The thing is, ownership of any of these can change at any time. Bitwarden, Mullvad, and Tutanota could be sold to very different owners.
That is up to and including something like uBlock Origin, which only has one developer, and would suddenly be very different if that developer died and the project had to be forked.
You can never trust that the person who takes on the reigns has the same ideals as the people running them now.
Hell, Mullvad was abused to the point they removed access to Port Forwarding on their VPN service, which has led to many people needing to switch to crummier, shadier VPNs that still offer port forwarding access. That's not Mullvad's fault, but it is an example of them having to change their philosophy and what they offer because of abuse.
Trust should only go so far, and loss of trust should be very easy. There's not a good reason to keep "trusting" something when it has fundamentally changed from its initial ideals.
Hell, Mullvad was abused to the point they removed access to Port Forwarding on their VPN service, which has led to many people needing to switch to crummier, shadier VPNs that still offer port forwarding access. That’s not Mullvad’s fault, but it is an example of them having to change their philosophy and what they offer because of abuse.
It's a real shame too. It was a nice feature.
Hell, Mullvad was abused to the point they removed access to Port Forwarding on their VPN service, which has led to many people needing to switch to crummier, shadier VPNs that still offer port forwarding access.
Could you explain what happened?
As clear as I can make it out, it seems like it was related to a search warrant that was executed on Mullvad.
Because just a little over a month after the news of the failed raid, there was news of them removing port forwarding.
https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/5/29/removing-the-support-for-forwarded-ports/
Emphasis mine.
Unfortunately port forwarding also allows avenues for abuse, which in some cases can result in a far worse experience for the majority of our users. Regrettably individuals have frequently used this feature to host undesirable content and malicious services from ports that are forwarded from our VPN servers. This has led to law enforcement contacting us, our IPs getting blacklisted, and hosting providers cancelling us.
The result is that it affects the majority of our users negatively, because they cannot use our service without having services being blocked.
The abuse vector of port forwarding has caught up with us, and today we announce the discontinuation of support for port forwarding. This means that if you are a user of forwarded ports, you will not be able to add or modify the ports you have in use.
They made a smart call that has probably increased the long term privacy of their users.
People were using port forwarding to host illegal shit, and governments were getting pissed off about it. Mullvad has been able to prove in court that they don't keep logs, but that's not a perfect deterrent; a properly motivated government, perhaps if somebody is using Mullvad to host CSAM, might attempt to legally force Mullvad to put logging in and add anti-canary clauses.
Preventing port forwarding keeps customers as consumers rather than hosters, and avoids this issue.
This is true and people should always be mindful of this. Additionally you should consider not just the ownership of the companies but also the infrastructure they rely on such as their rented servers, payment processors, on-site staff etc. However commercial VPNs remain a convenient compromise for many use cases. These services are probably fine for your shitposing needs but should not be relied upon for activism for instance.
Same thing just happened with IVPN :-\
I used to use proton until I saw them give info for a warrant. After that I gave up on the VPN thing. If I lived in a country with limited streaming options I might use them but
bruh, i can't be the only one confused why state farm's drive safe app was being touted...
allows their car insurance to spy on their location data and driving habits Is curious about privacy
Okay buddy
I love Mole, Shield and Road
Ah, the new pokemon game that just came out.
the mole creates the tunnel for the road, and the shield is for the travelers' protection
Why do you trust a Germany based secure email over something like Proton? At least Mullvad is Sweden based.
Permanently Deleted
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=IeXaYR4ed9c
https://piped.video/watch?v=QCx_G_R0UmQ
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Because in Germany we value privacy and the protection of personal data
Sure. Ask the CCC...
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https://www.engadget.com/protonmail-climate-activist-ip-swiss-french-authorities-233004304.html
Europol requested it. Even though you think your service is not under 14 eyes there still is gonna be many other problems.
You can always find problems with the service itself.
