This might come out as a bit of a rant, but I just wanted to post it here anyway since it’s the only social media I use.
Recently, I’ve been making some steps to improve my privacy. GrapheneOS, Linux on my PC, open source software, moving away from Google stuff. So, next logical step was for me to switch away from Gmail. I went with Tutanota, since they’re based in EU, their mobile app is on F-Droid and doesn’t require Google Play Services. So I made an account, switched a bunch of my private account e-mails from Gmail to Tuta, and was basically done. Two days later, I wake up to a “invalid credentials” message. I checked the option to remember my password on my PC, so I thought it was weird. I checked my phone, and it turns out I was logged out of the app too. I tried changing my password with recovery code, thinking something went wrong (though unlikely since I used a password manager), but I got an error on that one too. So I contacted Tutanota, almost a week ago. No response.
I tried looking on various sites to check if people had a similar issue. I found a few reports on Reddit. The moderator of Tuta says to contact the e-mail address that I sent a message to already, but people complained that they haven’t gotten a response either. I found out that similar reports were happening for a while now, accounts being flagged for seemingly no reason. I found one post from October, 2024, from a frustrated user. He said he was in the same situation, and when he finally got the reply, Tutanota said they can’t do anything. When I found that post, I was really disheartened. I’ve already went back on a bunch of accounts to @gmail.com account, for safety, but there is still a few that I’m not even able to access because they use e-mail 2fa. Some of them being accounts for various government public services.
So this one gave me a pause on my privacy journey. I never encountered problems like this one before. A service blocking my account without any message or warning. No contact from support. Being locked out of my accounts. I’ve lost a lot of enthusiasm to replace a few proprietary services that I have left.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
Yeah same here, they deleted my old addr for inactivity, fine, so I made a new one. “Flagged for review, cannot send/receive emails at this addr yet” 2d go by, “flagged harder, reach out, using the email that can’t send email, to tuta support and explain why you need this acct.” Tried to send the email, perhaps unsurprisingly, to no success.
So I created a Disroot acct instead. They also flagged me for review (but then approved me, and I did it twice so I have two disroot accts which I need for different reasons), and their sign up site is pretty bad (it says “weak password” until you get enough chars in the prompt, coulda just told me that instead of making me insane rolling 30 different passwords in keepass…) but still, much better now, I have IMAP and disroot doesn’t delete for inactivity, so, woohoo!