What part of Windows (or Microsoft software in general) is not a data collection service?
If you aren’t using an insider edition then Notepad is still safe
… for now. They’ve already replaced the old Notepad with a bloated UWP version, so it probably won’t be long before it starts sending telemetry as well.
bloated?
I think then new Notepad is just perfectly fine.
The tabs are nice, but I notice it takes 3x as long to open (TBF it’s still under a second) and take up 10x the memory (12MB vs 1.2MB), for basically doing the same thing as the old version.
Thankfully Kate is available for Windows https://kate-editor.org/post/2021/2021-05-09-kate-21.04-in-the-windows-store/
Impressive
When I look at my Pi Hole dashboard while my girlfriend’s Mac is booted, I’m surprised by how many requests are blocked, given that apple somehow has the reputation of respecting their user’s privacy.
And when she boots into Windows 10 MS’s data stealing gets downright creepy.
I am lucky enough not to have a Windows 11 PC on my network but I think I would see even more denied requests.Proprietary software is very creepy
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Hey Proton how about you quit privacy-washing and actually prioritize and release feature parity products for Linux so your customers aren’t being herded onto windows’ data harvesting platform just so they can use your supposedly privacy forward products
The Linux Experiment recently interviewed the CEO who answered this question.
Basically it’s the same as anything else. Linux requires more effort to code for due to its variety of distributions, and has a significantly smaller userbase.
In short, don’t blame Proton, blame the (lack of) users.
I mean, can’t you just package your app in flatpack or even snap? Bam, your app works on 99% of distributions for little effort. That’s what Spotify does, and I’d argue they have even less incentive to support Linux than proton does
Spoken like someone who has never developed a app package
I don’t know, I’m not a developer. Lots of companies don’t make their products available on Linux, most cite similar reasoning, so it’s unsurprising. But I agree it’s disappointing. I really wish Linux was more user-friendly.
He also answered this claim, it is right for apps that aren’t stuff like Proton VPN that can’t work in a sandboxed environment. They are working on it iirc
Screw VPNs, give us everything else!
Well… A drive app will need to access the filesystem pretty in deep to support file syncing, whuch is harder to do on flatpak, their password manager is an extension so on linux too, and for the mail bridge app I think it’s already on linux. Those are all the existing proton services
Sure, as long as you don’t need any integration with other software, don’t need arbitrary IPC, and actually keep some dependencies in line with some common denominator because there’s only so much you can do with static linking (oh excuse me, distributing the shared libraries in the same package as your binaries as if it’s a new thing) once it reach the “program must actually run” part.
Flatpack and every other similar solution that are described as “works everywhere” always come with a heck of limitations.
Thunderbird, MegaSync, Bitwarden all distribute as flatpak just fine, and it covers most of the functionality of proton suite.
Ironically the only two services this list doesn’t cover: Proton VPN and Proton Bridge, are on flathub…
Last in checked email ain’t all that complex, so seems like a good match
Variety of distributions doesn’t affect the effort in coding, it adds overhead for package management. Only rarely does it require the developer to add some extra code for either an edge case or some specific library requirement.
On top of that, Flatpak and AppImage exist to solve this issue if you don’t want to deal with it.
This is a pretty rich statement coming from Proton who has very publicly given out “private” info about its users to law enforcement without even so much as a hint of resistance. I doubt they would want to spend any resources on cross platform if they don’t even back up their claim about true privacy.
Even zoom has a lazy script that packages their app in literally every possible format possible because it runs the exact same on every distro. It is not that hard. Literally the only way this doesn’t work if you hired some 3rd party MSFT dev to create some insane C++ app with pure Windows API calls instead of using a library.
That’s a bullshit excuse. Looks at Arch’s AUR. Look at Gentoo’s guru. What happens for proprietary stuff is a deb or rpm package is downloaded, extracted and files copies where they should be. That’s it. And it works, because the cornerstone of the system is libc and the kernel. And these, for the overwhelming majority of applications, behave exactly the same on all distros.
I think the bigger issue is the variety of distros that end up not being compatible. Even if you overall have a lot of Linux users if they, for the sake of argument, distribute evenly between all distros then it’s still a lot of effort to code. The only difference is that the argument will change from “Linux has a small userbase” to “Distribution X has a small userbase”.
