Nym, Threema and Proton said they would leave Switzerland over this. The question is where to go. Certainly not to any EU country (ProtectEU, Chat Control).
There's nowhere to go, since it's a constant game of whack-a-mole. Small island countries in the Caribbean can brag about super lax laws that aid privacy and evasion but none of them will ruin relationships with US or the EU just to protect a small 10 person privacy focused tech company when a warrants comes from abroad.
For reference, Switzerland had to change their banking secrecy laws decades ago due to pressure from the US, Germany and France, so you can guess how well other weaker countries will fare against such pressure. And let's not forget the famous Crypto AG scandal in Switzerland, so I'm not buying the famous "Swiss privacy" marketing fluff at all anymore as much as I like the country. Just like Crypto AG, every tech company is, or will be, infiltrated by alphabet agencies by cooperation or by force. If you want real privacy you have to self host, that's the only way.
Plus, I feel like we're focusing at the wrong issue here. Do we really want lawless places on this planet to exist where companies and individuals can escape the courts and law enforcement of their own nations? Something that will be exploited mostly for nefarious purposes than protecting privacy of law abiding people.
The real solution is holding powerful governments accountable against invasions of privacy by their voters, not creating lawless zones where companies and powerful individuals can go and hide to avoid laws they dislike. If laws are bad, just change the laws, don't normalize law avoidance. If you normalize law avoidance about one thing, why not about other things as well like theft, taxation, human trafficking etc? The whole point of developed western nations is democratic representation, the strong rule of law and fairness of the court system. Write to your representative.
Iceland?
It’s tough. The world is, overall, going through a shift toward authoritarianism of various flavors, and people are voting for it because of incredibly successful propaganda and fear of change.
Russia would be pretty good right now (for non-Russians).
If it is just a VPN, a "cybercompany" does not need to be incorporated somewhere. If is is just virtual, it does not have to follow any laws in a jurisdictions. Servers can come and go...
That has been obvious to me after they requested me to upload my passport/id in order to unblock the newly paid and created account. But that happened only after the payment page, of course.
I'm a little bitter, but for what I need it, I'll let it pass this time.
edit: it is a business account, but I have never been asked for this anywhere else. you have all the company required data, all my required data, why do you need my id? maybe personal accounts are treated differently.
After reading the article, that company name takes a whole new meaning. I use to think it meant "we are maniacal about computing" (informatique in French), now I suppose it means: "we are maniac hoarder of metadata"
Well fuck, guess I'm moving all my domains again. And I just moved away from Gandi.
Does anyone have recommendations for domain registrars that support .ch and .li domains and ideally also supported by lego (my current acme client of choice)?
Besides the blaming of informaniak, their email hosing for 18 Euros a year is actually a pretty good deal. If you can live with US hosting for email, purelymail.com is worth a look.
I wanted to take back control over my emails so recently I started to look long and hard at ProtonMail, Infomaniak (kMail), Mailbox.org, and others. In the end, I chose mailbox.org. I could have been really annoyed right now given how painful updating accounts/credentials and account migration are!
You could work within their parameters but continually communicate an enormous amount of garbage that is not illegal but would be flagged, it would be an interesting experiment, and then they could decide whether or not they’d wish to continue.
Personally, I think that privacy is a losing game, like gambling. The best case is that we all work within the parameters. But in any case, the amount of time and effort that is dedicated to privacy is keeping humanity from more important things.
The main annoyance I have with companies and organizations that engage in working with our private data is that eventually they will lose control of the data, and if bad things come because of that, we are the victims. This may be our physical and mental health data, and we could lose our jobs or have to pay higher insurance. This may be our financial data, and we lose our savings for retirement. This may be our personal historical thoughts that we don’t wish to broadcast, and we lose relationships and our jobs.
Privacy at one level is a luxury but at other levels are not, unless society as a whole embraces that we’re all unhealthy and we’re all flawed, but at that point perhaps things become too flexible and very bad things happen.
unless society as a whole embraces that we’re all unhealthy and we’re all flawed, but at that point perhaps things become too flexible and very bad things happen.
What bad things do you see happening? I see that as a good thing, we are all flawed, to me, society internalized that fact seems to be an opportunity to make it a better more compassionate one but alas I don't see that happening in the near future.
A combination of good pricing, sane behavior and an offering with many TLDs right now is https://www.netim.com, based in France. Their UI is quite outdated, but it works ok. I've switched here after leaving Gandi.
If you're fine with a US-based provider, https://porkbun.com/ also has good pricing and a tech oriented mindset. They don't support many ccTLDs though.
