we appear to be the first to write up the outrage coherently too. much thanks to the illustrious @self
Well, I was contemplating Protonmail…
I’m in the process of degoogling and dewindowing. I’ll be dammed if I’m going towards ANYthing even related to"artificial intelligence" if I can help it.
Feckin bullshit.
I’m pretty happy with Tutanota all things considered. There are some tradeoffs back and forth between the two, but I think it’s neat they run on renewable energy. And they’re very focussed on being open source which I also appreciate.
Maybe an option worth looking into. They’re also encrypted (though I wish either them or proton had an option not to be) and have a free tier)
Hope you find what you’re looking for!
I’ve been using Mailbox.org. I tried Tutanota but the domain name was just awful.
I recommend you get your own domain, then you can’t ever lose your email.
sure. because domains can be bought, not only temporarily leased.
Not sure why that’s relevant. There are domains that have been in use by the same owner for 39 years now.
That’s longer than anything I’ve ever owned.so what happens with the domain when the owner dies?
I don’t know anyone who has “lost” a domain (besides incompetence). You can be pedantic if you like, but domain ownership allows you to transfer everything to wherever and no one in a realistic example can take it away from you.
sure. tell that to people who used the .af domains; or learn more about shenanigans with the various oceanian TLDs, or who owns the .io domain, and why.
the fact is that you don’t own the domain name, and it’s always one missed card payment (or registrar changing hands and losing your card data) from being lost, and then your best chance is arbitrage.
it’s one of these things that you have to understand when you start self-hosting anything.
or registrar changing hands
or registrar “forgetting” renewal settings… conveniently soon after they introduced new at-checkout products
you’ve never heard of a single example of anyone losing a domain due to legal maneuvering, trusting the wrong TLD (ie a bunch of lgbt folks losing their domains when the TLD’s administrating country decided not to give them service), or a plain ol registrar fuckup?
you’re far too inexperienced to be opining on self-hosting email, then
Well it is just tuta now so there is that
Thanks
I’ll mention I went to Fastmail (mainly because they’re an Aus company as well as the privacy stuff), so far so good.
fastmail is viciously anti union however https://union.place/@fastmailunited/112672408714595554
ah fuck I wasn’t aware of this, thanks for mentioning
off the list they go
I ended up settling on Infomaniak’s kSuite after looking around. They’re a mid-sized registrar and hosting company.
They’re partially employee owned (and I believe in the process of becoming fully owned by employees). I’ll grant their privacy policy is just standard EU/Swiss boilerplate, though (stuff like no sharing your data, etc., that you always find in EU paid services like this). GDPR compliance was all I was looking for.
The web client looks nice and kDrive is affordably priced if you need a Google docs/photos/drive alternative.
Edits: clarity and me refreshing my memory on their privacy policy
Was hesitating between Proton and Ksuite.
I was already pouting toward them, but you finished to convince me to go to Infomaniak, thanks!
I’ve been using them for my domain and email for almost a year now and I have no complaints. I had to talk to customer support twice to fix a couple things that came up and they got back to me right away. Can’t say the same for the last service I used lol
I think it’s fair to point out they’re not designed around encryption like proton is. It’s not a factor in my threat model because I treat email as non-private communication, but it’s something you should know if you’re wanting proton for that reason.
kDrive is a heavily customized Nextcloud/OnlyOffice implementation with a pretty new and well-regarded file sync algorithm they implemented last year. I would recommend cryptomator to client side encrypt anything you want to protect. It’s at rest encrypted, but not end-to-end because there’s nothing client side.Here’s a list of WebDAV urls from the Cryptomator community to help you set it up. KDrive is on there.
Anyway, hope it works out for you!
It’s mostly for private/family matters so that seems perfect for my need.
Thanks a lot for taking the time to explain like you did, really appreciate it :)
It’s not even in the consumer version. Also it’s a optional local LLM running in your browser for basic stuff
though to be honest, the fact that you think this is local-only and only affects business accounts perfectly demonstrates how fucking dangerous Proton’s marketing and design around this feature is
Eamonn Maguire, author of the Proton Scribe announcement post, responded to my tweet with this: https://x.com/EamonnMagu14645/status/1814062340863651965
We built this as an opt-in alternative to the non-privacy centric options on the market.
Our goal is always privacy by default, we want to make that possible in the GenAI world too given the number of businesses already using it, and the privacy risks other options pose.
not sure how legit that account is, actually. It’s not the one I @'ed - this one was created in Jan 2024 - either it’s his low-key alt or a bot
perhaps his plausible deniability account.
do you get banned from twitter if you call him a fucking asshole?
