Do this all the time with video games. Pirate to try before I buy. If I really like the game I buy it in the hopes it creates an incentive to make more games like the ones I like.

It doesn’t matter what is being discussed, if its about proton the email incident gets brought up.

Here is the deal. No major company is going to break the law for its users. Had the activist been using proton vpn to create and access their email, Proton would not have had the info they were forced to give up. The takeaway from the story is bad opsec is usually what gets people caught whether its activists or hackers.

Whether you use Proton or someone else you will need to trust that service. If you don’t trust them, don’t use them. Its that simple, no need for conjured up FUD excuses.

If all your eggs are encrypted, having those eggs in one basket or five doesn’t matter from a security perspective. Its the same reason you wouldn’t split up your passwords to multiple password managers.

That being said the much more likely scenario is that at some point in your lifetime Protons values change (either by being purchased or new leadership) and you have to move on. That’s why, regardless of how good a providers security is, its good to have backups elsewhere.

This whole line of thinking seems to be based on FUD more then anything else.

There is no evidence or reason to believe some major compromise of proton will happen.

If your that worried about proton you probably should just not use the service at all.

Also using the 3-2-1 backup rules should help mitigate this fear of having everything with one service.