Infomaniak transitions to a foundation model to protect user data privacy | Hacker News Reader

Infomaniak transitions to a foundation model to protect user data privacy

news.infomaniak.com

176 pointsdarktoto48 comments

Sadly when you get to use their products they may ask you for Passport/ID and a selfie through kCheck[0] like they're a bank, as you can see at the app page[0].

In their website[1] you can read about their true "privacy" behavior:

> identity verification procedure may be triggered in the following cases (non-exhaustive list):

> - forgetting an Infomaniak account password (user account)

> - forgetting a login email address

> - deactivation of double authentication (2FA)

> - unlocking an Infomaniak account

> - during the first transfer of revenue for the product Ticketing

> - when ordering a product (suspicion of spam or fraud, brand name, etc.)

The same page also says the process may require mandatory geolocation, choosing ID card or passport, photographing the document, and taking a selfie with it.

[0]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.infomaniak...

[1]: https://www.infomaniak.com/en/support/faq/2418/getting-start...

Which is ok, the point of privacy protection is to control who you're sharing personal information with. Such as accepting to sharing KYC with infomaniak shouldn't imply your personal information and user information is shared with 3rd parties. It's not an anonymous hosting company

In their defence, tons of abuse happens and forces providers to check identity. I’m not saying there’s no other way, but any hosting company I’ve worked it has strict limits until you verify your identity.

I was blocked from using their services because they required a phone OTP-based check and for some reason their OTPs did not reach past my provider. I only got it to work after opening an account with another internet provider.

This is a good news. I moved my domains from DNSimple to Infomaniak last year, as part of my rely-less-on-US-infra-and-services strategy. I chose them for their dedication to privacy, ethics and transparency. This change reassures me this was a good choice.

For those who are/were considering Infomaniak and are wondering about the quality of service: I use it for DNS only. Their UI is less than ideal but not bad once you get used to it. The service is solid, never had any issues.

I've had more or less the same experience using it to host a blog for a friend. Mid UI but I don't have to interact with it much. Their service has been great and their ethical commitments were the main draw. They did ask for a lot of personal info related to my identity though

Migrated my email servers in 20 minutes yesterday from OVH (their MXs does not support IPv6, and Infomaniak was less expensive for basic email hosting), I found the documentation and the diagnostic tools of the DNS zone very clear, was a no brainer to add DKIM, SPF and DMARC (hey generate the records for you, just have to cpy paste in your zone manager and refresh the diagnostic to get a status after propagation), and autodiscovery and autoconfiguration of email clients are a nice bonus !

Overall a great experience, can recommend !

> Concretely, this means that no takeover of the company is possible without the Foundation’s approval. Even if Boris were to pass away, even if an irresistible investor came knocking, control of Infomaniak remains in the hands of a structure dedicated to its mission.

This reads quite naive; if you want a legal entity to be ideologically driven then it needs to be controlled by a small number of ideologues. Committee-like structures tend to mean revert to a reasonable position that bows to financial pressure. Structures guarantee longevity, but the ideological underpinnings of the that longevity tend to stray.

One of the major lessons of political history is it isn't possible to structure your way out of a situation where there is an incentive to do something. If Boris Sienenthaler has proven to have good judgement it is a much better idea leaving him in charge than re-rolling dice. Any institution quickly becomes a corrupt shadow of what it was originally envisioned as once the original people involved move on.

> Any institution quickly becomes a corrupt shadow of what it was originally envisioned as once the original people involved move on.

The debian project here acts as a counter-example: The institution governing the project far outlived its original creator and the "debian social contract" clearly helped to that.

Additionally, Infomaniak seems to have registered here as a Swiss "public interest" foundation. This has several implications:

(1) Swiss authority regularly audit the foundation and verify that there is no conflict of interests with the registered chart.

(2) Usage of the money should be done in respect of the chart.

(3) If any of the previous conditions is not respected. The Swiss authorities can step it and dissolve the entire thing or even take control.

Not OP, but considering the American case (OpenAI) I do understand the OP's concern.

I decided against quoting from https://www.debian.org/vote/2026/platforms/srud - current Debian project lead - because it looked like a short out of context quote would misrepresent him and also maybe a fast way to get flagged.

I like Debian, they still make a great OS, and I want to be clear I have no complaints against Chandran who as far as I know is doing a great job in a tough position.

