Most services just offer a paid email. Proton offers all of its services for an extremely low monthly price. Not to mention their security protocols are among the best.
Everyone uses email. Most use a VPN (everyone should) and almost everyone utilizes some form of cloud storage.
I started off purchasing to use their VPN and now actively use all 3.
It’s a false sense of security and a waste of resources. The ones making the money are datacenters and middle-men.
The point of cyber security tools like VPNs is to limit tracking, data sharing and reduce the potential for malicious actions to be taken against you.
You can't honestly say not using a VPN is better than using one. What's the alternative? Unencrypted web traffic? Your ISP harvesting your web data and selling it? Exposure on public networks?
What is the difference between the ISP knowing this and being a problem, but the VPN sitting with the exact same information, also knowing it?
I don't know if you're aware, but basically all sites on the internet use something called SSL these days. However, SSL is useless if you use a VPN that also provide DNS servers (which most do) - because the provider could listen in on all of your traffic by hijacking the handshake, DNS and traffic to and from any target server - making it much easier to create a user profile, because you're authenticated to the VPN.
Also, third party cookies are blocked in the mainline browsers by default, making VPNs even more useless.
Most if not all of the ISPs also use dynamic IPs, making it unlikely to be cross-site-tracked based on IP sources.
Additionally, 3rd party cookies may be blocked but cross-site are not.
Your VPN doesn't protect against squat when it comes to the agencies that might be watching. Hell it doesn't even protect much against marketers fingerprinting your movement around the internet. You leave a plenty big breadcrumb trail that isn't just IPV4.
Honestly VPNs have been a great marketing example of the last 5 years. You all buy something without needing it or knowing why t f you have it. Yes using internet without one is better. Why? It's cheaper for starters.Auth. faster! No relay slowing down your connection!
VPN best use isn't on consumer end. It's on orchestration end as another tool to guarantee you are who you say you are via another layer of auth.
What does Apple really do with that information? I at least know what Google or Microsoft is doing, by example of this article.
I just laugh as Apple users misplace their trust and think they're somehow secure for it buying an iphone, at least Microsoft users know the insecure mess they're stuck with.
What does this even mean?
Do you pay for your personal emails? I do (Fastmail) and I'm very happy. Same with search (Kagi) and many other services.
> your IMAP and SMTP username and password are transmitted to Microsoft in plain text.
What the heck?
I think that is not true. I think that is a lie on Proton's behalf.
When I set up the email client, it connects via OAUTH2 to the other services. It's connected as an app and not via credentials. If it connected via bare credentials, then it'd be a "legacy app" and you'd need to generate an "app password" for it, but you don't.
> I think that is not true. I think that is a lie on Proton's behalf.
Sadly, it is all too true:
Microsoft lays hands on login data: Beware of the new Outlook https://www.heise.de/news/Microsoft-lays-hands-on-login-data...
Warning: New Outlook sends passwords, mails and other data to Microsoft https://mailbox.org/en/post/warning-new-outlook-sends-passwo...
Their objection is that the credentials are being transmitted to and stored by Microsoft at all, instead of Microsoft generating and storing an automation token / app password. That is a valid concern. But tacking on "in plain text" to it just creates confusion.
Today, when the context is service provider and customers, "plain text" is used to say that service provider has the data unencrypted.
if password "secret123" is sent to you, it doesn't matter if it was sent via carrier pigeon, locked up in a secure briefcase and delivered by someone driving an aston martin, or via a TLS channel. It's still plaintext, because the receiver now has the actual password, and not a hash of the password.
This Outlook risk hangs over my client's head because they opted to pay. Last year they moved from self-hosed Exchange to hosted-Exchange + Office 365 + all the recurring fees (and support costs).
Paying rent to reside in MS's surveillance hydra isn't a terrific bargain.
So you could have two different Outlooks on your Windows 11 computer now. Just like there could be 3(!) versions of Teams installed (Teams for Home with Friends and Family, Teams for Work or School, and New Teams for Work and School).
I and several people I know are happy to pay for email. Every report like the one linked here makes me an even happier paying customer.
Perhaps you have a different definition of "no one".
I pay for protonmail, and I'm very happy with what I get. I can even use it as a client for receiving and sending email from my own domain. So, if ever I were to want to get away from it, my accounts won't be tied to the email provider.
If folks ask "why would you pay for email", I think the right first answer to that question is that it's a better service than the free service providers. Then, you can talk about the why's (when you pay for email, you're the customer, not the product, the privacy aspect of not having their email being farmed to enhance a company's advertising profile about you, or being used for AI/ML research if that's important to you, or any of the other reasons that might be important to folks).
So yeah, paid email is a premium service, and if we're being honest, it's been a premium service for regular folk for decades. I happily pay for email myself, but my parents sure don't, my wife doesn't, and most of my friends don't.