Swiss company Proton is further expanding its productivity suite. In addition to an email service, calendar, VPN, password manager, and drive, Proton Sheets is now available. It is an alternative to Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets, an increasingly important advantage as countries take sovereignty more seriously.
It’d odd that they don’t have a Linux version of proton drive.
Cryptpad?
Anybody?
No?
My go-to online suite, but their spreadsheets, documents, and presentations have some big limitations as they use embedded OnlyOffice.
Why are we linking to 3rd party articles with no sources rather than just the horse’s mouth?
clever girl…
…yes, I was aware of what it means when I wrote it, thank you.
Being a nazi just doesn’t make sense to me.
It did.
it’s too bad you feel that way
In the context of the unedited comment the horse’s mouth thing made sense, it just looked like a weird nitpick. I just saw the ninja edit - that was poor form - and I don’t support proton in any case. Additional caveat, my fuckin watch woke me up at 3 am, a couple hours ago, to congratulate me on three hours of sleep. I might be missing something.
Hopefully that’s enough caveats.
none of it matters… except that proton isn’t trustworthy ever since their warrant canary died….
also that wasn’t a ninja edit, i just happened to be editing it when you replied….
there should be an edit history on here, maybe some apps have it?
In what way did it not make sense to you?
you edited it… funny.
at any rate it’s pointless, it’s a new product announcement… you don’t need other sources for thatI edited it to add the link, before you even replied to it.
The only “other sources” is the one OP included.
so 11 hours ago was before 13 hours ago?
weird concept of time
Libre office is a fine tool, I use it myself. Calc is a somewhat capable spreadsheet application, although it has its fair share of issues and quirks. But that’s true for most software these days, although I do wish the windows wouldn’t be on a random monitor at a random location and random size all the time.
However in this case they state their solution is a Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel competitor. These are tools one uses online in a browser to access files stored on the server of the provider. That’s pretty different from what Libre Office Calc offers. It’s a bit confusing because Microsoft calls their app Excel, which can refer to the online service or the offline local app. But with Google sheets it’s clear it’s the online service they refer to.
So the comparison isn’t a straight one. If a local app is an option, I would prefer that over an online service. So Libre office is the way to go. But many people prefer something that’s available on any device, including underpowered tablets and phones, and want their files to be accessible everywhere. For those people it’s good to have competition to Microsoft and Google.
You Stole my comment :D
Looks to be B2B focused. I don’t see a price anywhere, but can request a quote, and their references to data sovereignty makes me think it’s “self”-hosted, as opposed to an E2EE cloud solution.
Could be wrong, I was just scanning, but it feels much more focused on big businesses with large dedicated IT departments.
or only office, or crypt pad.
If they actually cared about privacy, they would just contribute to CryptPad and host an instance.
CryptPad
by the way proton is going they’ll probably buy cryptpad
You can’t buy CryptPad. You could maybe hire its developers, but it’s open source.
Do we like Proton? I never know which VPN company I can truly trust.
They’re increasingly divisive I’d say. For me the fact that they rage-quit mastodon after a stint of bad publicity is all I need to know. If they were truly dedicated to a better internet they would be committed to stand up against big tech everywhere, not just wherever there’s money to be made from it. I’m migrating away from my proton mail account.
I get my VPN from Surfshark. Not because I necessarily trust them, but because it’s cheap and they don’t insist on doing anything else than just being my VPN provider. And I trust them more than Proton at this point, anyway.
Don’t let me ruin your good time, but my experience with Surf shark:
Used surf shark for about 3 years around pandemic timeframe. Had no complaints (other than it drained my phone battery super fast - didn’t test empirically, but seemed somewhat worse than other VPN providers). I was unemployed for a while, so took the opportunity to cut expenses; tried to drop my surf shark subscription. It was a HUGE pain in the butt. I forget the process, but iirc, you had to use their help chat to get the number for cancellations, they kept me on hold for ~10 min, then had a long winded questionnaire (“were required to ask you these questions before proceeding”) asking why I was quitting, then made an offer for discounted months before letting me unsubscribe.
Its my understanding regulations have changed such that that’s not allowed anymore and also that most VPN can elations are about that bad anyway, but still, wanted to share my experience. Lol, suppose so long as you never quit, you won’t have to deal with all that.
do you have a more current preference/recommendation?
I suspect Mullvad would be a popular choice, but it’s quite a bit more expensive. As I rarely use VPN (I hardly every do anything where it’s necessary), I’m a bit on the stingy side personally.
