy.nz 3 points 1 year ago

Their calendar, contacts and bridge don’t support CalDAV/CardDAV, so you can’t synchronise them anywhere.

The iOS app doesn’t synchronise contacts or calendars either. There’s a one way “upload to proton”, but not the most helpful.

The public holidays only include some countries (not mine).

Their VPN is terrible with 20% packet loss, despite sitting in the same data center as other VPN providers without that issue.

But, still not google, and their mail app is better on iOS than fastmail.

[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Oh ok I was just referring to the email part. You are right that their non-email offerings do leave a lot to be desired. I’ve found that downloading files from Proton Drive as small as 3GB is almost impossible, because their download rate is atrocious and on iOS if you don’t keep the screen active during the download it’ll just stop with no way to resume later.

[–] reverendsteveii@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Couldn’t forward emails until about a month ago.

wow, that in particular seems like a minimum viable product feature

[–] fuzzzerd@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You could forward emails manually, but you couldn't setup a rule to automatically forward emails based on a rule.

Fwiw, I'm in the same boat as the other poster. Love proton, but it's not as seamless as Google.

[–] FoD@startrek.website 1 points 1 year ago

Yep sorry I wasn't specific and thank you for clarifying. Auto forward so like I want my girlfriend to receive all my Walmart+ emails which doesn't let you have accounts like Amazon. So I forward all emails. Had to keep my Gmail to just make it easy. I'm sure there's a more complicated setup but it's Walmart... I just need email to get to both of us about orders.

It's like this because it's secure, there's was good reason they didn't have this feature. But it's inconvenient and I'm not using Proton because I'm a secret agent, I just to want to pay for a product instead of being the product.

[–] helenslunch@feddit.nl 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I mean...that's a long list, my guy.

Gmail client, no, but I have my (work) Gmail connected to Shortwave, which honestly is a fucking Godsend for all the people who insist on continuing to use email. It just makes it so much easier to organize everything.

You can't do the same thing with Proton (for good reason) but there's no reason they can't incorporate those features.

[–] lambchop@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To everyone saying they've changed to protonmail, check out https://simplelogin.io/ , owned by proton and free for all paying proton members. Unlimited email aliases so you can have a unique email per service. The apps also on fdroid.

[–] totallynotarobot@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why would I switch from Firefox relay that gives unlimited aliases at 1/4 of the price?

[–] clive@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You dont have to switch but if someone is paying for Proton than they can utilize it for no extra charge

[–] totallynotarobot@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Ooh so if you are already a Proton Other Things subscriber you get the unlimited alias version for free? Because that's an excellent reason.

They should make that more clear in the pricing page.

Thanks!

[–] pineapplelover@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah I wish they advertised that because it's an excellent deal. I don't know if the free Simplelogin Premium applies to all levels of subscription plans but Unlimited for sure has it. Been using it and it's amazing, it allows you to add PGP encryption through protonmail and simplelogin.

[–] andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I didn't try Proton's solution, but free Relay was blocked at some services I tried to use it. It was so weirdly specific since no one really knows about them, so I guess some web admins has enough time on their hands to create a whitelist of all mail services they support, and moz.com wasn't there.

[–] totallynotarobot@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I just had a company refuse to send to mozmail.com, thought they managed to charge the credit card just fine and the email address didn't throw an error on sign up. Figured it out on phone with support so they have a record of exactly why they lost that sale worth a few thousand dollars. I'd like to think they'll learn but more likely the only lesson learned was me re: shopping there.

[–] lambchop@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

There are github repositories where people curate a list of domains providing temporary emails or email aliases and admins can just point to the maintained list to block.

In the ~20 I've created so far I've had 2 services that wouldn't accept simple login. For those I've used proton mail's built in email alias service where you get 15 aliases with their proper domain.

[–] 0110010001100010@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm just finishing up that transition myself and glad to hear I made a good choice!

[–] iamanoldguy@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Same, using Proton mail and I am now blissfully Google free. Something else I found the holidays good for is finding out all the old accounts I have floating out there from sites that I interacted with over the years so I can cancel them or change the email if i decide to keep them. But, no more Google! Next on my list is Amazon.

[–] shadowSprite@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm in the (gradual) process of switching all my stuff from Gmail and Google to Proton mail. I really like the mail client and Proton Drive works better on my computers than Google Drive did, but Proton Drive doesn't back up my phone yet and I wish they had an office suite like Google does. I don't put anything important or private on Google docs, but it's useful to be able to access my textbook notes from any of my computers. I haven't used the password manager because I'm using Bitwarden, which I really like.

[–] Newby@startrek.website 4 points 1 year ago (8 children)

They just released photo backups on android

[–] shadowSprite@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I missed that update! This is great news!

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[–] Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 year ago

In the same boat. I currently just forward everything from gmail to ProtonMail and am gradually changing my contact email one at a time. It dawned on me that I receive mails from services I don't give a damn about, so maybe I should not change those.

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