I’m working on a more detailed reply on mastodon but to be honest, I’m pretty sure he didn’t read the original post
it all stinks so much. He calls it “opt-in” but the official description of that opt-in is:
If you try to use Proton Scribe, you will be prompted to chose between local and server-side. So, technically, it’s not active until you decide how, and if, you want to use it.
as you can see here: https://mastodon.social/@protonprivacy/112807462045101580
there is opt-in and then there is dangling an expired hotdog
holy fuck that’s worse than I thought
so going back to not being able to recommend Proton to anyone again: there’s now a button (and associated “tutorial” advertising modals trying to get the user to click the button, don’t pretend there won’t be) that when clicked gives the user a confusing choice between an option that might not work and one that exfiltrates their data and claims it doesn’t (if they even get this choice on a computer that doesn’t support the local LLM), and if they interact with that it just opts them into the feature in a state that may or may not (but by default does) expose the plaintext of their messages to Proton’s servers
and I’m supposed to recommend this horseshit to non-technical users? what’s that sound like, I wonder? “oh it’s a great privacy-oriented mail service you should pay for — but not for your business because you might fuck up and exfiltrate your data, and also there’s a chance they’ll enable the same feature for regular users at some unspecified time in the future so look out for that. oh and don’t get visionary either.” yeah fuck that
The good news is I barely use Protonmail (or email at all, for that matter).
The bad news is I have a fucking Proton account. Fuck.
they’re still least worst, but “oh the fuck no” is the correct reaction
Once they activate the acausality module, you can write those responses before they even send the initial email!
Alright Eschaton
Most email providers already have this feature it’s called automatic out-of-office reply.
tbf it’s only in the business plans and some of the legacy lifer type plans, but yeah, wildin
just a little violation of my trust for the company I pay for privacy and encryption services. as a treat.
It should be an option that is turned off
it was acausally enabled before you clicked on it, for your comfort and convenience, like the new ad tracker built into Firefox 128
alternatively, if the only version of this that doesn’t break Proton’s e2e security model is the local-only version, maybe don’t ship the cloud hosted version of the feature under any circumstances
I’d still hate the feature because the LLM model’s derived from plagiarized work and the labor of exploited workers from the global south, but this didn’t have to be a fucking privacy catastrophe
deleted by creator
Never rely on multi services products from a company. I know it’s more practical but you get the real benefits of having spread services.
Glad I stuck with mailbox.org.
I’m not familiar with them. What makes them more privacy focused?
It’s encrypted and based out of Germany (so, outside of five eyes). The ui is shit but if you use an app for email it’s great. They also offer anonymous payment methods if you’re into that.
they’re not end-to-end encrypted; their security model involves giving their server both your GPG private key and its passphrase, which makes your inbox and other data trivially able to be subpoenaed by German authorities.
I don’t think this is a replacement for Proton or Tutanota at all.
It’s encrypted and based out of Germany (so, outside of five eyes).
[…] your inbox and other data trivially able to be subpoenaed by German authorities
Germany is a member of the Fourteen Eyes alliance and shares data with 9 and 5 eyes members.
I just wanted to put that out there after @[email protected] suggested that the five eyes are the only eyes. They share with Germany and vice versa.
I went to Proton for the explicit reason I didn’t want Google scanning all my docs. Glad I moved away from them now, hopefully Fastmail doesn’t do the same.
It’s a local model running in your browser though
Doesn’t sound like it
Your prompt — that is, the email you’re writing — is kept in plain text on their server
Besides, I just don’t want AI in general, is that too much to ask? I wonder how long it will be until there are companies actively promoting their lack of AI.
it can run locally, but Proton discourages it in their marketing, it has very high system requirements, and it requires you use a chromium-based browser (which is a non-starter for a solid chunk of Proton’s userbase). otherwise, it uses the cloud version of the feature, which works exactly like the quote describes, though Proton tries to pretend otherwise; it’s actually incredibly out of the ordinary that they pushed this feature at all without publishing anything about its threat model.
it’s unclear what happens if the feature’s enabled and set to local but you switch to a computer that can’t run the LLM. it’s also just fucked that there’s two identical versions of the same feature, but one of them exfiltrates your data.
Besides, I just don’t want AI in general, is that too much to ask?
you’re not alone. the other insulting part of this is that the vast majority of Proton’s userbase indicated they didn’t want this feature in responses to Proton’s 2024 survey, which was effectively constructed to make it impossible to say no to the LLM feature, since the feature portion of the survey was stack ranked. the blog post introducing Scribe even lies about the results of the survey — an LLM wasn’t even close to being the most requested feature.
e: and for those curious who missed it in the article, the system requirements for the local version of the feature are here
I wonder how long it will be until there are companies actively promoting their lack of AI.
Its already happening, to some extent, but not mainly among the big corps. Grabbing some random examples I could find:
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Cara blew up a few weeks ago off the back of Instagram going all-in on AI
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Glaze and Nightshade earned a lot of popularity by offering means to sabotage them
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Dove also made waves by directly taking shots at AI, too
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Nintendo publicly eschewed using it, stating they’re focused “delivering value that is unique to Nintendo and cannot be created by technology alone”.
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Newgrounds put the hammer down early on AI, but more publicly disavowed it alongside adding an option to flag something as AI-made in March this year
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Last, but not least, Beth Spencer cooked up a quick-and-dirty “Made with Human Intelligence” badge which has since blown the fuck up online
I’m probably missing some examples, but I think my point’s made.
