It's always nice to see companies claiming to care about privacy walking the walk. In this case, all the way out of Switzerland.
this post was submitted on 18 May 2025
241 points (97.3% liked)
Buy European
5886 readers
644 users here now
Overview:
The community to discuss buying European goods and services.
Rules:
-
Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. No direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments.
-
Do not use this community to promote Nationalism/Euronationalism. This community is for discussing European products/services and news related to that. For other topics the following might be of interest:
-
Include a disclaimer at the bottom of the post if you're affiliated with the recommendation.
-
No russian suggestions.
Feddit.uk's instance rules apply:
- No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia or xenophobia
- No incitement of violence or promotion of violent ideologies
- No harassment, dogpiling or doxxing of other users
- Do not share intentionally false or misleading information
- Do not spam or abuse network features.
- Alt accounts are permitted, but all accounts must list each other in their bios.
- No generative AI content
Benefits of Buying Local:
local investment, job creation, innovation, increased competition, more redundancy.
European Instances
Lemmy:
-
Basque Country: https://lemmy.eus/
-
🇧🇪 Belgium: https://0d.gs/
-
🇧🇬 Bulgaria: https://feddit.bg/
-
Catalonia: https://lemmy.cat/
-
🇩🇰 Denmark, including Greenland (for now): https://feddit.dk/
-
🇪🇺 Europe: https://europe.pub/
-
🇫🇷🇧🇪🇨🇭 France, Belgium, Switzerland: https://jlai.lu/
-
🇩🇪🇦🇹🇨🇭🇱🇮 Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Lichtenstein: https://feddit.org/
-
🇫🇮 Finland: https://sopuli.xyz/ & https://suppo.fi/
-
🇮🇸 Iceland: https://feddit.is/
-
🇮🇹 Italy: https://feddit.it/
-
🇱🇹 Lithuania: https://group.lt/
-
🇳🇱 Netherlands: https://feddit.nl/
-
🇵🇱 Poland: https://fedit.pl/ & https://szmer.info/
-
🇵🇹 Portugal: https://lemmy.pt/
-
🇸🇮 Slovenia: https://gregtech.eu/
-
🇸🇪 Sweden: https://feddit.nu/
-
🇹🇷 Turkey: https://lemmy.com.tr/
-
🇬🇧 UK: https://feddit.uk/
Matrix:
-
🇬🇧 UK: matrix.org & glasgow.social
-
🇫🇷 France: tendomium & imagisphe.re & hadoly.fr
-
🇩🇪 Germany: tchncs.de, catgirl.cloud, pub.solar, yatrix.org, digitalprivacy.diy, oblak.be, nope.chat, envs.net, hot-chilli.im, synod.im & rollenspiel.chat
-
🇳🇱 Netherlands: bark.lgbt
-
🇦🇹 Austria: gemeinsam.jetzt & private.coffee
-
🇫🇮 Finland: pikaviestin.fi
Related Communities:
Buy Local:
Continents:
European:
Buying and Selling:
Boycott:
Countries:
Companies:
Stop Publisher Kill Switch in Games Practice:
Banner credits: BYTEAlliance
founded 4 months ago
MODERATORS
walking the walk
But they haven't?
yeah, so far this is just talking the talk. but with a bit of luck we may not need to see them walking the walk
I would hope Switzerland isnt stupid enough to do this. Their reputation as a country is based around trust. Dozens of highly profitable privacy based companies would be forced to relocate.
While these companies make up a very small percentage of the GDP, they'd take people out of work, hurt their reputation, and take a minor blow to their budget.
Though, this isnt considering future prospects; the Proton suite is getter better, fast. It wouldn't surprise me, if in a few years, their suite could rival Google's or Microsoft's.
It could be very profitable in the future, but kneecapping the VPN would really slow things down.
Weakening encryption, or access to it, in any way, shape or form should be seen as a violation of human rights, democracy, and national security — a crime against humanity — resulting in lifelong imprisonment.
Can we have technology that's secure enough that it doesn't matter what country we are in?
Not as long as somebody else is hosting the server.