And that proves what exactly? Swiss law required them to hand over an IP address. Swiss ptivacy is not absolute. They have laws. An IP address didn't grant them access to the encrypted emails. Proton openly admits they had no idea who the user was. The activist should have used a VPN, which Proton also offers as a service, and then whatever activity trail they linked to the IP would have died at Proton's VPN network.
Protonmail then went to court, and got the law changed so it doesn't happen again https://www.reuters.com/technology/proton-wins-swiss-court-appeal-over-surveillance-rules-2021-10-22/
Five and eleven eyes doesn't matter if the service is encrypted and open sourced. Also, did you know that Switzerland has no superior privacy laws comparing to Germany? It's all marketing bluff.
Selfhosting an email is very hard but I think that at the end it’s worth it
I read some horror stories about folks who self-hosted for years and how they eventually quit and moved to an established email provider. It didn't seem like something I wanted to deal with.
Do you think using one of those federated email networks where it's invite only and between people you know would have any appreciable use cases in conjunction with an established provider? I can think of having a small org use it maybe but not between friends or family.
Permanently Deleted
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=IeXaYR4ed9c
https://piped.video/watch?v=QCx_G_R0UmQ
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
KeePass is also a good password manager, it's open source and you get to store the password database anywhere you like.
I have bitwarden and mullvad, but what's the other one?
It’s Tutanota, an email service
keepass > bitwarden
vpn providers should be reviewed regularly
email is inherintly insecure/non-private, self hosted is best
why do you prefer keepass to bitwarden? has it better privacy or is it just a personal preference because you like the UI more for example?
keepass is a different paradigm. it uses a locally encrypted file. many frontends for it (use keepassxc and keepassdx). dont have to rely on some 3rd party, even if they say they have e2ee. theres no better privacy (and security) for an app than not using it with the internet. im not too concerned about ui for pw manager personally, the less time i spend w it unlocked the better. only (slight) problem for me: multi device usage (i just copy the file onto my phone occasionally). general rule of thumb: if it can be selfhosted, it is best to.
i think bitwarden is the best one of its type, it comes down to your needs and threat model
its more user friendly. Just a file you have to have. You can encrypt that double and tripple on bitwarden nope.
Proton does all of this at once
You do also kind of put all your eggs in one basket so to speak though. I don't have anything against Proton and the pricing makes sense if you value all their services and pay for Ultimate (though by my estimate, less sense if you are only looking for a smaller handful of services). However, if you go fully into Proton for everything, you're placing your trust into an entire stack of services and it can end up a single point of failure.
I trust their privacy claims but if you backup your email and calendar you can just as easily move elsewhere if Proton does go down. Having only one provider can make things a lot easier to manage.
However, if you go fully into Proton for everything, you're placing your trust into an entire stack of services and it can end up a single point of failure.
Yeah, I know
The point is that Proton offers good service at a reasonable price, and for me that's it, that's perfectly fine
Still can't bring myself to use proton pass. I'll be much happier when proton drive better integrates with desktop machines as well but calendar, VPN, email and the bonus simplelogin premium are way too useful.
Permanently Deleted
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=IeXaYR4ed9c
https://piped.video/watch?v=QCx_G_R0UmQ
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Thank you, I'll watch it later
For anyone still using Mullvad and wants port-forwarding, I recommend AzireVPN.
Good list! I use all of them too.
I don't get what you mean, Mullvad supports port forwarding
According to this blog post, they don't seem to 🙂 https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/5/29/removing-the-support-for-forwarded-ports/
They very recently stopped supporting it.
I might swap bitwarden by passbolt as it uses a more recent programming stack, although vaultwarden looks to be a good alternative too.
Does a more recent stack translate to any real benefits?
Not necessarily, plenty of good programs written in C89 for example.
With something that is heavily library dependent, having a more recent development stack may mean better maintained libraries but definitely not a sure thing.
No love for KeePass?