Yeah, I had a boss once who’s favorite saying was:
“You don’t always get what you pay for
But you never get what you don’t pay for”Generally with software I will only pay for things that I get full access to without paying for them. I guess I would render your boss somewhat confused.
Well, he took it also to mean payment in the philosophical sense. He was also fond of saying “you can pay with your wallet or you can pay with your clock”. He had some extension of that to the effect of its worse when you have to pay with both, but I forget the wording (it didn’t flow well).
Not any authoritative recommendations. I’m at most a casual user of VPNs, and so long as I see the traffic getting encrypted, don’t think about it much more.
I always hear Mullvad is great for maximizing privacy. Never tried them myself though.
Personally, I use Proton. I was prepping to jump ship earlier this year, but ultimately decided it wasn’t worth it. I’ve had a pretty decent experience with them. The only issue was on on a Linux machine…Uh…and it was minor enough and long ago enough that I don’t even remember what it was?
See above for my dissatisfying experience with Surf shark.
I did try to sign up with ExpressVPN many years ago. They’re payment portal was busted (tried every day for a week, emailed support with no response).
That about sums up my experience.
Ah, yeah, that sucks. In Europe you can always cancel by just not paying for a subscription, so I’ve rarely had experiences like this. Only time it happened to me was when I had been stupid enough to have a New York Times subscription (gah) and decided to end it. Huge pain in the ass.
With Surfshark I bought a two-year subscription without automatic renewal, so I get what I paid for and then it’s done. But I’m sorry to hear about their bad business practices—it goes well with the overall sleazy look of their website. Hopefully I’ll find something better by the time the subscription period is over. :)
Thanks for letting me know! I try to avoid any company that doesn’t have open source software as the core of their business strategy, but with VPN that’s a bit tricky.
I use Proton because they are no longer a “VPN company”. They are slowly rolling out a suite of privacy tools that compete with Google’s Workspace (or whatever the hell they’re calling it these days).
If you want a “VPN company” I would recommend Mullvad.
When it comes to VPN my choice is always Mullvad.
No port forwarding
I torrent even without the port forwarding and still get great speeds, and >1 share ratios
Great for you, but most good private trackers will ban you if you aren’t connectable. If you’re only torrenting English stuff then public trackers are fine, or one’s with lax rules like IPT, but for many other languages private trackers are unavoidable.
It’s also just against the spirit of the P2P network to not accept connections from others, if your port isn’t forwarded then you can only seed to users who have their port forwarded
ah, im not that deep into it so i dont really do too much with that. I understand why you’d need port forwarding, then
If you don’t need port-forwarding, Mullvad is the best choice IMO. Eggs in a basket as well, if you already use other Proton products but don’t want to lock yourself into one vendor for everything.
If you’re buying an annual plan, Mozilla resells Mullvad for cheaper. Monthly, buying direct is cheaper.
Also, I assume, but don’t have any evidence, that buying from a reseller is a little more private due to separation of billing and services.
If you use Mullvad you get a token instead of an account. It’s not linked to any email address. You can then pay directly to this token using crypto. You can even send cash in an envelope. If you use Tor to get a token and pay, you’re as private as can be.
The thing however is that VPN providers can always see what IP address is using their service. So however private your account and payment is, in the end you always have to trust the provider that they are not logging IPs.
If you are buying from Mozilla, then both Mozilla and Mullvad have access to information. This means that buying from a reseller is less private by default.
Good idea budget wise. Mullvad doesn’t require any information from you though, except your payment info. And even then, you can pay by cash or crypto if you really want to purchase anonymously.
Not even sure anymore. Ceo recently said Trump is great.
This is not completely fair or true statement - though it is not too far from truth.
Proton Mail has long positioned itself as an apolitical company, dedicated solely to safeguarding user privacy. That’s why many were surprised when CEO Andy Yen posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the political landscape in the U.S. had shifted, stating, “10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned.”
This was earlier this year. So sure its up to interpretation.
So… He’s an idiot, is what you’re saying.
I remember there being a little more to it, but I don’t have receipts. They did fairly reasonable PR explanation which lowered my concern a little - but some doubts stayed with me for sure.
That quote was the crux of it. IMO Yen was foolishly only looking at the situation through the lens of which party would be less of a barrier to Proton’s business and interests in user privacy at that point in time. But the community very harshly (and rightfully so IMO) corrected him with regards to the bigger picture of corruption and cronyism and greed rampant in today’s GOP and how shortsighted it would be to trust them at all.
Proton as an org was pretty burned and officially walked it back and said they would refrain from allowing individual staff (CEO included) from making those kind of political statements that could be interpreted as representing the business.