In general, https://tld-list.com/ is the best place to research domain registrars in my opinion.
Despite it's limitations on the UX side, PGP is still the better option for email privacy I think. That and using your own domain. There's tor for the web when one needs it. None of these are ideal, but they depend a lot less on trusting third parties.
I just moved my stuff from Google Drive over to Infomaniak kDrive, and I paid for a year of service... I don't really want to try to migrate 100s of gigs of data again :/
I was just at the start of the journey of moving our entire company over to Infomaniak from Google. Perfect timing. Anyone have suggestions for where to go instead?
It will happen sooner or later just like it happened to their banking laws. There is no reason for the global trend of deprivatization (in all senses) to reverse.
In other news, Proton VPN and probably email are also subject to surveillance by the Swiss Federal Intelligence Agency NDB, including decryption of VPN traffic and data retention for up to 6 months. Switzerland is no save haven for your communication needs.
It is a fairly common attitude amongst hosting companies.
And understable from a business perspective. If you are one of the few hosting companies that host truly anonymous VPN and email providers, you are going get some troublesome customers that likely are going to end up being expensive.
Everything can be justified as a business interest. Even criminal behavior could. So that argument is NOT acceptable. This is about a Swiss company, not Russia. If Switzerland wants to go there, let's at least be honest about it.
I thought that this proposal was broadly opposed by Swiss political parties, is this not accurate? Is there a realistic chance of this passing or is it all sound and heat?
As sad as it undoubtedly sounds (and as if we're already saying goodbye to the utopia), I think this choice might be wiser than we initially thought.
Consider the implications of AI knowing everything about you, even down to your biometric behavior. Think about the threat of disinformation campaigns targeting democracies.
I know my stance may seem weak in terms of ideals, and I feel a bitter regret toward my former self.
But shouldn’t we, as humans, try to honor our shared values and act accordingly?
I am aware that a single hosting company won't do anything regarding those considerations, but ... anyways. I feel sorry for writing those sentences and sharing my doubts.
> try to honor our shared values and act accordingly
What "shared values"? Most of the values people hold as "important" has people on the other side with the opposite values, and both of those are "correct".
There are no "shared values" that all humans agreed upon.
> Consider the implications of AI knowing everything about you, even down to your biometric behavior. Think about the threat of disinformation campaigns targeting democracies. I know my stance may seem weak in terms of ideals, and I feel a bitter regret toward my former self. But shouldn’t we, as humans, try to honor our shared values and act accordingly?
I don't understand this train of thought, what exactly are you saying?
I can interpret it as "it's wise to end online anonymity and feed all personal information (including biometrics) to AIs to enforce social rules" which is, frankly, an absurd proposal even if you are extremely naïve, not even considering one single negative aspect of the loss of all privacy, being managed by a machine in a societal level.
Or I can try to interpret it as feeding all of this into AIs create insurmountable threats, to democracy, to the individual, etc. which is somewhat what I'd expect to logically follow from feeding all this personal data into AI models.
But none of these interpretations are actually possible for me to land at based on what and how you wrote, I can't make sense of it.
'You are being watched. The government has a secret system, a system you asked for, to keep you safe. A machine that spies on you every hour of every day. You've granted it the power to see everything, to index, order and control the lives of ordinary people. The government considers these people irrelevant. We don't. But to it, you are all irrelevant. Victim or perpetrator, if you stand in it's way we'll find you.'
nickslaughter02|8 months ago
https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/we-would-...
FirmwareBurner|8 months ago
For reference, Switzerland had to change their banking secrecy laws decades ago due to pressure from the US, Germany and France, so you can guess how well other weaker countries will fare against such pressure. And let's not forget the famous Crypto AG scandal in Switzerland, so I'm not buying the famous "Swiss privacy" marketing fluff at all anymore as much as I like the country. Just like Crypto AG, every tech company is, or will be, infiltrated by alphabet agencies by cooperation or by force. If you want real privacy you have to self host, that's the only way.
Plus, I feel like we're focusing at the wrong issue here. Do we really want lawless places on this planet to exist where companies and individuals can escape the courts and law enforcement of their own nations? Something that will be exploited mostly for nefarious purposes than protecting privacy of law abiding people.