But if you look at the platform he's outlining the current DPL ran with the clear understanding that Free Software is one of a couple of priorities. Something that, in this context, really stands out is he thinks the Debian project culture needs an infusion of new blood and ideas. In fact, this page has a number of absolute classics for how ideological organisations go soft. He wants new people involved, he thinks that the community is too conservative about change and he doesn't say much on the topic but it looks quite possible that he wants to start legitimising Debian as a serious organisation (getting it formally registered and branching out to find more funding). Take all that in context of the idea that they can't find someone who wants to be project lead in order to promote free software.

So again, I personally would love it if Debian kept to their rabid pro-freedom stance, but I would not rely on it as the Debian Devs slowly rotate to a new generation; there is always a high risk that they quietly transition to "Open Source" then go the Mozilla route. The people matter far more than the paperwork.

You are right but the ideology of a company is also driven by the society in which it exist. Switzerland is far more "conservative" (in the meaning to change slowly) than the US. Like our biggest retailer is "Migros" which still refuses to sell alcohol according to its statutes which where formalized somewhere in the 50s/60s of the last century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migros

Not sure if that's a good example. They bought a competitor so they could sell alcohol under its name.

The relationship with Alcohol in many European countries is a bit different anyway. In some nordic countries you can only buy it in official state-owned stores (and it is incredibly expensive due to taxes).

Switzerland doesn't have a special relationship with alcohol like that, you can buy everything you want from stores. The fact that Migros doesn't directly sell alcohol is just a historical oddity. Their other brands and other companies sell alcohol everywhere without concerns

Migros has Denner and "Migros Partenaire"[0] that both sell alcohol

0: https://filialen.migros.ch/fr/migros-partenaire-mp-ouchy

After I moved away from Google services as much as I could (https://www.mac-vicar.eu//posts/2020-10-20-migrating-away-go...), and after some years on mailbox.org, which I did not enjoy, I ended moving to Infomaniak.

The experience has been nothing but awesome. I love the Android clients (mail, calendar sync) and I am also using their AI services for light tasks. Management UI is a bit confusing but not the worst I deal with.

Glad to see this move. I am a fan!.

I did the same and am a big fan of their services. Still, a word of caution: their policy states that they delete emails in folders named „Trash“ and similar after 30 days. It is documented, but I realized it too late. And the list of folder names in the docs is „non-exhaustive“.

https://www.infomaniak.com/en/support/faq/2351/understanding...

I thought this was a standard procedure? Especially for someone who is used to GMail. In fact, I was surprised when I found out that Proton doesn't do that, and also doesn't empty the Spam folder.

Now that I looked closer, you seem to be right. Hotmail does it as well. But Gandi didn't back when I used it, and MxRoute doesn't. That's probably why I was surprised.

Yup, fair.

"foundation model" a somewhat confusing phrase in the title here, given the majority of HN front page.

Dunno, I got it immediately, made me think of Mozilla.

Reading this, it sounds very like what Ingvar Kamprad did with IKEA - although the structure is slightly different, the intent feels the same.

I work at Inter IKEA, which is actually a franchisor - the structure is a family run foundation sitting at the top, below the group that owns the concept and value chain, then the retailer licence to hold a franchise (https://www.inter.ikea.com/en/this-is-inter-ikea-group/the-i...)

I always assumed that IKEA being a non-profit was a tax evasion maneuver first and foremost. Even Wikipedia says that the goal of their convoluted corporate setup is to enable a "non-taxable for-profit" entity.

I don’t think that's what Infomaniak is after. Not even in the same ballpark.

Of course. The reason IKEA was structured as it was, is to pay very little tax. Sadly this rational and admirable way of running the company has now gone out the window and the current ownership is way more woke than during the golden era. But now they are big enough to do what they want, so it doesn't really matter that much.

> woke

not sure how being directly responsible for illegal wood-cutting in eastern europe, worsening quality, higher prices, low wages and treating your employees like cattle is woke. were you bothered by them pink-washing themselves with rainbow flags?

in other words i'm always surprised about people choosing "wokeness" as criticism when there are things way more impactful and worse to actually care about.

> pay very little tax [...] rational and admirable

okay. i get the rational part, from a business perspective. still dislike that it's being done, but who am i. admirable? are you libertarian by any chance? (genuine question, i can't imagine how one can find tax evasion admirable if they're not wealthy or businessman-first-human-second themselves.)

