this post was submitted on 19 May 2026
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Privacy
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Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
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This might be an unpopular opinion in this community, but here it goes.
Privacy doesnt really exist with email. Yes, Proton does support encryption, but nobody but Proton uses it. When your bank sends you an email, its plain text, and its pretty much guaranteed its sent from an outlook or gmail server. If they want your data they can get it whether youve got proton or not.
As for me - I actually still use my universities email. Its on outlook, but, hardly anything is sent to it, it never gets flagged as spam, and it doesnt cost me anything and will hopefully be there forever.
Your opinion is not unpopular here.
For those that don't know, yes, when Proton or Tuta sends an email to an unsecured provider, it is on the open... if you want it to be that is. You have the choice to tick if you want to send the mail and attachments encrypted or not. If you choose to send it encrypted, they have a link they have to introduce a password to get in. I use this multiple times with somehow sensitive data. At least their email provider won't have the data... now, the recipient may place then that data in Google Docs and that is game over; but that is your party's fault, not your email provider.
Yeah, as long as it's not Google, it works. The real trick is to find a good email aliasing service (I use Addy.io) so when email are exposed in a data breach you can just turn it off and avoid spam. Also good for when your trying different emails out because you just have to update what the aliases send to.
Came to say the same, the only benefit I see in proton and other providers is not having my email monitored by Google but that's it
Google alone is enough reason for me haha
Nah that's a pretty common (and correct) take. Never email something you wouldn't want to see come up in a court case. Secure email can limit exposure somewhat though. Unless it's the government it may be impossible or at least harder to put things together about you from other email addresses. At the very least every email is not being scanned by Gemini and used to train it. And the more people that use privacy respecting email the more private it is.
Never actually thought of it that way, like how no matter what you do, since most of your family uses META, you're indirectly hit by the crossfire
Right ya. You're best bet if you want to achieve privacy is to pretty much stop using email as much as possible. Proton is fine, and it is better than say using outlook or gmail, but barely.
Privacy doesn't really exist in what way? In a sense that the layperson should be concerned or just a person of interest in a diplomatic position?