I've been using Proton Mail for several years, even signing up for a 2-year Mail Plus subscription in May of this year to take advantage of some additional features like aliases email client support. Their emphasis on privacy and security has been a main selling point for me from the beginning. So when I learned that their CEO doesn't seem to understand the security risks involved with reckless “vibe coding” with AI, that raised a red flag.

I decided I won't be renewing my subscription and that I shouldn't be dependent on email providers for my actual email addresses anymore. If you purchase your own domain, you can set up your own email address that never has to change, even if the service you use to actually send and receive email does change.

So yesterday I was brainstorming and searching for available domains. At one point I started thinking about possible domains with the “.ing” suffix. And since I've been thinking about the recent passing of Sir Patrick Stewart and Star Trek has been on my mind a lot, I discovered that boldlygo.ing was somehow still available and it wasn't being sold at a “premium” price (meaning someone wasn't squatting on it hoping to make a ridiculous profit).

So I snatched up boldlygo.ing and am slowly transitioning all my Proton Mail traffic to email addresses on my own domain.

For now, I'm using the iCloud+ custom domain feature. Since I'm already paying for iCloud+ that means it's no additional cost for me to use iCloud as my email provider.

Longer term, I'm going to be looking into moving to a more independent service. Even if I have to pay a little, decentralizing is never a bad idea.

And I do hope Proton nips these problems in the bud and gets their CEO in line – or replaces him. If they do, there's a good chance I'd eventually use Proton as the email provider for my custom domain!

Discuss...

#100DaysToOffload (No. 191) #tech #privacy #security #email