One of the projects I’ve been tackling recently is the (not insignificant) work to move off of Google’s gmail platform and onto Protonmail .
- Google get’s (most of) it’s revenue from ads; their incentive is to collect information from their users and to sell it.
- Protonmail revenue stream comes from users; their incentive is to deliver on their promises to protect customer’s privacy and information.
- Google has been a very good steward of the information they collect so far; however FISA and similar programs can legally compel Google to give up data without disclosure.
- Protonmail’s default security model reduces the amount of trust I have to put in them, and it is getting better.
I am NOT anti-google. Google does a lot of really good and interesting things. However, I do think that they have too much power and not enough accountability.
A recent update to Protonmail hinted they they will soon be adding the final thing that is needed for me to be able to recommend it, which is two-factor authentication.