The real solution is holding powerful governments accountable against invasions of privacy by their voters, not creating lawless zones where companies and powerful individuals can go and hide to avoid laws they dislike. If laws are bad, just change the laws, don't normalize law avoidance. If you normalize law avoidance about one thing, why not about other things as well like theft, taxation, human trafficking etc? The whole point of developed western nations is democratic representation, the strong rule of law and fairness of the court system. Write to your representative.
api|8 months ago
ThatMedicIsASpy|8 months ago
pclmulqdq|8 months ago
Beijinger|8 months ago
If it is just a VPN, a "cybercompany" does not need to be incorporated somewhere. If is is just virtual, it does not have to follow any laws in a jurisdictions. Servers can come and go...
unknown|8 months ago
[deleted]
zuppy|8 months ago
I'm a little bitter, but for what I need it, I'll let it pass this time.
edit: it is a business account, but I have never been asked for this anywhere else. you have all the company required data, all my required data, why do you need my id? maybe personal accounts are treated differently.
conradfr|8 months ago
sschueller|8 months ago
nick__m|8 months ago
Yeri|8 months ago
- https://thejollyteapot.com/uses - https://thejollyteapot.com/2024/11/05/website-updates/
josephb|8 months ago
RealStickman_|8 months ago
Does anyone have recommendations for domain registrars that support .ch and .li domains and ideally also supported by lego (my current acme client of choice)?
rayhaanj|8 months ago
rspoerri|8 months ago
Beijinger|8 months ago
German inwx.com is not bad for country TLDs
Besides the blaming of informaniak, their email hosing for 18 Euros a year is actually a pretty good deal. If you can live with US hosting for email, purelymail.com is worth a look.
ldng|8 months ago
priced_in|8 months ago
I wanted to take back control over my emails so recently I started to look long and hard at ProtonMail, Infomaniak (kMail), Mailbox.org, and others. In the end, I chose mailbox.org. I could have been really annoyed right now given how painful updating accounts/credentials and account migration are!
ignoramous|8 months ago
raxxorraxor|8 months ago
And not only by the judicial system. Also I do believe the net can survive anonymity just fine due to empirical evidence.
rubit_xxx19|8 months ago
Personally, I think that privacy is a losing game, like gambling. The best case is that we all work within the parameters. But in any case, the amount of time and effort that is dedicated to privacy is keeping humanity from more important things.
The main annoyance I have with companies and organizations that engage in working with our private data is that eventually they will lose control of the data, and if bad things come because of that, we are the victims. This may be our physical and mental health data, and we could lose our jobs or have to pay higher insurance. This may be our financial data, and we lose our savings for retirement. This may be our personal historical thoughts that we don’t wish to broadcast, and we lose relationships and our jobs.
Privacy at one level is a luxury but at other levels are not, unless society as a whole embraces that we’re all unhealthy and we’re all flawed, but at that point perhaps things become too flexible and very bad things happen.
nick__m|8 months ago
nonelog|8 months ago
mgw|8 months ago
If you're fine with a US-based provider, https://porkbun.com/ also has good pricing and a tech oriented mindset. They don't support many ccTLDs though.
In general, https://tld-list.com/ is the best place to research domain registrars in my opinion.
pzmarzly|8 months ago
kovac|8 months ago
noman-land|8 months ago
nticompass|8 months ago
nickslaughter02|8 months ago
drcongo|8 months ago
LudwigNagasena|8 months ago
enopod_|8 months ago
https://steigerlegal.ch/2025/03/29/proton-ueberwachung-keine... (German)
chvid|8 months ago
And understable from a business perspective. If you are one of the few hosting companies that host truly anonymous VPN and email providers, you are going get some troublesome customers that likely are going to end up being expensive.
nonelog|8 months ago
Everything can be justified as a business interest. Even criminal behavior could. So that argument is NOT acceptable. This is about a Swiss company, not Russia. If Switzerland wants to go there, let's at least be honest about it.
ls612|8 months ago
PrivacyDingus|8 months ago
Kichererbsen|8 months ago
misja111|8 months ago
amarcheschi|8 months ago
Bengalilol|8 months ago
notpushkin|8 months ago
diggan|8 months ago
What "shared values"? Most of the values people hold as "important" has people on the other side with the opposite values, and both of those are "correct".
There are no "shared values" that all humans agreed upon.
meindnoch|8 months ago
piva00|8 months ago
I don't understand this train of thought, what exactly are you saying?
I can interpret it as "it's wise to end online anonymity and feed all personal information (including biometrics) to AIs to enforce social rules" which is, frankly, an absurd proposal even if you are extremely naïve, not even considering one single negative aspect of the loss of all privacy, being managed by a machine in a societal level.
Or I can try to interpret it as feeding all of this into AIs create insurmountable threats, to democracy, to the individual, etc. which is somewhat what I'd expect to logically follow from feeding all this personal data into AI models.
But none of these interpretations are actually possible for me to land at based on what and how you wrote, I can't make sense of it.
bobajeff|8 months ago