Since the vault is end-to-end encrypted, it shouldn’t matter where it is hosted, even if it is in the cloud. Here is what a security researcher and a password cracker Jeremy M. Gosney has said about this after the LastPass incident.
”Is the cloud the problem? No. The vast majority of issues LastPass has had have nothing to do with the fact that it is a cloud-based solution. Further, consider the fact that the threat model for a cloud-based password management solution should *start* with the vault being compromised. In fact, if password management is done correctly, I should be able to host my vault anywhere, even openly downloadable (open S3 bucket, unauthenticated HTTPS, etc.) without concern. I wouldn't do that, of course, but the point is the vault should be just that -- a vault, not a lockbox.”
If something is weak, it is Proton's knowledge of password strength. For example, they call a 16-character password without special characters "weak," which has around 95 bits of entropy, so this doesn't make sense. They also overemphasize the role of special characters in passwords, as just increasing the password length by a single character would add more entropy than enabling special characters. Furthermore, many of Proton's articles regarding password strength contain a lot of misinformation. This one talking about password entropy might be their worst yet. You cannot seriously claim that a single word, "Bankruptcies," has 68.4 bits of entropy, which also isn't the only inaccurate claim that the article makes.
You are right that Proton is currently self-funded by its paying customers, but to be accurate, they have actually taken VC money before.
I don't see an option for a 24-month plan.
Interestingly, the article mentions twice how Proton doesn't do flashy marketing campaigns when that is precisely the aspect people have criticized Proton for years, usually around Black Friday when they portray the discount as much better than what it is.
This is also not their only controversy. When someone proposed in their forums that Kagi should add a widget that would help people get help if they are searching for suicide material, Kagi refused because that isn't the result that the person was searching for.
Read the article. Google already requires a warrant before handing out this data.
Tidal brought FLAC this year, so this MQA critique doesn't really apply anymore.
This is wrong. By enabling privacy.resistFingerprinting you cannot make yourself more unique in Firefox because you’re already unique. I would read this guide by the Arkenfox project about fingerprinting. The guy has worked for the Tor browser, so he knows his stuff. The summary is that the privacy.resistFingerprinting is the best tool that Firefox has against fingerprinting, but it can only ”fool naive scripts.” If you’re really worried about fingerprinting and want to defeat advancing fingerprinting, the only option is to use either Tor or Mullvad Browser depending on your threat model.
The Firefox hardening project Arkenfox only recommends uBlock Origin. Everything else is redundant.
I think this article by Mullvad explains this well.
I would also remove DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials. It is redundant if you are using uBlock Origin.
This has already been recently discussed here.
I don't think that it captures everything, but according to the Arkenfox project, any additional benefit ClearURLs could have compared to this setup is minimal, and thus, it probably isn't worth to install another extension.
ClearURLs is not really needed anymore since you can enable AdGuard URL Tracking Protection and import Actually Legitimate URL Shortener Tool to uBlock Origin.
Skip Redirect is still fine if you want to continue using it but Smart Referer could be replaced by changing network.http.referer.XOriginPolicy in about:config to 2 like the Arkenfox project recommends. However, note that there could be some issues regarding this setting, so keep that in mind.
They need to make money somehow, and regardless, all the crypto stuff is actually turned off by default, so criticizing Brave for this makes little sense to me.
According to their privacy policy, they are using both AdMob and Facebook trackers on their other apps, so that may happen to Raivo as well at some point.