Yes im aware that my search engine choice is not the best option.
As others have said, remove all proton stuff that you can. You are just replacing one centralized service with another. Google started out good too and look where we are now. Never put too many eggs in one basket.
My answer to this is to use a custom domain with an email aliasing service.
I’ve gone through about half of the 400 accounts in my password manager and moved them over. I’ll migrate the rest over the next week or so.
So, I’m switching from Gmail to Proton for now, but if Proton starts to get worse or Tuta catches up on functionality or there’s a better provider that emerges or I decide to try to self-host, it’s one easy change at the alias provider to redirect all of my mail to a new email provider.
You should try migadu. Thats the most no-bs provider with custom Domains I could find
Just recently discovered Migadu and it’s all I ever wanted!
What does Migadu do? I’m not understanding what “consolidation” means in this context. ELI5?
Typically MailProvider would let you have
<yourusername>@mailprovider.tldand sometimes a limited amount of aliases, right? With some you can bring your own domain and have<yourusername>@<yourdomain>most of the time also with a limited amount of aliases.Migadu let’s you pay a flat fee, bring as many domains as you like and use unlimited aliases. Their pricing scales with actual traffic, not arbitrary limitations on your address namespace.
Oh so you’re thinking about it from the lens of a standard mail provider, correct? I was more so asking what the difference or advantage was compared to an alias service like Addy, Simple login etc.
yea
You got great choices, actually. I’d only recommend to be as little dependent on multiple fronts on one company. So I’d change a few of Proton to something else.
Depending on how private communications must be, Threema might be better than Signal.
As for distro…
Mint is great (and honestly what I’d rec for people brand new to Linux). But if you want to harden privacy, the following Linux distros might be better:
- Fedora (any of them). It’s an international upstream distro from Red Hat (American company, parent company is IBM). Developed by the Fedora Project whose headquarters is in NC, USA. Linus uses it.
- OpenSUSE Tumbleweed -, developed by the OpenSUSE community, backed by OpenSUSE from Germany. Pretty good all-arounder.
- Arch Linux, developed internationally, but most devs are spread across Europe. Has an extensive wiki (that also is good for other distros), though it’s not exactly “plug and play” and I’d rec it only if you know what you’re doing.
- Debian is another option if privacy is slightly less a concern for you than it being FOSS. It’s one of the most FOSS distros out there, and also highly independent and international.
I assume you want to use your distro as daily driver, and that your threat model isn’t too severe. So the above ones should suffice.
If the threat model calls for it, or you’re willing to sacrifice some usability for slightly more security, you could try QubesOS (arguably one of the most secure distros since it sandboxes everything as if they were a separate computer). Tails is another alternative, that’s on a USB and forgets itself after usage.
For search engines…
… go for Qwant (French) or Ecosia (German). Both are European-owned and are busy constructing their own indexes (currently they still use Bing and Google). There’s Mojeek (UK-based) which is independent.
I don’t know how to block specific sites from popping up on them though, since I notice a certain trillionnaire’s personal ““wiki”” pops up a LOT. Probably he’s cheating and search bumping to spread his desinformation. It should be blocked.
Presearch also exists, which is decentralised and uses its own indexes. If you want OSS, there’s SearXNG and YaCy which have metasearch options. Be careful in which instance you pick, though.
Arch Linux
You can break anything quite easily on arch if you don’t know what you’re doing, including security.
Lol very true, Ive been using Mint for maybe 7 years now, Ive tried Arch 3 times or more, broke evey single time ive used it. And that’s with me not doing anything out of the ordinary. (No hate to Arch btw, I just can’t figure it out)
Network effect is the biggest problem for messaging services, and so I would still push for Signal over the alternatives that are technically better. This guide seems like it is focussed on users who are new to the space
I agree with the Linux recommendation, but I’d offer CachyOS over pure Arch for newcomers. The limine bootloader gives a lot of peace of mind, since you can tell the user “if you get a bad update, reboot and pick an older option on the first screen”.