I think that’s the right response, because he certainly fucked up. That doesn’t make them evil, but it does cause me concern around their awareness of the shifting US legal landscape.
That doesn’t make them evil, but it does cause me concern around their awareness of the shifting US legal landscape.
Doesn’t make them necessarily evil. But yeah, overall I’d agree with you on it. I’m certainly in my guard since then though.
I recall him saying he was not american so it doesnt matter what he said. Which annoyed me cause then why open mouth?
That being said its more than understand the ceo is not the only voice in company and it was January 2025 so I may have outdated information if this stance is even relevant.
Yeah it’s a LOT far from the truth, like the distance between neptune and the sun
Yeah, I guess it depends on how you look at it and what are your limits on this stuff. I can see why you disagree even with me for sure.
It definitely didn’t look great. It certainly didn’t inspire confidence. Not bad enough for me to leave (once the head cooled), but enough for me to consider it if a competitor comes up with a similar offering (looking at Tuta Drive once they introduce it).
It was enough to get me to unsubscribe and move to tuta for email, pcloud for storage, and mullvad for VPN. I still have a free proton account but they will need to really regain my trust to get me to resubscribe.
Regardless of the walkback, it takes a real egghead to ‘accidentally’ praise an obviously corrupt fascist. Even from the narrow perspective of ‘what is best for their business’ it was moronic. You really think the guy in bed with Peter Theil, Palantir, Musk, etc etc and loves dictators who “rule with an iron fist” is somehow good for your privacy company and your users?
The statement revealed this dude as either at worst a fascist or at best a dipshit. Neither option is great for CEO of a company that requires very high trust from its users. Do I want to rely on and pay for products from the company he oversees? No not really.
I’m in a similar boat. I had Proton Unlimited because of a good deal they had, downgraded back to Mail Plus and got Mullvad for VPN (which looks to me better than Proton).
The thing about Proton is they make it easy to degoogle. I can easily set up gmail stuff to be forwarded for things I didn’t switch yet (or people who didn’t catch on the fact I changed emails) and they have a whole suite of products.
But really, if Tuta introduces a Drive on feature parity, I will consider a switch - though it will be pain to change everything again.
“Great pick by [Donald Trump]. 10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned.”
- Andy Yen, Proton CEO
“Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.”
- Proton
Proton Mail has long positioned itself as an apolitical company, dedicated solely to safeguarding user privacy. That’s why many were surprised when [Jan 2025] CEO Andy Yen posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the political landscape in the U.S. had shifted, stating, “10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned.”
This statement quickly went viral, leading to further controversy when Proton’s official Reddit account reinforced Yen’s sentiment. The now-deleted post suggested that Republicans were more inclined to take on Big Tech monopolies than corporate-aligned Democrats. However, within hours, Proton removed all traces of these remarks from its social media platforms.
Proton? No.
Yeah, that mess was quite disappointing. I’m still waiting for them to make a clarifying statement on it. I suppose removing it and just not getting further involved in politics is at least “better” than continuing to double down.
Well, hope you like AI shit too because the people at proton are in love with vibe coding. Get ready for your data to be exfilled by a prompt injection in a spam email.
Source?
https://lemmy.org/post/1309818
People found AI config files in their public repos. When they were found, Proton deleted all discussion of it and then altered the repository history to pretend the config files were never there.
Shady, scummy behavior. They’ve tried to do the same ‘delete everything and ignore it’ when their CEO publicly praised Trump and the Republican party, and then kept doubling down in reddit and mastodon comments until someone on the PR team wrested the account away from him and started mass-deleting all of it.
Unfortunately news reports- and even people- discussing his praise of Trump and the republican party often do not know that there was more than just the 1 or 2 statements he made, so it seems like it was at least slightly successful in that case.
Is this a trustworthy analysis? I wanted to understand what happened. I am confused after reading this a while back, but still seeing people actively saying he praised Trump. I do what to know exactly what happened in the end to make a judgement. I really want to know if I’m missing something.
I’m so, so tired of seeing that fucking article by ‘ovenplayer’ over and over again. It’s not your fault, mind you, but damn do I wish that abomination would get erased from the internet.
It’s incredibly biased, missing a ton of information, and just frankly outright lies to frame the whole thing as positively towards Proton as possible, and completely skips mentioning Proton’s attempted cleanup job. Even worse, it pretends to sound neutral while doing all that to try and gaslight people into thinking it’s actually a full journalistic dive into the issue.
I’m like 90% sure it’s just Proton’s PR team creating an easy astroturf- an account that was made JUST to post that article, nothing else, created right at the same time as the Proton PR team started working on the whole issue?
