Selfhosted
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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Get a proton mail. The complete plan not only supports custom domains, they also let you create unlimited alias.
This is the best thing ever. Alias work with custom domains too and they basically give you an endless amount of single-use emails allowing you to sign to each service/website with a different email (that will then be forwarded to your inbox).
This not only leaves your real email safe and unexposed, but it also lets you organize your inbox more tidily if your aliases have a structure and you use email rules for them (e.g. you can create aliases for your shipping stuff called [website].shipping@[myalias].com and then make a rule including all the adresses .shipping to a specific folder).
Everyone suggests proton and their whole infra just makes me sus. Just because of how much they are the "go to" alternative.
Maybe I'm paranoid. But I feel like these companies that focus on "privacy" are just not as good as we all assume.
It's like all the YouTube sponsored segments of "Ingogni". It just makes me feel like these companies that sell "privacy" are just consolidating data on the people that are worried about their privacy.
This is less a comment about proton I guess. But, incogni, is sus as fuck. Like, really, "give us all your personal info and we'll "scrub" it from the internet, trust us."
Are they sharing your emails. Probably not. But I just don't really trust anything.
Edit: lots of strong responses. Which I appreciate. But, my comment was more "vibes" based on Proton. But I'll take a stand on these "Ingogni" types services. I think they are sus as fuck.
If you don't trust anything, then your only option is self-host everything,
Is Proton perfect? Not at all. Are they better than Google? Well... if you trust the external audits (1) and external sources in general (2), then, they probably are.
But if you don't trust anything, then you probably don't trust those audits either, so it's pointless to even mention them.
(1) https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/proton-vpns-no-logs-policy-holds-up-under-scrutiny-of-fourth-independent-audit
(2) https://www.webpronews.com/unlocking-proton-mails-encryption-fortress-a-deep-dive-into-secure-email-mastery/
Ingogni is super suspicious and I don't believe what they claim to do is even possible. But to me it's what they claim to do that makes them suspicious, and that's and entirely different thing than what proton does, and at least proton has documented audits to back up their privacy claims. INB4 the links to articles talking about proton complying with law enforcement requests, every company does that, even respected ones like mullvad. It's not important that they hand over information they're legally required to, it's important that they save as little as possible so they can hand over everything without identifying you.
And also, any privacy conscious service is never better than your own opsec, so if you get caught because your recovery email was your apple ID, that's on you and not them.
Guys...it's Incogni. Like incognito?
Incogni feels like a product the data brokers created to double tap your data and get paid for doing it.
Hasnt Proton assisted law enforcement in freezing, locking out or providing access to some person?
I remember that happen.
They comply with the law to the extent that they absolutely have to.
I've heard of locking/freezing accounts, but the only case where a person got identified (that I've heard of) was because the user used their apple ID mail for recovery and got identified that way from the information handed over.
Nvmd.
What I had in memory was false.
The provided IPs but not decrypted mails or access to the inbox.
Besides that they also suspended inboxes.
Unlike those “we will delete your data for you.” Services. Proton operates under a Zero Knowledge Encryption, I.E. no one even themselves can read your emails.
Is it perfect? No obviously, if you use a recovery email that is not properly secured (say a Gmail account.) then congratulations your now vulnerable via the State asking Google.
But the privacy focus IS genuine
It’s just ad-bait. Proton will hand your ass over to whatever authorities.
That's the thing though, you don't need to trust them, you trust public key cryptography. And unless the NSA has secretly solved that, Proton cannot hand anything to anyone, because they can't access anything but encrypted data.
If the NSA solved that, they don't need Proton's cooperation, they can just intercept the encrypted traffic directly.
You don't need to trust Proton inherently, all their apps are open source and you can verify the encryption yourself. They hold your encrypted data and you hold the keys.
The only thing they could be lying about is keeping VPN logs, but there's no credible reason to believe they are. They do annual third-party audits of their infrastructure to confirm no logs, but if you're depending strictly on VPN to hide data you think the government is interested in, you're doing it wrong.
They cannot hand over your emails, because they don't have the keys. But email is an inherently insecure communication method, and any email you send to a non proton recipient is visible to that recipient's provider.
