The journey of tech empowerment and liberation from tech bros can be a long, bumpy road.
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@_elena do you have any links that could work as a gateway to figuring out how to acquire and set up a custom email domain? I've been using the same Gmail address for 20 years and it's the major thing I haven't degoogled yet. I don't want to have to change it more than once, and by the looks of things I won't ever be able to trust any email provider.
@LeoRJorge it's really easy. Just buy a custom domain and then add it to your email provider. There are many video tutorials about how to change DNS settings, step-by-step
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My new approach vis-à-vis transitioning away from #Proton (in a slow way) - cont':
For every new email that comes in that uses one of my Proton email addresses (or aliases), I am making changes, updating the email address for that account (if it's shopping/newsletter/admin) or I am notifying the sender that going forward my default email address will be the one associated to my domain name.
It's a pain, but it's long overdue.
@_elena «Stop thinking always of how it can be painful, and focus more on how to be faster.”»
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My new approach vis-à-vis transitioning away from #Proton (in a slow way) - cont':
For every new email that comes in that uses one of my Proton email addresses (or aliases), I am making changes, updating the email address for that account (if it's shopping/newsletter/admin) or I am notifying the sender that going forward my default email address will be the one associated to my domain name.
It's a pain, but it's long overdue.
@_elena These changes now will save you a lot of time later. This situation is such a conundrum. My immediate reaction is to leave, because I don't want to indirectly support a company with a CEO that treats its employees this way and ignores the security concerns from the very engineers that built its products. But a company is also so much more than just its CEO, and do you punish the team and abandon the arguably good tools by leaving, when it's really the CEO that needs to go?
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I'm devastated to hear that #Proton 's CEO and CTO are treating their engineers in a terrible way, blindly trusting LLMs and creating a toxic culture where speed and growth trump security.
I'm not ready to make a radical switch yet but some little actions I implemented today could be useful for others, too:
1) I made my custom domain the DEFAULT email address in ProtonMail
2) I created aliases w my custom domain for shopping, newsletters, admin, etc.Hoping this will make a transition smoother
@_elena
Thanks for this idea! I am very disappointed as I just moved over to Proton. -
My new approach vis-à-vis transitioning away from #Proton (in a slow way) - cont':
For every new email that comes in that uses one of my Proton email addresses (or aliases), I am making changes, updating the email address for that account (if it's shopping/newsletter/admin) or I am notifying the sender that going forward my default email address will be the one associated to my domain name.
It's a pain, but it's long overdue.
I've been doing the same for the past several months. I switched to a new email provider (Fastmail), and have started using my own domain name for my emails now.
I've switched most of the old Proton accounts over to my domain name now, just a few left that I'm changing over as and when they pop up.
The joy of having a catch-all, rules and servicename@customdomain.xxx is measurable. Just knowing I can kill an address at will should it start spamming is great peace of mind.
And yeah, it's sad what's happening at Proton right now. They were one of the good ones. Damn shame.
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@_elena
Are you switching to self-hosted email, or an alias on one of the major providers?I have been trying to figure out my best options for awhile now.
@TerryHancock @_elena I use @doncow on my self hosted cloud server and love it. Also host my nextcloud and website and much of my stack. Anyone interested in help with this please reach out at https//tobiaseigen.org.
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I've been doing the same for the past several months. I switched to a new email provider (Fastmail), and have started using my own domain name for my emails now.
I've switched most of the old Proton accounts over to my domain name now, just a few left that I'm changing over as and when they pop up.
The joy of having a catch-all, rules and servicename@customdomain.xxx is measurable. Just knowing I can kill an address at will should it start spamming is great peace of mind.
And yeah, it's sad what's happening at Proton right now. They were one of the good ones. Damn shame.
Also, it worries me that Yen thinks customer privacy and security can be either maintained or improved by pushing engineers/coders to rush code via AI.
Surely hand-coding (so engineers can 100% stand by it) and testing would be the prudent approach if privacy and security are the bedrocks on which you've founded your business model?
Looks like Yen has turned into yet another Tech Bro
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My new approach vis-à-vis transitioning away from #Proton (in a slow way) - cont':
For every new email that comes in that uses one of my Proton email addresses (or aliases), I am making changes, updating the email address for that account (if it's shopping/newsletter/admin) or I am notifying the sender that going forward my default email address will be the one associated to my domain name.
It's a pain, but it's long overdue.
@_elena awesome! This sounds like a solid approach. I moved from my Gmail.com email to self hosted on my own domain using mailcow last year and it took about two months before everything flowed through mailcow. It’s a project but very feasible and fully worth it!
Still have the gmail for the occasional email that still comes in and to use Google tools like Remote Desktop connection. But everything’s that matters I moved to my digitally sovereign tech stack.