Linux doesn’t just need more users to be worthwhile to develop for, it also needs a distro agnostic solution to run software. That or significantly reducing (or streamlining) the amount of distros so the developers would have far less configurations to account for.
Flatpaks and nix packages work on pretty much every distro.
That’s why I mentioned both 🙂
Edit : okay yea i fd up guys anything to support women was only thinking of the slezzers
I don’t want google to read emails from my doctor, or between me and my friend in a country that has an authoritarian government, or really anything. If you think you have nothing you need to keep out of the massive surveillance network most companies have become, you’re mistaken.
Do you realize that right now there are US states trying to make publicly existing as a transgender person prosecutable as an obscene act? Or that there are states where abortion is illegal? I’m assuming you are american but that also applies to other countries. In Russia any public indication that one is LGBT is liable to get one persecuted by law and by bands of raging homophobes.
At the best of times this attitude “if you have done nothing wrong, you got nothing to hide” is naive. But these days, as the many flaws of the justice system and the raging bigotry of many people are transparent to see and widely commented on, it’s downright clueless to say something like this.
you are right i didnt remember there are good people too
Is this satire ‘/s’?
I don’t use proton so forgive me if this is a stupid question…
But do you need an app? Can’t you just use whatever browser you want for their services?
Of course you can access everything through the web on Linux. I really like Proton’s web mail interface. Unfortunately, Proton does not have a Linux analog to their windows client that provides automatic file syncing. I think that what the commenter is complaining about.
There is a dedicated Linux client for Proton VPN and in my experience it integrates quite well on Debian-based distributions.
Ya no drive client is the worst, followed by the fact the VPN app lacks a ton of features compared to their windows one. I don’t care about a desktop mail app personally since I use Thunderbird.
Also, there’s Thunderbird if you NEED a fat client for your email. Except Proton’s strength is where the service is located and the security of access. Having a full copy locally on your system kind of defeats that.
If you have properly implemented LUKS I don’t see any reason that should be a concern.
Unless you also employ very strict sandboxing, a rogue app or script could read those emails from your running system while LUKS is unlocked. There are plenty of CVEs relating to code execution; an infected JPEG, browser exploit, or any number of other things could expose your Thunderbird email database or the running memory to an attacker, particularly if you use “secure” services like Proton because you’re the kind of person who would be targeted by state actors.
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You need a special app that they call a “bridge” because Proton doesn’t support normal IMAP and SMTP, so you have to use the bridge to be able to use normal email clients.
But they are now porting their webmail as a cross-platform desktop Electron app, after which they’ll just likely discontinue the bridge “for safety”. And so this issue will become moot.
I’m grateful you put “for safety” in quotes there. That’s definitely bullshit talk. I’m further grateful that I just self-host my email. I can skip the bullshit of companies making random decisions that are ultimately against my wishes.
I finally said screw it and am leaving Proton for a proper paid service. I never upgraded Proton to a paid tier because it never matured enough for me to use for real. I never once migrated contacts over to it (just a couple people who understood I was testing it).
Yea, so there’s a connection to my credit card. At least it’s with a professional org that has proper modern mail management (something post-2000), and gives you tools to manage your email.
I really wanted Proton to work out so I could recommend it to friends and family. But it’s a terrible user experience. I missed 50 emails because it keeps moving them to spam even after I set the sender as not spam. Oh, and spam management requires (according to support) logging into the web, not thru the mobile client. 🤦♂️
Can you imagine telling a customer this with a straight face and not seeing a problem with it? I’m using your app and can’t manage spam?
That sucks! I have never experienced any of these issues
What service are you moving to? I’m curious of other alternatives.
Here’s a good starting point. All of them are hosted in Europe and enjoy strong privacy protection as an extra bonus.
I mean, this is the mail service whose own docs candidly state that their mobile app “sometimes doesn’t work”. 'Nuff said.
Don’t worry, they’re preparing to discontinue all their desktop-native apps in favor of webmail (and webmail running in Electron).
After which I expect they’ll start squeezing their paying customers, since they won’t be able to leave anymore. Or sell the company, get out with “clean hands” and a wad of cash, and let someone else do the squeezing.
No shit. There’s a reason they are killing the nice and simple Windows Mail app; it allows you to sync with your email without Microsoft servers between.
Also, the biggest issue for me is the UX. I use outlook for my work email and like to separate my work and personal life, so soon I just won’t have an app for my personal email on my PC.