Of course, there is no way that a wasteful company like IKEA, that basically sells overpriced plastics and cheap aggregates does actually benefit humanity as a nonprofit implied purpose would. The waste it creates is very substantial on many levels, not even mentioning wasting people’s time and fostering bad taste through short-lived production cycles. Transitioning to a nonprofit obviously has a lot to do with taxes evasion and maybe a little bit of communication posturing too.

Big fan of this move. My feelings on Infomaniak slightly soured though when they sent me an email trumpeting their "sovereign AI" and offering some free credits, so I tried it out - docs said OpenAI compatible API, but failed to mention that not all of it actually works - I emailed support and they replied with "Unfortunately, we do not provide support for our AI Service, as the solution is highly unmanaged and uses our API."

I have no idea what this means, but it certainly made me wonder how much of the rest of their offering has no support and put an instant halt on us moving the company over from GSuite or whatever it's called this week.

This is awesome news.

I wonder if it has any impact on Infomaniak's earlier position on Switzerland's privacy laws, e.g.:

https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/vpns/infomaniak-breaks-r...

This is an excellent question! Maybe the CEO was out of sync with the founder and spoke too soon? Maybe that is what pushed the founder to make this change in order to block any future CEO from making similar statements?

I dont see where those positions conflict with each other. Can you elaborate?

I moved my domains and mailboxes from Gandi to Infomaniak when Gandi went from "no bullshit" to full shit hole after TWS bought them. The service is top quality and their customers service was really helpful in transferring my third-level .name domain which has always been a hassle. This news makes me even more glad I chose Infomaniak.

hey, exact same story and sentiment here!

I miss the second free email.

I thought the founder was against privacy. There were discussions last year or so about the Swiss (anti-)privacy laws. I don't know what to think about it now.

I recently moved one of my boxes from Mailfence to Infomaniak. It works, but their product/pricing strategy is really hard to understand (my ksuite vs ksuite pro). Their AI is not helpful in explaining the differences. Also their UI opens new browser tab for almost every menu page. After dealing with these issues it works quite well.

I wonder if this move is similar to what Home Assistant project did.

I use Infomaniak for personal domains, along with DNS. I really want to like them. But their management UI is just... horrible? Also the product offering feels increasingly unfocused, with kSuite and kDrive.

Ksuite is literally a google workspace competitor nothing unfocused about that. My company uses them for everything works well.

It came into my email earlier this morning, and I was a bit confused, because I had just woken up, but a coffee later everything was clear. I bought a domain there not long ago, mainly to support European companies, which was straightforward with no problems at all.

What is it with company blogs that outright refuse to link to their product pages?

I agree! It's amazing to require the visitor to edit the url to go from blog to main site. For my projects I pay attention to avoid this as I find it so annoying. I want visitor that are interested to have easy access to the website!

I've received an email about this with the subject: "An (important) message from the founder of Infomaniak"

Putting "important" in there, even in parentheses, is highly disrespectful, as it implies the necessity to be read immediately, whereas in reality this doesn't have any impact on customers at all.

Infomaniak overall has a decent product offering, but I've noticed repeatedly incompetence and manipulative behaviour such as this from them and am considering moving away entirely.

If you claim to be ethically superior, I'll hold you to higher standards.

I share the exact sentiment. I unsubscribed once I was done skimming the body of the email.

I disagree. As an Infomaniak customer I felt that this information was important. It’s not true that it doesn’t have any impact on customers at all: this protects the customers against scenarios like what happened with Gandi [1] that another commenter mentioned.

Maybe not urgent, but important indeed. Saying that this is "highly disrespectful" and "manipulative" is exaggerated.

[1] https://linuxfr.org/users/acatton/journaux/gandi-passe-de-no...

Got the same email. After reading the subject, plus the first paragraph:

  > I'm writing to you as the founder and strategic director of Infomaniak because something important has just happened, and it concerns you directly.

My initial reaction was questioning whether the email was legit or not.

All in all the final message is great but the way it was communicated not so much.

Ah, it reads better in French I think (my native language): "Un message (important) du fondateur..."

I think you might read it as: `An "important" message from the founder...`

On this, Gemini says:

  In French text, parentheses are frequently used for
  nuance, self-correction, or an understated aside. They
  act like a slight lowering of the voice, a wink, or a
  humble qualification.

I was finding it challenging to verbalize, but I think Gemini is accurate

Boho... go see a therapist. Love the way you added insult to injury by taking the time to write about it.

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