The only reason it’s only 90% instead of 100% is because there’s a lot of proton apologists who think Proton supporting this shit is ‘blown out of proportion’ because they have no idea what they’re talking about, but feel personally attacked because someone isn’t supporting ‘their team.’
I’m well aware of their CEO positions, but they have no impact on the security while using LLMs does. I understand people that stopped using Proton services because of any of their past actions, but until now nothing they did compromised the security of the products.
Will be interesting to see what their next annual independent security audit will say.
I mean, their security IS directly impacted by their support of a fascist government. They’ve already happily gave over personal information of an account owner to authorities when asked- the security posture doesn’t matter when they choose to circumvent it.
More to the point- they have a history of deleting proof of misdeeds and pretending they never happened. That is not what you want to see from a company touting its security!
Everyone should expect companies to give up any information they have because no CEO will go to prison for you, but they can’t give what they don’t have. If you know of any company that will go to prison for me, let me know.
As far as the case of sharing an IP address, it was made under Swiss court order and IP logging was only enabled after the court order and for that specific account only. And Swiss law at the time required review under Swiss privacy law for order to be granted, which has very high bar to be granted. So I wouldn’t classify that as “happily”. The content itself was never shared since Proton doesn’t have access.
Their marketing is shady as fuck, their foundation structure is a joke (CEO of the for profit entity has a voting majority) and they do hide like little chidren at any public pushback (like leaving Mastodon after the whole Trump/republicans debacle), but so far nobody raised any issues with their cryptographic security and they passed every single independent security audit.
It would be fair to discourage people from using for any of the above bullshit, but security is not one of them and bullshit claims like that just hurt privacy advocacy and keeps people in the existing monopolies.
I genuinely tried to find the source for this but all I got from google were ads for vibe coding and proton’s own AI. So take this half-remembered anecdote with a grain of salt, I guess. Best i’ve got is this
I’m actually hyped for this. A privacy-first alternative to google cloud. I still prefer to self-host all my stuff, but this is WAY more accessable to my less tech-savvy friends
Now all I need is a way to save stuff to my Proton Drive without it needing to sync to a local device…
Privacy first, yes, but who are Proton and can they be trusted? The amount of times they have responded with an immature or unprofessional reaction is too many to believe they are not going to sell or fuck with the data.
Privacy first for the authoritarian mindset is a walled garden, like Apple. They want to prevent anything from connecting or working with stuff because “security” and meanwhile harvest data about you.
Your criticism may be valid (I’m not familiar with any controversy), but if they are as bad as you say, do you have a better alternative?
I just moved from Google, so thus far it has felt like a significant improvement for me.
For cloud storage, Nextcloud is the best open source solution (and, I’d argue, the best solution period). I get it from Murena.io - hetzner.com is much cheaper, but I am happy to support Murena as they develop my phone OS. And I still save a lot every month compared to Dropbox. The instance provided by Murena has great OnlyOffice integration (sharing documents and working together with others works great) and an encrypted drive (vault - similar to what Dropbox used to have) enabled by default.
I use it for syncing files, contacts and calendars, passwords, working on documents together with others (collaborative simultaneous online editing works great with word and markdown, my collaborators only need a link), and really anything you’d expect from a cloud provider. I also it for a secondary e-mail account.
Part of what makes it great, of course, is that you can change service providers with relative ease, including self-hosting. Email is an exception of course, unless you come in with your own domain.
Not the exact development route I wanted them to take, but def pleased they’re doing something to improve existing services.
Definitely better than the whole (ongoing?) Proton Wallet ordeal.
With Proton Sheets, Proton Drive now becomes a true alternative to Google Drive.
Lol, okay Buddy, y’all still have a long way to go on that point.
up until they start spying like google, and selling you data, its only a matter of time.
I’ve been waiting for this!.. I have a couple of personal spreadsheets with Google but that’s it.
Now I can completely move to Proton (not the best but at least better) and spend my day filling and removing my Google Drive with garbage tehehehe
Is it called collabora calc?
Their philosophy is a bit fucked to be able to recommend them. https://forum.collaboraonline.com/t/collabora-office-on-windows-without-paying-microsoft/3619
How is reimbursement for the money Microsoft itself asks to be published on their Store, a “fucked up philosophy”?
You are blaming the wrong party.I have no issue with the payment, my issue is with the only available pre-built distribution being Microsoft Store.
It’s really an issue of their own making as they market themselves as an alternative to Microsoft prodcuts while using Microsoft as a dependancy in their pipeline. Which also makes it a single failure point.
nice