Why is Threema better than Signal?
See here - secure messaging apps
another thing is that the Trumpist US regime allegedly got access to Signal through Israeli spyware (Paragon), or is trying to do so. (The Guardian)
The Swiss military also has publicly shifted away from Signal, as they deemed it unsafe for communications.Signal’s still subject to the CLOUD Act, while Threema is not. (Bleeping Computer).
The signal one suggests it’s a phone OS hack that can open apps so could probably do threema too.
The article you shared suggested it’s likely the result of lobbying by the company so they use a company inside the country.
Yeah looking at it I had the same thought. Il look into Threema, thanks!
For passwords, you can use the same KeepassXC database on multiple devices. It’s encrypted, and you can have the passphrase file locally on multiple devices, and the cloud provider cannot access it even by brute forcing. The database itself would not be reliant on the cloud service, you can easily switch between any provider (I currently use dropbox)
Proton Pass could be replaced by a synchronised KeePassXC/DX database.
I understand your point for Independent Password Managers. For some people this is not a solution. I would always recommend a password managers that fits your needs and know-how. My parents could not use keepass with sync without breaking or loosing shit. But protonpass, or Bitwarden or strongbox could be a viable option. In some rare cases I would even recommend Apple Passwort App. Better than nothing.
I use KeepassXC and it’s database syncs great with Syncthing.
What I don’t like about KP is it’s ui. Too many pages. Everything should be one one page like KeepassDX. I wouldn’t recommend for noobs.
If you can figure out Linux, you can definitely use KeepassXC…
Or Bitwarden (can selfhost too)
Thats a good idea, I only use is for accounts that I must have access to, other than that I write them on an encrypted SD card.
Isn’t google auth an OTP service? Proton Pass also supports that btw! Haven’t heard about Ente before and what purpose it replaces a gallery with, but again you can upload and view photos to Proton Drive as well. Although I have not yet tried it myself because I like to keep them local.
Kagi is one of the search engines I actually trust, but it is paid. I can give you trial if you want to try it out. Oh and it being US based might also be drawback.
Pretty solid list I’d say!
Thank you, Auth is on there because I had to import a bunch of accounts at once. I use Ente Photos since it’s a pretty nice UI, I never use their cloud storage though.
Would CoMaps be a better recommendation than OSMand?
For those who are familiar with Ente, how are their apps? I use something different for 2FA and photos, but I need recommendations for people who don’t want to deal with selfhosting and backing up Aegis
Ente is pretty nice, Their UI’s are clean and not bloated much. I don’t use their online services though.
Edit: I use Osm since ive been using it for years now, all map’s are pretty much forks, either from Osm or something that uses Open Street Map (from my understanding)
People will agree and disagree on individual choices, as we can see by the other comments, but I think that is an excellent start.
A message for others, improving your privacy can be a gradual process, you don’t need change everything at once, since that would be overwhelming. Start with one or two, and if that works for you, move on to other items.
I use proton for a lot of stuff. The calendar is useless IMO since their custom bridge doesn’t support linking anything else in. Same with contacts. For those two I use a self-hosted radicalev3 container, works like a charm.
Does someone have suggestions for what proton provides with its passmail? I think their implementation and usage experience with this entire reverse-email feature is pretty great and I dont want to give this anonymity up, selectively being able to send from those passmails is also a great feature that works really well in the rare case of getting something I need to reply to.
Don’t know Ente, but the GrapheneOS gallery works fine for basics, and pop Immich on Mint for the rest of google photos functionality. I’ll suggest Bazzite for the distro, especially if they game or are likely to break things.
Fossify photos is also good.
A little trick I use with obsidian is that if you use syncthing to sync the vault folder you can basically have a shared vault (in my experience the time to get edits from one device to another is like 10/15 seconds which is not bad at all)