I trust bitwarden, but android app doesnt trust me!
wdym?
One of these is Bitwarden. What are the other two?
Mullvad, Tut(o/a)nata
That mole is sus to me, I am more like into Snakedragons.
Snakedragons
I heard it was a mythical creature
What's bottom right? Top is Bitwarden and Left is Mullvad VPN
Tutanota, an email service.
that's Tutanota
tutanota, an email service
Had anyone heard of or tried buttercup? Any thoughts?
I was mulling around the idea of using KeePass but it seems to be too inconvenient. The pretty UI and cool name makes me want to try buttercup.
KeePass + Syncthing is pretty convenient.
Buttercup looks to be using AES-CBC with PBKDF2 and no authentication, but I only took a very brief look so I may have missed important details. That's not secure if an attacker can alter the vault file, and PBKDF2 isn't a great KDF to use. If you use this, you definitely need a 128-bit or higher entropy passphrase (10 Diceware words). You usually want that anyway, but using a weaker string for your master password will be less secure than you expect compared to something using a modern KDF.
Thanks for the insightful response. I'm gonna spend some time searching for all those terms you mentioned because much of it is stuff I've only heard in passing or never heard of at all. I'll try to find what works well enough for me. Wish me luck!
tutanota is terrible though
Tutanota is one of the few good E-Mail services that i can think of, what's so terrible about tutanota?
The lock in and the lies. The first being your inability to read your emails in another client. Second is the lie that it's secure when email is inherently not second. It's making a false promise.
Oh and I forgot the new issue, being that you can't zoom mail, which is infuriating.
Disclaimer: I pay for Tutanota and have for a few years. But I'm tired of it. Will switch to another season once K-9 becomes Thunderbird for Android
I've been saying this for years. Aside from the other issues people have with them I found their support to easily be the worst I've encountered. It's a shame because I really liked their pricing structure at the time.
mine is larger for sure
As a US consumer, I can't use a lot of these VPNs. When you dig into how local governments are trying to break encryption in many countries overseas it makes you slow to sign up for services. The worst case would be you use a service, get invested and a few weeks later new legislation you're not following/in the know about gets passed and some of your data is now in some foreign governments jurisdiction more so than it was before.
It's not that Germany or Sweden in particular do that today but I also haven't quite looked into its bounds, if five-eyes alliance reaches them, etc. There is a lot you have to be cognizant of.
Also I like Bitwarden but Vaultwarden is the way to go; just make sure to donate/pay somehow for bitwarden if you use its clients.
Translation of the logos?
bitwarden (password manager) top, mullvad (vpn) left, tutanote (email provider) right
Thx!
just a side note for everyone out there that uses bitwarden: you can reset your password with just your email. that means the admin can see your passwords. The only 3 upstream password managers that don't have that "feature" are 1Password, lastpass and keypass (not counting gpg-based script in bash n friends). Lastpass is obviously a mediocre solution (too many breaches), keypass isn't for everyone (UX). 1Password is a very solid solution and it has public security audits
I've got nothing with agilebits/1Password - i just use it after spending days researching (also I'm a former IT security engineer)
It's so out of context it's almost untrue.
Bitwarden can't find or change your password, and their admins absolutely can't see them either.
You're talking about the "admin password reset" feature offered to organizations (and which doesn't concern lambdas users at all), which must be explicitly activated and which allows admins not to see our password, but to trigger a password reset with notification to the user.
Once the password has been reset, all you have to do is change it, and nobody else has access to it.
If that were true that it wouldn't be just a side note because it would render the whole Bitwarden product useless. It'd pretty much mean that they are not encrypting passwords at all, so even worse than infamous LastPass. But as the other comment pointed out, it's pretty much not like that.
No you can't reset your bitwarden master password with just an email. I invite you to try and let is know how it went.
Been using Bitwarden since it was on horrendous light blue theme, and I'm fully aware that users cannot easily reset their master password through email ever since.
