this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2025
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We've seen this several times now. Proton is subject to Swiss law, just like every company in their respective countries. You choose Proton because Switzerland has the most privacy protections of any country on the planet (for now).
If you want private communications, don't use email. In fact, if we could all stop using email entirely, that'd be wonderful. There are hundreds of truly-private alternatives, many with no company involved at all.
This is absolute nonsense. I would prefer most of Europe over Switzerland. The swiss government was always bad with privacy. See Fichenaffäre for example. Not to mention the new büpf and similar laws. I'm swiss. I would never store sensitive data in Switzerland on a public server. Well. Except taxdata, I guess. Can't really get around that.
Such as...? I bet some ISPs or hardware maker companies are involved at some point.
Cwtch. XMPP. Matrix. SimpleX. Quiet. Delta Chat. Arcane Chat. Revolt. Briar. Meshtastic. etc. etc. etc.
Aren’t most of those requiring dedicated setup? How does that work without a pre-existing communication channel such as email to prep for them? You walk to every party you need to integrate?
Sorry, I don't understand the words you're using. Some of them are peer to peer. Some of them use servers which can be hosted by individuals. Some of them work locally over Bluetooth or WiFi.
Damn. They didn’t seem so wild especially compared to the flow of yours. All mediums / techs you listed are complex technologies that take efforts to setup. Compared to the ubiquitousness of email. How do you propose to make that as available to the baseline human being?
Email is much more difficult to configure than most of these services. Some of them require no configuration at all. You just open the app, type in the recipient's address, and Bob's your uncle.
For others, it's already available through community projects like AdminForge and Disroot.
Users don’t need to configure email that’s kind of the point… and the receiving side of most of your techs still had to eventually setup the server side right? Adminforge is Linux tutorials, hardly something for the basic user. And disroot has not the best reputation if I can trust the few top links in my search results due to its gtc where they mentioned that they would collaborate in criminal investigations as well.
Users don't "need" to configure these services either. That's the entire point.
You can either configure it yourself, or use someone else's that has configured it for you. Or you can choose one of the p2p apps that simply don't require any configuration. That's the entire point.
AdminForge runs a variety of services for public use.
Much like Proton (and every other company/org), they have to either choose to comply or close up shop.
But then you need to trust another party which is just moving the problem along…
These are your choices. There's no other way.
But that was the entire point from the first reply. If you don't trust external hosts, there is nothing for you.
You already forgot the other choices...
Self hosting and p2p
Most of those still rely on some company to host a server, except Briar, and in practice most Briar users are still relying on companies to access Tor to connect.
They are more robust, not perfect.
None of them require a company to host a server. That was my entire point.
Explain how you'd use Delta Chat without a server, please? I may have misunderstood its need for a mailserver when I tried it.
I didn't say without a server, I said without a company-hosted server.
How do you even get a non-company-hosted server now? Public bodies don't host services for outsiders much any more and aren't really safe places for privacy in this type of case anyway.
You run your own or just choose from a variety of publicly-available ones.
Run your own? Great, but you'll almost certainly be getting a company to connect it up.
Publicly available from whom? Companies!
I may sometimes wish community-owned internet became the norm, but it didn't, so companies are involved almost everywhere.
I run several of these services with no company involved.
Publicly available from, as I said, individuals.
I'm sceptical. Name me a server and I'll show you a company involved.
How about infosec.pub?
infosec.pub appears to be in Hetzner Online GmbH's Falkenstein hosting. They probably also own the hardware.
I dunno man, the problem with most private servers is that they're just that. I don't know where they are or who is hosting them. I only know where mine is.