I really wanna support these folks but I’m also curious about the recent headlines with Cameron Ortis (Canada’s own selfish version of Snowden who deserves a damn Peace Prize for reals) referencing these.
Also, I think people need to learn there is nothing “private” about email beyond not scanning which is like paying for a not-service (like don’t fuck me over). Hell, its hard enough to work up the courage and stamina to vanishing-messages-set someone adversarial who desperately needs you to make and ebforce that decision upon them as a baseline for engaging with them at all.
I will pay $1/month for email company to not be an asshole but that’s the extent of my patience with the notion and I have zero illusions about what is likely still happening on some level.
Edit: Snowden deserves reward, not Ortis.
Edit: whats the timeline/continuity in terms of Ortis’ mention and Tutanota rebranding to Tuta
Can you share more about why you think Proton’s approach is better than Tuta?
From a casual read through they both appear to use end to end encryption when users are on the same service. (Proton emailing Proton or Tuta emailing Tuta) and both offer the option to password encrypt an email so you can message someone on other services as long as you can share that password with them IRL somehow.
The biggest difference would be the theoretical claim that proton can’t know anything about your emails because the mailbox itself is encrypted. The calendar too. This also means these accounts aren’t compatible with any IMAP/POP3/Activesync clients, and you need to install your own proton plugin to use it with them. On the desktop. On the phones they have their own apps, since you can’t use the phone email app nor the phone calendar. They are a bit lacking there too. Regarding the mailbox theoretical encryption claim, I’m sure it’s really encrypting everything. It’s just, email is inherently unencrypted (unless it’s proton to proton) as it travels along the servers, unless you go to several pains to encrypt it, and your destinatary too, to decrypt it on their end. So for most purposes, right now the main difference between these two doesn’t seem all that useful and it continues to be relatively simple to intercept/read your email along the way, since most likely it won’t be encrypted anyway.
Along with what has already been said, for the same package deal they offer an email, a vpn, a password manager, drive, and alot more space than the competition (500gig).
Proton lost me when I found out you can’t receive notifications from their app on a de-googled phone. Their app requires Google services for notifications. Since then I’ve moved to Tuta and am very happy with the service and notifications work. I mean how hard is it to set up a new email check every half hour in the app. What’s the point of private email when you have to run it on a spyware (Google) infested phone.
I wasn’t familiar with the headlines you’re referring to so took a look, here is one story from the CBC. And here is Tuta’s post responding to the allegation.
Besides knowing the name I was not super familiar with Tuta, but it appears their source code is publicly available for review for any backdoor (and that Cameron Ortis doesn’t seem trustworthy or even especially knowledgeable).
The point is not whether it's shady, but to trust (at one's discretion) that they will meet minimum expectations. I would expect a change with such absolutely dramatic consequences to be notified in advance and give users plenty of leeway; the opposite seems like a red flag to me, especially when they had no urgency about it.
It's good that they are now more serious about informing their users, but the first time they did it they were very discreet, not even a mention on their blog. A very unpleasant surprise.
A 6 month window is too short, and applies indiscriminately even to accounts that only use a few bytes. They could just delete the content and deactivate them... well, actually that's what they do, but they demand money to reactivate them ._.
Something in the post should at least attempt to explain what Tuta is rather than just announcing a new name for something hardly anyone has ever heard of.
What I don’t understand about Tuta, is that they allow you to create multiple accounts and use them in their app simultaneously, but they say it’s against their terms and they may ban you !!
I don’t know if this is an old policy, but I’m sure it was like that at one point
Considering it has been my main email account for just under three years now, no, not one bit. (@tuta.io)
I have never once had an issue with them. I made a mistake and they helped me fix it within 48 hours. So there’s clearly something you’re omitting that is preventing you from keeping an account open with them.
Didn’t call you a liar. I said don’t spread misinformation. There is still a free teir, whether you are able to use it or not is another story.
And yes, that actually does sound crazy. Especially like I said, I’ve been using them for several years and they’ve always have been responsive to me.
Plus your clear aggression is telling me that you’re clearly expecting me to rise to your anger, fuel it, and spin it back. Makes it harder to believe someone when they can’t have an informed discussion without blowing up and raging hard at them when I am not trying to get a rise out of you.