If anyone knows of a similar windows mail app with good touch support and without such a traditional mouse designed UI, please share it.
The new thunderbird UI looked neat and modern.
They’re still working out some kinks, but yes, the new UI of Thunderbird 115+ is pretty good.
Thunderbird has a new UI?
I’m on 115 and i dont notice anything different from how its always been… (This isnt some joke, or insult, or anything. I genuinely don’t notice anything different?)
If you update from a previous version then it configures itself to be similar to the old UI. If you do a clean install it looks very different.
fresh install on a fresh OS install.
Weird
Isn’t that more of a replacement for Outlook? It doesn’t look designed around touch like the windows mail app.
Outlook in Office (365) is the actual Outlook.
This is like the Lite Edition.
Huh? Okay, well I don’t want either of those. I want a light touch first mail app. If it is like any version of Outlook for PC, I’m not interested as it doesn’t meet what I originally asked for.
I’ve been using Thunderbird since forever. It’s not perfect but I like it better than bloated and laggy Outlook.
I thought Thunderbird was getting increasingly shitty and slower/clunky, until I realised it was actually my ISP’s mail server getting increasingly shit. This became immediately obvious the day that emails started taking 12-18 hours to land in my inbox. Reallllll handy for those time limited account reset emails. Funnily enough, they were planning real soon to outsource their email to another company for the low, low cost of just a few extra dollars a month, opt in now!
Transferred my IMAP inbox to my own domain, everything is now awesome again.
But better for touch and simpler than windows mail?
I am only using Outlook for work email.
If by “better for touch” you mean a phone app: no, Thunderbird is for your computer. In Android I can recommend FairEmail.
No, I mean like windows mail app for windows. A large screen app that can easily used with only touch. Like I said in my first comment.
Failing to read my comments and just answering the questions you want to answer is not helpful.
Sorry I missed that. I don’t think you’ll ever be happy using Windows on a touch device though. Too much relies on the traditional UX pattern, especially third-party applications.
I’ve been paying for mailspring for a few years now, and I love it. It has touch and gesture support, is open source, and is available on Windows, MacOS, and Linux.
Its paid plan includes some nice features like email tracking - which you can’t really get from just a simple client and (needs a server to track who has opened an email and when) - and id lookup, for things like quickly seeing the LinkedIn profile of a sender not in your contacts list.
Definitely my favorite desktop client by a wide margin, and one I would recommend wholeheartedly.
Edit: Just to be clear, it’s available for free as well.
Thank you for actually reading my comment and suggesting something appropriate, though I’m not convinced by the UI images. I’ll have to test the touch support myself, but I’ll check it out.
While I don’t use it like that myself, the website touts “touch and gesture support”, so I’m assuming there’s something in there.
It is free, so give it a shot - maybe it’ll scratch your itch!
Is it a local-only client, or does it download email on their cloud servers first?
Local only.
Even if you pay for their subscription, when you get to a new computer you need to manually authenticate with each service. But, it remembers which accounts you have, so it’s faster than manually setting up each account from scratch. Basically “we know you have Gmail, xmail, ymail - tap each account to reauthenticate”
It’s a good way to have (part of) the convenience of a cloud service, while combining it with the security of local only clients.
Edit: all of this is optional, you can choose not to let their cloud service know of any of your accounts.
I really liked the mail app, the outlook one sucks
As a guy who runs Windows 10 LTSC on one of the machine, yeah I agree it do suck ass
Not only it’s UI design doesn’t fit at all with overall Windows 10 UI design, it also runs significantly slower than the old Windows Mail app
And in the typical Microsoft fashion, they’ll shoved that garbage into everyone’s throat despite nobody ever asked for it
Fuck that
What especially galled me was as I was updating my laptop before flashing to Linux the new outlook will not work unless edge installed, I had just uninstalled that pile of garbage.
Ah well, at least pop_os works great 😃
If you’re still using Windows 11, they’re still collecting your data. Sure, no need to give them more, but maybe that’s the push you need to move elsewhere. There are really good options.
I’m waiting for Microsoft to bring back the option to move the taskbar to the side of the screen before upgrading to windows 11 from 10.
I may switch to Linux if IT forces the update and I can’t stop it.
Wino Mail has a pretty good UI similar to the Mail app. You can find it in the Store.