The bill did not pass in the first stage of the law making process as all the political parties rejected it. Also, I'm very certain that even if it passed the first few hurdles, someone would make an initiative against it and that initiative would win 9 out of 10 times as most Bünzlis are serious about their privacy and would feel like their freedoms are being taken away by such a law.
So…… We got an alternative to Switzerland as a country? Historically I always thought they took digital privacy seriously. But it seems tides are changing.
We got any other GDPR countries as good as Switzerland? How about the Netherlands?
Or is this gonna turn into a game of finding a country that just doesn’t care about digital surveillance?
Be careful with any EU country… there’s a weekly attempt to introduce backdoored encryption, because “pedophiles” and “terrorists”.
But only in some countries, not all of them accepted it
They would not stop there.
Our elected representatives are way too afraid of their citizens (which many of them would not mind if they could change those 'citizens' into powerless 'subjects'), and they've become obsessed with the idea of surveilling our every move. An idea that has been very actively encouraged by an industry that is more than happy to sell them the required surveillance technology for a lot of money. Money always wins, freedom (which can't stand without privacy) is screwed.
So, I already made up my mind upon the quick disappearance of any online privacy, here in the EU. The cloud I'm using (for its full encryption) won't be able to stand against the law (and it should not). So, the moment they introduce a law to force backdoors into encryption I've already decided to quit using any form of online storage and as much online services as I can (one of the reasons I I went back to reading printed books—yep, I'm that paranoid save that It's not being paranoid at all).
Those wannabe EU dictators, worrying so much about our own well-being (as no one in their right mind would express any doubt about their true motivation) they can go funk themselves.
Well, I totally understand you when it comes to using local storage and reading printed books (having physical books on bookshelf looks cool) but from what I remember only some countries decided vote for this idea
You're right, but once a few have that law the EU is a Union (and most countries are not against controlling us), so I would not hold my breath (posted from France, so you know ;)
Same for me, if most decide that then first thing would be downloading all stuff from my clouds and removing all files online. Kinda sad to see that from one side eu tries to make ai providers unable to collect our data but eu doesn’t like us to have freedom and privacy in the internet
Honestly there needs to be aggressive crackdowns on pedo-smearers
You think in Switzerland “pedophiles” and Co. are not surveilled 🤣😂? Bit naive thinking, you have.
I did not say that.
I said the central EU is trying - almost literally on a weekly basis - to require companies like Signal and Whatsapp to replace their end-to-end encryption with a backdoored one, and the excuses they throw up every time is “pedophiles” and “terrorists”. I am quite aware Switzerland is trying that as well, hence the announcement by Proton to leave the country if the government keeps hanging on to that dumb idea.
Proton is in IMHO blowing a lot of hot air. Where do they want to go? BTW, do you have any articles showing that the EU wants to acquire Signal or WhatsApp (???) to end end-to-end encryption and replace it with a backdoors one - just to prove that you are not spreading FUD?
The alternative is to leave cloud services, use GnuPG to encrypt your mail on your device and use a VPN / TOR for any interaction with the net.
VPNs - and even Tor - can be compromised, especially by government cybersecurity agencies, although attacking Tor may require more resources. Some VPN providers, even those that charge for their services, have experienced significant security breaches (just search for terms like “VPN loopholes” or “VPN hack” on Google). Free VPNs are generally even less reliable, and there are rumors that some may function as honeypots. Tor, while offering stronger anonymity, tends to be slower - routing traffic through multiple nodes adds considerable latency.
At the rate we going corporate won't able to provide privacy if privacy becomes illegal
Self hosting is likely the only option until ice gestapo starts raiding residentces of freedom of enjoyers. Which is the likely final stop before complete re enslavement of the plebs
Not everyone lives in a pristine 1st-world country.
Plebs being fucked directly correlates with their their proximity to the imperial core.
With that being said. Foss don't discriminate like that
I am using them while I wait for Tuta drive. Tuta better hurry up.
I heard Trump in the US is doing loads of good stuff about big tech’s power; they should move there.
oh man if only this didn’t hold water for Andy
A mandatory backdoor would ruin the purpose of most security but a VPN that doesn't do VPN is just a security theater like NordVPN to some extent is just a security theater.