I disagree here, as an American using a Swiss exit node (most compliant) websites are forced to allow a much higher degree of privacy to comply with the laws there.
While I block all third party advertising and tracking anyway, it’s incredibly satisfying seeing websites explicitly list out everything they’re tracking about you and having that “reject all” button.
Fi makes it pretty clear that use outside the US is meant to be temporary (unless you're on military duty overseas). The person you replied to got a really long run and honestly has no cause for complaint.
I completely block all Google access via DNS blocklists (I realize it’s not 100% bulletproof as you could get around the block by just knowing the IP address). Because their tracking is including in basically every app and website I think this is the only effective way to stop tracking.
Using a VPN might make you more anonymous in other ways, but that alone isn’t going to stop anything from building a profile on you.
There are 2 lists of countries applicable here. The list of countries where the VPN is included with a Google One subscription and the list where you could use the VPN while traveling.
You'll notice that countries known for internet censorship are missing from both lists, so using it for that purpose wouldn't work at all.
I had to help out a client this week because this migration broke their website. Turns out that Squarespace's omain forwarding feature drops query params. This brokes thousands of links. Fun times.
With your recommendation and that of the others below it, I might give them a shot. I’ve been using Cloudflare in the meantime but don’t really need their other services anymore.
Edit: Hoping they support DNSSEC. I just woke up so I’m too lazy to look that up but I’ll get there.
The registrar doesn't have anything to do with TLS. I use LetsEncrypt on my domains through NameCheap, no problems whatsoever. I get my hosting elsewhere (previously Vultr, currently Hetzner).
I care if they have poor privacy policies or something in features I don't use as that can indicate future impact on features I do use, but I don't care if they have limited product offerings generally. So to me, it's completely irrelevant.
You should probably separate your hosting from your registrar anyway so you can switch one without impacting the other. I did just that when I bailed on Vultr due to their unprofessional (IMO) handling of a TOS update (blocked access to my account, so I couldn't close my account w/o accepting the terms), but I didn't have to change my registrar and all that, I just spun up an instance at another host and redirected DNS entries. I also separated my DNS mappings from my domain registrar (they're combined now @ cloudflare, which is a little unfortunate).
They ticked off a lot of customers by eliminating included email. Their email product was however fantastic and can be worth the price; while I’ve switched to Proton one thing I miss is the very accurate Gandi spam headers and the ease of writing mail filters.
So far the new owner hasn’t worsened things (from my view) but my experience is that whenever one company buys another, the purchased company’s products go to hell pretty fast.
They are not primarily a domain registrar, they are a website builder SaaS. So they will probably try to sell you on that product when you renew, but many registrars will try to upsell you, so that’s not uncommon. If you are planning to transfer away, I can certainly recommend Namecheap, I’ve used them for many years without issue