Diana Barbosa 
🇺🇦🇵🇸In line of trying to cut as much ties as possible with big American tech, what alternatives do you suggest to Gmail+GDrive that are safe? I just recently paid, for the first time, Google One to have a backup of my phone's pics via Google Photos. I'm looking for a safer alternative... #Hivemind #Fediverse #FediTips #OpenSource #FediHelp
Lynn McAlister UE 
@diraquel I use Protonmail and Proton Drive. They're a Swiss company, open source, encrypted everything. Not unreasonably priced, either.
@lmgenealogy thank you. I knew of Proton mail, but have been reading some dodgy stuff about the company here 😏
@diraquel Really? Where?
@lmgenealogy there was a post here on Mastodon. It was something about the owners. I'll have to search for it again
@diraquel All I could find on line was a warning that Protonmail, along with numerous other platforms, is being targeted by phishing attacks - which I'm glad I read, since I think the more often we're reminded of this kind of thing, the better. But same defence as usual - don't click on link in emails, make sure the url is right, etc. I try to always leave the email and go to the proper website (whether Proton or anyone else), but it would be easy to get careless, so it's good to be reminded.
@lmgenealogy the problem is this one. The owner praised Trump, although now it's backtracking
https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-trump-republicans/
https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-trump-republicans/
@diraquel It wasn't the owner. It was an employee of a US subsidiary.
Dan Walsh@diraquel @lmgenealogy Most complaints I’ve ever seen about Proton are in relation to them working with law enforcement agencies when they’re required (and even then it’s limited since their email bodies are encrypted). Overall, they’re a great company and make great products
@danwalsh @lmgenealogy yeah, but the owner praising Trump is a big no no for me. Plus, we need to have in mind that the advertised privacy only works within proton (as with other similar services). Once an email is sent to another address, it's no longer private or encrypted. 😉
@diraquel @danwalsh @lmgenealogy IMHO, I think the whole “Trump praising” thing was taken out of context and over exaggerated to a large degree. I wouldn’t disregard what is otherwise an awesome company pushing privacy-respecting products to the masses because of an out-of-context personal tweet from a single individual. His intentions were positive even if poorly worded.
With that said, if you’re going to completely write off Proton then Tuta is an awesome alternative.
@lmgenealogy @danwalsh @diraquel Absolutely, I completely agree!
It’s also good to use self-hosting as an alternative, when possible.
It’s a bit tricky with email which is why I mainly use Proton Mail but for other things I don’t rely on any cloud service. For photo backup, as an example, I use Immich hosted on my own server.
@danwalsh @lmgenealogy self hosting for cloud backups is too much for my level of knowledge 😕