Library membership
Judging based on what I’m actually paying for myself I’d say Mullvad VPN, Protonmail and a nameless AI assistant.
Edit: I forgot I’ve got a website too, so hosting of that is another one.
Mullvad is stellar. I’ve been a user for years and it’s never let me down.
I strongly disagree on proton mail. If you use a custom domain with a catchall it’s absolute trash. Also possibly the worst email search ever. Don’t even get me started on the proton bridge.
I lasted a few months (about 8) and then switched to fastmail. Worlds apart.
I’m curious, since you’re already on Protonmail, why not use their VPN too?
For no particular reason really. I don’t think Proton was offering a VPN service when I switched to their email so I used few different ones and eventually landed on Mullvad and have just stuck with it since.
Email to avoid email providers from companies like Google or Microsoft.
I’m still using the services of Big Email, which means I’m the product in this setting. From a philosophical standpoint, that sucks. From a practical point of view, I don’t really see any downsides. Surely there are some that I’m just not aware of.
If they want to show me some ads, I have ublock origin and NextDNS to take care of that. What else should I know about my situation?
They get access to all emails used for banking, shopping, social media accounts, etc. Depends on if you are fine with them being able to build a detailed profile off your emails.
Ads is like the least problematic aspect.
Your email is the root of your digital identity, and pretty much everything in your digital life is tied to it. If your email is provided by Big Email, they own your digital identity and it exists at their whim, with no recourse if it gets taken away, compromised, or abused.
If you own your domain and pay for mail hosting, you can at least move your email between providers if something goes wrong, and have some recourse with those providers since you’re a customer instead of a product.