They can see the subject line and the recipient's address, because they need to know where to transfer the email and send notifications with the subject line, but they are transparent about that.
Are you basing this on anything? I agree with another poster that proton being the go to alternative is somewhat suspect in my paranoid brain but some of these remark here seem pretty outlandish.
Proton has been involved in some situations but it’s like the scenario I provided.
Accounts having an unencrypted line of entry “we can’t get the information off the Proton Server but the account is connected to a Google server so let’s go to Google instead.”
Or Proton not particularly putting up a hard fight against a government request. (Mind you no information is being handed over just an account being turned off with no means to recover)
Sure I saw yours and accept that, but “hand your ass over” doesn’t equate to “complies minimally with legal request they have to in order to remain functioning as a business” in my book.
https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/proton-mail-discloses-user-data-leading-to-arrest-in-spain/18191
Before that: https://www.wired.com/story/protonmail-amends-policy-after-giving-up-activists-data/
There are many, many more cases we don't hear about in media.
If you consistently connect to Proton via I2P or tor and don't link a phone number or tracable recovery mail, you're covering up at least some of the juicy metadata.
Thanks for the links, the recovery email aspect was covered in the initial comment old mate was replying to. I was more interested in if the hand your ass over remark had anything to do with the “they cant read your emails”/encryption part. The second link is very interesting though:
Auhorities in other European countries are known to MitM SSL certs at VPS providers for years already. Switzerland is moving their legislation towards the EU direction. Proton themselves have been vocal about their concerns about this.
How long until someone realizes they can demand Proton to inject some extra JS into the webmail for desired targets? Folks in a sensitive situation should follow the established best-practice of not relying on remotely served JS for client-side encryption. To be safe against this vecor, handle your encryption and signing outside of the webmail; either in your own client or copy/pasting.
Fuck that is depressing. I had hoped I’d be able to pay for a service and not worry about this shit to avoid the hassle of self hosting. Very informative thank you.
Google it.
Burden of proof is on you.
No it isn’t.
Actually it is. You are the one saying not to trust the service.
Ok, please present us the material that causes you to mistrust.
Just drop it (both of you)...at this point you're just a sea lion and a troll exchanging messages.
I mean I only responded to the specific account once in the chain 🤷🏻
My bad, didn't notice the different username
As long and they do it under this chain of messages, they don't sealion/troll anywhere else.
Also, sealioning is “just asking questions” (JAQ’ing off). Consistently interrogating a position or POV for example, with requests for evidence. Not asking someone to provide some sort of evidence for a single claim they made in reply to another user and refusal to find said evidence for them.
Emphasis mine. From wiki. I appreciate the attempt to deescalate though and accept it’s probably time to pack it in with that particular user.
How about you google burden of proof? Like the other user said burden of proof is on the party making the claim. It’s not on other people to prove the claim wrong by doing research for you.
Tell that to science.
This comment describes Brave browser
Why would they be sus? They're a Switzerland based company which means really good privacy laws in regards to keeping your data out of the wrong hands. They're not going to monetize your emails or information, which is a big deal!
Incogni, you're right, give us your data so we know what to scrub? No thanks lol. Feels like the wrong approach lol
Why make it so difficult when + addressing exists?
Link to random blog for people who don't like search: https://salmantechblogs.wordpress.com/2025/06/11/what-is-plus-addressing-pros-and-cons-explained/
You can't disable any of those alias so you will always recieve mails from them, even if they are sent to spam and they still expose your full email address.
That's what I do, but with mailbox.org instead of proton, to name an alternative. They even offer temporary random addresses with the click of a button.
Fuck proton
lol at proton fanboys downvoting, you did some scrolling.
People are downvoting you because you’re being an ass, don’t give yourself too much credit
I'm gonna make a small reach here but are you willing to defend Andy Yen's pro-trump stance? If not, why are you giving Nanook shit for saying fuck Proton?
I’m not even a proton user anymore, for several reasons including the politics of the founder.
It’s possible to be correct and also a dickhead, as evidenced by the way nanook is behaving in this thread.
Nah fanboys be fanboys