Proton Mail Says It’s “Politically Neutral” While Praising Republican Party
theintercept.com
The “privacy-first” company surprised its user base when CEO Andy Yen lauded Trump on social media.

Summary

Proton Mail, known for its privacy-first email services, faced backlash after CEO Andy Yen praised the Republican Party and its antitrust stance.

The company initially posted and deleted a statement supporting Yen’s comments, later claiming an “internal miscommunication” and reiterating its political neutrality.

Critics question Proton’s impartiality, particularly as it cooperates with Swiss authorities on legal data requests.

Privacy advocates warn that political alignments could undermine trust, especially for Proton’s users—journalists and activists wary of government surveillance under administrations like Trump’s.

      • NudeNewt@lemm.eeEnglish
        4·
        29 days ago

        There are other good VPN options that provide port forwarding but it’s usually at an extra cost or absolutely tedious to set up.

        AirVPN, Windscribe, and another one I can’t remember. Personally I prefer the security and privacy of Mullvad but I use proton’s port forwarding and proton mail for quite a bit so the transition is gonna be annyoing…

        EDIT: Removed PIA due to dubious behavior.

        • JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl
          2·
          1 month ago

          PrivateVPN is what I use. No ties to the big VPN corporations known, pretty open about their stuff, decent price, small company, port forwarding over OVPN (not wireguard) and no-log policy.

          The problem is I don’t think they have ever been audited but also because they are obscure enough, I don’t know if there are any watchdogs for them turning over info to authorities.

          • NudeNewt@lemm.eeEnglish
            1·
            29 days ago

            Oof I forgot about that, you also reminfed me about a post that I can’t seem to find anymore of a user fiscovering that they were connected to a US military base.

    • TsarVul@lemmy.world
      27·
      1 month ago

      Honestly the lesson I took away from this is to not vendor-lock myself if I can help it. Maybe it’d be better to have a domain through which you can route incoming emails to any inbox? That way you can just hotswap email services if their CEO turns out to be a cannibal or something.

      • rosahaj@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        4·
        1 month ago

        yeah, I myself was already getting a little uncomfortable with how far proton was branching out. It’s a good thing that I was already making a transition to using my own domain using aliases through eforw.com

    • the_swagmaster@lemmy.zipEnglish
      6·
      1 month ago

      Tbh I think proton is solid. What the CEO said is just stating a fact of the situation 10 years ago and linking it to now. I don’t believe that’s right but he posted the message 4th of December which (if I’m not mistaken) was before it was clear all the tech CEOs were sucking his dick like we saw around his in inauguration.

      I’d still recommend it, the other stuff the CEO says on twitter is all very logical and positive for privacy and against big tech. Unfortunately someone says something that is remotely questionable (not like this guy has outright praised Trump far as I can tell) and sudetly Proton is a dead service not considering all the good they have done and will (probably) continue to do

      • TheLowestStone@lemmy.world
        3·
        30 days ago

        I’ll be as weird as I want. My trust in them has been eroded and that is a major concern to me when picking a company to keep my data private. In the future consider staying out of the conversation if you have nothing of value to add.