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Comment by efitz | Hacker News Reader

Why are you using Google if privacy is this much of a concern for you?

There are many other services that provide much better privacy protections, eg ProtonMail.

Spoiler alert: in 10 years a leak reveals that ProtonMail is one of the multiple "Swiss-based privacy-oriented" services operated by secret services.

NordVPN is pushed so hard everywhere that it looks like a single point of failure - I assume every secret service wants to hack it, if they didnt already.

It's ok, because now ExpressVPN is putting out ads everywhere instead!

I would have expected some sort of crackdown on popular VPNs used by US citizens if they were as private as they seemed or at least some polical action funded by right holders.

We don't see this at all.

That tells me these services are compromised on some level.

A little while ago I noticed plenty of different VPN providers. Many of the smaller ones were bought and private labelled or had smear campaigns against them. Companies compete so some of that is understood.. but the extent of the attacks tells me players with powerful networks (governmental,business or rogue) shut down many legitimate smaller VPNs whike help promote others.

I would be wary of using any VPN if I expected privacy.

Rolling your own is easy enough but be careful where you setup shop.

Please don't spread FUD. Do you have any sources for your accusations?

I believe that there are still honorable companies out there (and I don't even use ProtonMail in particular)

Many others? I only know of ProtonMail. Then there's mailbox.org and Posteo, but both are required to provide access to the government [1]. Their only option is to provide end-to-end encryption, like ProtonMail does.

I wouldn't trust any other email provider than one of those three, if I would need to have truly secure emailing via a 3rd party. But none are in a different position that Google, maybe with exception of ProtonMail.

Which ones would you list?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesetz_zur_Beschr%C3%A4nkung_d...

I would only trust my own server and even then.

put it under your bed so that you could immediately notice if anyone tries to access it while you asleep

It's not only about mail though. I don't use Gmail, but I still need a Google account for my job to access our Drive, Calendar, etc. I will delete it without hesitation once I don't need it.

Disclaimer: I'm a Googler. These are my personal opinions.

Email is a small part of things I care about. Moreover, there's snowflake's chance in hell I succeed at convincing every correspondent to switch to e2e encryption and off services no more trustworthy than Google or Microsoft. So, the technical premise of ProtonMail doesn't help.

When it comes to Swiss privacy law... I'm already protected by GDPR. Google is a juicy and politically convenient target for most countries, so I'm not worried about its compliance. And I'd rather stick to a company with a legal team equipped to wrestle with government overreach.

Finally, I feel perfectly fine trusting Google to keep my private things private. I keep copies of important documents in Drive. Realistically, the highest risk vector for them leaking is someone pwning my machine.

Even ProtonMail needs to operate under Malaysian law for Malaysian residents.

Being "private" doesn't magically make GDPR affect non-EU residents.

I can see someone wanting something that the GDPR provides them, while still wanting to use Google. "Right to be forgotten", for example.

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