A few days ago, the U.S. government sanctioned A/I for supporting “extreme far-left antifa terrorists”. If you didn’t know, A/I is an antifascist and anticapitalist group based in Italy, and they host a lot of services (like email, website hosting, etc.) run through donations. Their policy states that they are against racism, sexism, militarism, homophobia, and transphobia, and you have to agree to those principles to use their services. Their website and mailing server has been taken down, and unfortunately, that also means my email no longer works. It’s kind of insane how quickly the American government can take down internet services they don’t like. A/I has denied all of the allegations by the Trump admin, and rightfully so, they’re just a digital services provider who respect your privacy and are against fascism and bigotry.
relevant link if you want to read more about this: https://cavallette.noblogs.org/2026/08/10076
I still need to use email, so what’s a good alternative email provider that doesn’t profit off of my data? I have used Disroot in the past and had good experiences with their services, so they are currently my fallback. I have ruled out Proton and Tuta, as neither support IMAP properly.
edit: It appears that it’s only the autistici.org domain that has been blocked (the registrar for the .org TLD is American), the services are still running (though my email is unable to receive mail, I can only read existing mail). A/I is working towards providing users with a new mail address. If that doesn’t pan out, I’ll probably go with Disroot.
You have already mentioned it, it makes it more difficult to switch away to an alternative and it locks you down to Proton’s services. One of the main reasons why it’s so difficult to switch away from Google is due to their vast “ecosystem” of software services, though of course, this is an extreme example. Proton is a much smaller company, but my point remains that it is more difficult to go from Proton to another email service (like Disroot or mailbox) than it is to do the reverse.
I can think of another too. If one account is compromised, the whole “ecosystem” with email, drive, VPN, and maybe passwords/2FA (depending on how bad it is) could also be accessed or blocked. There’s a higher chance for one company to be bought out by Big Tech, banned in your country, sanctioned by the U.S., etc., than many simultaneously.
It doesn’t look like you have. You negated how Proton is licking the boots of Trump by saying “every CEO is pro-GOP”. You emphasised how they were “not bad”, all of my points were “personal decisions” of some sort.
No, you said they were not bad. Distinctly different from good. You said my points does not make Proton “objectively bad”, that they were all “personal choices”. I said that a lack of a Linux client for Proton Drive is bad. The lack of proper IMAP support (that is, without the use of Proton Bridge, since it only works on desktop) in Proton Mail is bad. Tying everything to one account is bad.