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Comment by causalscience | Hacker News Reader

I only use Proton for the spam or temporary low value (and free) email accounts. Proton also tries to do everything, which I don't like. If I did I'd use Google.

The thing I pay for is Tuta. The cheapest tier is way more generous than Proton and the product is simpler.

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I have the exact opposite opinion. I use proton business together with their email, vpn, calendar, drive (on macOS), password manager etc. and switched specifically because of their encryption, data protection and fulls-size feature bundle. Plus, I migrated vom Office365 and it became a shitshow to manage and was full of bugs. And I had a separate bitwarden subscription, and a separate VPN subscription. Now it is one package, much preferred.

Oh yeah, having your passwords online is a great idea /s

It is, if they are encrypted. Without a password manager, I would inevitable have to reuse the same passwords over and over on my hundreds of different accounts. With a password manager, they are auto-generated random gibberish. And yes, even when using 2FA, you should have different passwords for all accounts.

Bitwarden, OnePassword, LastPass, Proton Pass etc. are password managers with dozens of millions of users that agree.

It's not, because the world we live in isn't binary. It's not true that "it's encrypted therefore nothing can go wrong". Putting your password manager online increases the risk of an accident.

And just because millions of people think this is a good idea, doesn't make it a good idea. Millions of people also reuse their passwords and that doesn't make it a good idea either.

Of course it is a tradeoff between security and usability. Not putting your passwords online forces you to either remember all passwords (which will lead to re-use) or you will be only available to access your accounts (and thus most of the internet) from your home. Or you will have to come up with elaborate system how to carry your passwords on some kind of secured device etc. A password manager (alongside 2FA) is a very good security/usability compromise for a lot of people. YMMV.

The thing is that accounts get cracked because of reuse all the time. Whereas they seldom if at all get cracked because they’re in a password manager.

That's why I don't do either of those.

Good for you. The rest of us mortals who can't memorize dozens of unique complex passwords need to use a password manager.

No, those are not the only alternatives. I keep my password manager in my computer.

I understand the convenience side of this, but it's also risky. What happens if they suspend your account for some reason?

"Never put all your eggs in one basket."

That happened to my google workspace account in 2023, when I switched to Office365. Account was not blocked blocked per se, but they stopped the free workspace versions.

It was not a big problem as I use my own domains that I host separately. Get a new provider, adjust some MX and TXT dns records and you are live again. Backup emails by running thunderbird locally.

I have also been using Tuta for years. No complaints

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