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read the fucking article before you multi-post your uninformed shit in this thread, thanks
Right after this I spot the announcement post on my front page, in [email protected]. I’m surprised just how positive the comments are.
Same, tbh. I went on their subreddit expecting a shitstorm but the announcement sits at like 85% upvotes with mostly positive replies.
What kind of bizarro world have I stumbled into?
At least the top-level comments seem to be split.
between that thread’s activity pattern and how hard they tried to fudge the numbers on their own survey to make this feature look popular: boy there’s a lot of stank on this one
but hey here’s some worrying shit straight from the Proton team:
Our business audience was the most interested in a writing assistant, this is why we started gradually rolling it out starting with Business and Visionary plans. We will look into making it available to more users at a later date!
so there’s something utterly fucking obvious for the “it’s only for business users” posters to consider; they’re doing the same frog boiling shit that all LLM fuckheads do.
I’m tempted to crosspost David’s article and my mastodon thread to that community, since Proton hasn’t really replied otherwise, and they seem plenty active there answering softball questions and removing posts. I don’t look forward to the Kagi-level shitstorm in my inbox afterwards though
the thing about this is a “writing assistant” doesn’t have to be integrated into the email product. It could be a product in itself. If the “business audience(?) was the most interested in a writing assistant” you’ve got a fucken great standalone product opportunity on your hands. A Proton-certified LLM writing assistant that is magically better and more secure than anything else out there is not something you coyly slip into the email client and nudge everyone to use.
It doesn’t matter what reasons they have for doing this. Their method of deployment says more than enough to me. They know it’s off-script and they know they want their fucken “audience” to do the marketing for them.
Reddit content is paid/generated content. It is literally part of their commercial offering to customers that they can expertly deceive their users. It is an advertising platform and you use it to try and force a public image.
Great, just as I’ve decided to switch some services to Proton (mail and VPN).
Now I’ll have to reconsider this decision.
The fact that you never realized that you should’ve self hosted since all corporations will inevitably follow the money, and that politics will always be tied to money, therefore all corporations will make political decisions against your interests makes me lose hope in common sense.
it’s time for you to fuck off back to your self-hosted services that surely aren’t just a stack of constantly broken docker containers running on an old Dell in your closet
but wait, what’s this?
oh you poor fucking baby, you couldn’t figure out how to self-host lemmy! and it’s so easy compared with mail too! so much for common sense!
back to your self-hosted services that surely aren’t just a stack of constantly broken docker containers running on an old Dell in your closet
I feel personally attacked
Hey, it’s on a table in my office and it currently isn’t running shit because that hobby has been de-prioritized until the yard and shed have been dealt with!
the closet Dell hosting your services is a fine system (but do fix those broken docker containers, or see about going native). under no circumstances should it be your mail host, though.
ur not my reel dad! [launches cyrus+qmail on a pi]
I rescued an office spec HP desktop from a trash heap and upgraded it with second hand components from https://computerstoreberlin.de/?lang=eng. Its running Ubuntu server and I use it as a wordpress dev server and also my yt-dlp machine which dumps the files into a samba share. I’m very proud of it
yeah, you can get quite damn far with something like that. best other advice I can give you is to make sure your provisioning and backups are solid (because something will break sometime), and to keep an eye on power draw
not everything needs to be 902834098234 cores and distributed systems shit
the backups is good advice. I need to put in a second drive and work out how to make it keep a backup. I’m learning all that as I go.
As for power draw, I only turn it on when I need it and it’s not connected to a display - just ssh-ing into it, so hopefully not wasting too much juice.
they go to react conferences, too
they go to re:invent or whatever the one is where Amazon replaces your brain with a cloud, and they’re pretty sure Amplify is self-hosting because the guy with the headset on stage might have screamed it at them
have any of your coworkers come back from re:invent with the all of the symptoms of severe head trauma? you may be entitled to compensation
you may be entitled to promotion
*looks at collection of automation and infrastructure for personal and business services, built with going on 20y of knowledge*boy it sure is easy to diyolo some qemu vms myself and not have to pay aws! I’m going to tell everyone else they’re doing it wrong!!!(I mean, it legitimately is fairly easy to do a lot of this, but gotta grok the shit and not having the grok is ofc alllll up in aws’ product suite)
@BaroqueInMind @cordlesslamp You unironically use words like “windoze” don’t you?
don’t shame people for not having the capacity to run their own infra, jeez
Why?
because no-one likes a confidently wrong smug prick
(but seriously, “why?” - you really don’t get why? maybe go have a good think on it. on why people might not be in a position to do the thing you suggest them to do. you may become enlightened.)
what are you?
A meat Popsicle.
With Skiff going down at the end of the month and Proton gearing up to start data mining, there are very limited options for private email hosting. Basically Tuta and a few others now.
Rhaa fk, enshitification… I don’t want to host my emails…