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@TerryHancock @_elena I use @doncow on my self hosted cloud server and love it. Also host my nextcloud and website and much of my stack. Anyone interested in help with this please reach out at https//tobiaseigen.org.
I actually have custom, self-hosted (well, on a VPS) email accounts. But I don't use them and they fill up with spam. And I've heard they'll get blocked AS spam by gmail, etc.
So it seems like a lot of hassle to go back to them.
OTOH, using a Proton Mail alias to handle email for my YunoHost instance, rather than hosting it directly is also awkward.
It's just that email is kind of far down on my priority list, though I'm clearly going to have to spend some time getting it right.
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I actually have custom, self-hosted (well, on a VPS) email accounts. But I don't use them and they fill up with spam. And I've heard they'll get blocked AS spam by gmail, etc.
So it seems like a lot of hassle to go back to them.
OTOH, using a Proton Mail alias to handle email for my YunoHost instance, rather than hosting it directly is also awkward.
It's just that email is kind of far down on my priority list, though I'm clearly going to have to spend some time getting it right.
(Oh yeah, and the VPS is on Digital Ocean which has also recently gone over to the Enemy, so...)
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@TerryHancock @_elena @doncow My mailcow s server is on hetzner.
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My new approach vis-à-vis transitioning away from #Proton (in a slow way) - cont':
For every new email that comes in that uses one of my Proton email addresses (or aliases), I am making changes, updating the email address for that account (if it's shopping/newsletter/admin) or I am notifying the sender that going forward my default email address will be the one associated to my domain name.
It's a pain, but it's long overdue.
@_elena That's a good idea! Going to start doing the same!
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@_elena awesome! This sounds like a solid approach. I moved from my Gmail.com email to self hosted on my own domain using mailcow last year and it took about two months before everything flowed through mailcow. It’s a project but very feasible and fully worth it!
Still have the gmail for the occasional email that still comes in and to use Google tools like Remote Desktop connection. But everything’s that matters I moved to my digitally sovereign tech stack.
@_elena I journaled my degoogling experience at https://digitallysovereign.org/t/degoogling-moving-personal-gmail-to-self-hosted-open-source-email/8?u=tobias
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@TerryHancock @_elena @doncow My mailcow s server is on hetzner.
Have I mentioned that my rural ISP blocks a large part of Hetzner's cloud...?
Yes. I have IT problems to solve.
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@TerryHancock @_elena @doncow what that is crazy. So you can’t access my website? https://tobiaseigen.org
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@TerryHancock @_elena @doncow what that is crazy. So you can’t access my website? https://tobiaseigen.org
No. That one worked. It's kind of a crap shoot. But I have to use a proxy to use FreeSound -- and the Libre Office home page.
And it might be why the KDE bug tracker doesn't work for me.
My ISP is using some outdated, over-eager IP block list (this is an ongoing issue, and I think I've hijacked this thread more than I should, already).
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My new approach vis-à-vis transitioning away from #Proton (in a slow way) - cont':
For every new email that comes in that uses one of my Proton email addresses (or aliases), I am making changes, updating the email address for that account (if it's shopping/newsletter/admin) or I am notifying the sender that going forward my default email address will be the one associated to my domain name.
It's a pain, but it's long overdue.
@_elena this is something I need to do (and tbh have been meaning to do) with my Gmail for years... but haven't got round to because of the pain of the transition and difficulty in figuring out where to go.
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My new approach vis-à-vis transitioning away from #Proton (in a slow way) - cont':
For every new email that comes in that uses one of my Proton email addresses (or aliases), I am making changes, updating the email address for that account (if it's shopping/newsletter/admin) or I am notifying the sender that going forward my default email address will be the one associated to my domain name.
It's a pain, but it's long overdue.
@_elena Thank you for sharing this, I also need a way forward like this and was feeling kind of overwhelmed.
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i felt split between proton and tuta. I guess i made the right choice to go with tuta (for now at least)
@dylenar Tuta is also flirting with AI. I think we have to face the fact that every software project is going to be tempted to embrace AI. How they integrate it into their dev process is going to be a differentiator.
For years the #1 Proton complaint, by far, has been how slow their development process is for new features. I suspect this is a reaction to that. Tuta also is a small team and I suspect the draw of AI is very strong.
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My new approach vis-à-vis transitioning away from #Proton (in a slow way) - cont':
For every new email that comes in that uses one of my Proton email addresses (or aliases), I am making changes, updating the email address for that account (if it's shopping/newsletter/admin) or I am notifying the sender that going forward my default email address will be the one associated to my domain name.
It's a pain, but it's long overdue.
@_elena yea, switching e-mail gradually is relatively easy. The next challenge is finding a European VPN provider that works on the common video streaming platforms...