Thank you for actually reading my comment and suggesting something appropriate instead of whatever gets you the most karma (“use thunderbird/Linux!”).
I don’t know any of the alternatives that have similar UI to the Windows Mail app
But it is possible to get back the old Windows Mail app by obtaining the dumped package file for the app (either by looking for it online or leeching it from the official Microsoft Store website using store.adguard.ru) and then install it using Powershell
At least that’s what I do with one of my systems running Windows 10 LTSC, since that version of Windows doesn’t came with Windows Mail and MS Store pre-installed
Thank you for actually reading my comment and suggesting something appropriate! I’ll have to figure out how to get the package file myself, thanks!
I got a popup saying “wanna try the new Outlook app”? So I did and the fucking thing immediately inserted ads that resembled email into my inbox. If this is the future I’ll install Thunderbird.
Thunderbird is great!
I tried the new outlook for about 30 seconds. They injected ads into my mail.
Instantly uninstalled it.
I hope you changed your email account passwords after. What many people don’t realise is that when you fill out the “configure your email account” form, the details aren’t kept local to your PC. You are giving Microsoft the login details to your email account. This is a major departure from how Outlook and Windows Mail used to work.
So you’ve uninstalled the app, but how can you ensure they aren’t still polling your emails?
I mean, if it’s an Outlook email and not from another provider using Outlook as a frontend, it’s part of Microsoft’s ecosystem anyways. Unless your whole inbox is encrypted (and it’s probably not if it’s not being advertised as such lol), it’s on Microsoft’s servers and they have control over it anyways.
That said, definitely change the password if you just used Outlook as your email client at some point!
Well that’s the thing. The new Outlook app is now the default email program on Windows. So you’ll have people setting up their Fastmail, Gmail, GMX and countless other mailboxes on it, just like they always have.
Except this time your password is being given to Microsoft, not just the email app on your computer.
That makes sense. I always just used my email from the browser unless there’s something specific I need from an email client or the setup is employer-provided/mandated, but I guess a lot of people just go with whatever is put in front of their face first.
I use the old outlook, so M$ still has my info.
the new version of thunderbird is amaaaazzzzing
Really. It’s been a decade at least since I last tried it. It was primitive and error prone at the time.
It’s been a decade at least since I last tried it. It was primitive
the old versions were not very good, but ‘supernova’ came out a few months ago and everything improved. Its really good
Already downloaded and installed. Very quick and easy setup, easy to use and intuitive, no bs. Thumbs up. Thanks for the reminder it exists.
I Sincerely hope you logged back in to outlook.com after to reject all permissions and tear out your data/accounts
Nope. But I think I’ll do that now. Thanks for the prompt.
Gmail does the same, at least for me on mobile when I look at my promotions Inbox
You can turn this multiple inbox feature off. Then you will not have that problem anymore. I did that and now have an ad free Gmail app
Thanks for the tip!
It was so broken when I tested it that if you dragged a folder two levels deep it would disappear. Had to roll back to get that folder out.
For a few years, I had hope that Microsoft would become a respectable, user-oriented, even FOSS-friendly company, but they finally seem to have settled on AI enshitification as their main business model.
FOSS friendly company
I’m not sure what you are smoking but you’re high as balls dude. If there is any company that has as it’s motto “fuck and destroy open source” and as slogan “fuck everything for money”, then it’s Microsoft.
Microsoft paid SCO to make false claims against Linux in an attempt to destroy Linux and extort large companies away from Linux. The destroy part failed, but they got multiple large companies to steer away from Linux. Normal people would go to jail for that, Microsoft execs not so much.
Totally agree with that. MS is an evil fuck company hellbent on destroying Linux from the inside. But Linux is not a container or box or thing one can just destroy. It’s been fun watching them support Linux to try to infiltrate something. They haven’t realized that there’s nothing to infiltrate.
They haven’t realized that there’s nothing to infiltrate.
There’s always something. The whole point of infiltration is that it shouldn’t be detected until the frog is edible.
Ridiculing one’s enemy is just always the wrong thing to do, no exceptions.
They’re latest strategy is to be FOSS… Ohh look at us! We can run Ubuntu from Windows now! We give money to Foss for development. Let’s give foss GitHub so they can store all their software safely with us!..blah blah bam! Let’s make this free software not free anymore…let’s fire these key Foss people…let’s make GitHub hard to access. Microsoft is a sneaky bastard for sure.
