this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2024
166 points (97.7% liked)
Proton
5246 readers
177 users here now
Empowering you to choose a better internet where privacy is the default. Protect yourself online with Proton Mail, Proton VPN, Proton Calendar, Proton Drive. Proton Pass and SimpleLogin.
Proton Mail is the world's largest secure email provider. Swiss, end-to-end encrypted, private, and free.
Proton VPN is the world’s only open-source, publicly audited, unlimited and free VPN. Swiss-based, no-ads, and no-logs.
Proton Calendar is the world's first end-to-end encrypted calendar that allows you to keep your life private.
Proton Drive is a free end-to-end encrypted cloud storage that allows you to securely backup and share your files. It's open source, publicly audited, and Swiss-based.
Proton Pass Proton Pass is a free and open-source password manager which brings a higher level of security with rigorous end-to-end encryption of all data (including usernames, URLs, notes, and more) and email alias support.
SimpleLogin lets you send and receive emails anonymously via easily-generated unique email aliases.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
People that want a different storage/mail provider that isn't Google, MS or Apple while still using the OS that came with the phone. Be it for privacy reasons or for not wanting to support their anticompetitive practices.
You cant just say "companies that are not X, Y and Z" without further explanation. That doesn't answer my question. People are not paying for something that is otherwise "free" for no reason.
You asked what the Proton users are that don't use custom ROMs. I replied people that simply want an alternative to Google, Apple or Microsoft services. That does answer your question, with the reasons also in there: anticompetitive practices and privacy concerns, among others.
I'm not sure what you want to hear from me. People don't all have the same values (or give the same weight to said values) so they don't all act the same. It's not a binary where you either care so you go all in or you don't care.
Some of Proton's users will use custom ROMs, others won't (like myself). Reasons for that differ from person to person. Some want to go all in on privacy and get rid of everything Google/Apple, they'll likely go custom ROM. Others just want Big Tech to not read their emails for advertisments or block your account because you've uploaded pictures of your children to your cloud storage. Some just don't like Big Tech's tendency to be anticompetitive and don't want to support it. Some want to use a service not from the US. Some like how Proton looks and feels etc etc. You can switch to Proton for all those reasons and not want/need a custom ROM. And yeah, some only look at what's free and won't use Proton.
To take myself as an example, I am one such user that doesn't have a custom ROM, but uses Proton. Why? I simply wanted to move away from, in my case, Microsoft's Outlook and Onedrive because I didn't like them being able to read my emails and use it for ads. That doesn't justify flashing my phone, which has little custom ROM support btw, with the potential of bricking it.
I asked about privacy advocates. You can use Proton otherwise without a Google account and without a custom ROM.
It doesn't, because there are a thousand other email providers. Which just leaves privacy advocates (their demographic).
Then I misunderstood. If it's just about privacy advocates, sure, most Proton users are privacy advocates in some form or another, though there are still alternatives to Proton in that regard.