So, I’ve been de-googling, and moved my email and calendar to Proton, and I’ve been using their VPN for a while as well. I really like it, and it works extremely well for me.
But I am slightly annoyed by Proton’s choice to stop posting to Mastodon, and their CEO’s Trump comments. And I do like Tuta’s support for the Fediverse, and their better open-source implementation. But I’m wondering if it’s worth it to bother switching again. I tried making a ones month payment to try out both, and my card doesn’t want to pay for Tuta (It’s finicky about stuff outside the US).
So would it be better to just stick with Proton? Or try to manage to go over to Tuta?
Yes and no.
The domain registry knows the identity of the domain’s holder (ok, authorities can easily ask), but it’s impossible to associate a single email to a person with certainty. I can give you an email with my domain, for example.
I also do not see much difference with a fake account on Gmail (or whatever). Of course, it’s relatively anonymous if you only use it to register on a website or to send an anonymous email once, but if you use it regularly you will be identifiable anyway, just with a few extra steps.
If only you or your relatives use the domain, it’s pretty easy to link all the addresses. It’s pretty fair to assume that if a search doesn’t give anything, the domain is probably personal or used by a few people at best
My point was that using a custom domain makes you less anonymous than being on the regular proton domain
If you do not use aliases, it won’t change much, but at least your identity is not directly tied to the domain name
It’s a fair point, but anonymity is not the same as privacy. Normally I only need the latter.
Just by avoiding gmail-like providers nobody crunches all the activation emails to build my profile. Using aliases on @mydomain I can separate the identities a little bit. Of course it is still possible to assume that all the emails from @mydomain belong to me, but I can accept that risk assuming that nobody wants to follow me specifically (why would they?).
Rule 1: know your enemies. I only need to protect myself from the ads-industry and that works on volumes, not on quality. Two emails are very likely two different people for them.
If you truly want anonymity then you’re right, but life becomes much harder.
You’re completely right. I wrote privacy instead of anonymity
If you want to protect yourself from the ads industry an like having your own domain, then it’s pretty good