To be fair, Microsoft is a big company with various divisions. Parts of Microsoft are doing really great work in the FOSS area I would say, but really only if you’re a developer. As a general user… they do kind of suck yet.
WSL was a good start, change comes slowly to monoliths but they always have shareholder value as their defining principle so it’s a real tightrope.
Change to Linux on main PC when?
When gaming is 100% the same on Linux you’ll see more people pick it up.
It’s already happened — 90% of games will work flawlessly now on both Windows and Linux. It’s just that the remaining 10% are different on each platform, for various reasons. Pick your poison. Usually it’s those 10% that will dictate the decision for you — but the OS itself has stopped making a difference for gaming years ago.
15 years ago. But I still gotta use Windows at work.
TBH when I got this exact pop up on my last windows laptop (dell xps13) I actually panicked and installed PopOS on it.
I didn’t feel like distro hopping, I just needed it to work. I guess that shows how I feel about PopOS at the moment.
I always chuckle at the name PopOS because in Spanish that means poops. I’m sorry.
Haven’t even finished my first coffee and already I’ve learned something new today! Thanks!
And then after the coffee it’ll be time for some more popos
Hey at least you picked a great distro to settle on!
As someone with an iCloud account, every time I try to use Outlook it randomly deletes emails from my iCloud account. I’ve posted this multiple times on Microsoft support site with others confirming and since it’s been more than year with no acknowledgment or fix I am convinced it’s a feature not a bug. YMMV.
Just stop using it with outlook then?
I wasn’t asking for your advise but was merely pointing out experience that others may not want to repeat. I don’t use Outlook at all.
You sure you did not use POP3?
Yes I went over all settings multiple times with Outlook support. It’s a bug/feature they are not interested in fixing.
“I heard you like data collection so we put data collecting email app in your data collecting OS so we can collect data about our data collection”
spoiler
Should I make it into a ‘Yo Dawg’ meme?
Always
Powered by AI!
Uninstall that shit.
Edit: if you HAVE to use Outlook (because of work, etc), use the web version of it exclusively.
I give the web version credit, it’s pretty swell.
The web version and the new version look and feel nearly identical for me. Been using it at work for 6 months now.
Or the PWA version if you’re so inclined.
What’s the privacy conscious, and future-proof way to have email, that isn’t as crazy expensive as Proton?
Yeah, that update was the final push that moved me to Linux on my primary computer. I’ve used Linux for about 20 years on everything that wasn’t my gaming PC and between the advancements made by Valve and the increasing invasive nature of Windows put an end to my relationship with Microsoft.
I am aware this comes from a competitor and they want to go all out. However, what is unclear to me, does this also happen to paying users?
For my small business I use Office 365 Business Essentials, whatever it’s called now, the cheapest one. Been using it for many years and for the price/features, it’s pretty unbeatable. I use the new Outlook on my workstation since a few months, it’s pretty slow and not feature complete but was ok. I’m in the EU and haven’t been prompted with that window where it talks about advertisers. Will check Monday if I see a list of advertisers but I think for paid users it’s not the same.
For personal mail, I use Thunderbird, I even donated to them. I like it but would have been great if it had a view like Outlook. At the moment it has table view and cards view. Wish the cards view would more customizable.
Proton has a business plan, too.
I know but I don’t see any benefits to switching. It’s a little more money for fewer features and it’s still a somewhat new product.
I’ve read some reviews and a lot of people complained about their mails not being sent/received. Might be a limited thing but my email is working so I don’t feel brave enough to start messing around with it and clients not getting my emails.
This is why I don’t get excited when I hear some software that I already use and works fine gets an update. More often than not the update makes the software worse.
It used to not be the case, but as of the past decade or so, it seems like more and more software is getting lower quality or substantially bug ridden. Not just on windows either. It’s everything now.
Back in the day, each update used to fix bugs, add genuinely useful features, and were eagerly anticipated. Now, I get to do lovely things like RMA a bricked steam deck on stable channel or listen to New Teams’ ringer doubling, once before a call is picked up, and ringing again after the phone is answered. I wish I was joking for either of these.
As if the old outlook app wasn’t as …. Oh Shit! This is more egregious
It’s almost as if Microsoft doesn’t do that already!
