I’m trying to get rid of my Google dependency and one of those steps was moving over to Protonmail. Now in the past few days i have been picking up signals that even Protonmail is not as clean as it might be.
Does this really impact the privacy of how i use email and so is moving to Protonmail a step forward from Google, or is Protonmail just as bad?
If so, what could be alternatives?
edit:
Some of the alternatives being mentioned in the comments are:
Email:
VPN:
edit 2 (2023):
There seems to be some new activity around this post. At the time of writing the post (2 years ago) there were some stories going as user @UnfortunateShort described in their comment. This made me question the best options available at that moment. Currently i am still a Proton user, using their Mail and Calendar service, and Mullvad for VPN.
The most concerning part about ProtonMail/VPN is that their funding came initially from the feds and many big names in Silicon Valley. Would you trust that combination of “donors” sponsoring a service that’s supposed to protect your privacy?
Lookup Mullvad. It’s a great VPN. No gizmos, no bells and whistles, and more importantly: it has been audited frequently and their client is open source.