Premium Privacy Services: are they really that private ? (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 days ago by 64bithero@lemmy.world to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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I’m going to do my best to word this question carefully. I’m not privacy expert and maybe no more than an idiot. I do want to protect myself online.

Which led me to privacy focused cloud based premium solutions. The idea is you can pay for a service so they don’t need to serve ads and scan your data for profit. Services like Kagi , Proton among others offer services for a fee. These services let you pay with a credit card .

My question is , are these services really that private if they have your payment information ? Does it really make sense to pay to not be tracked but still have your information on file and linked to you ?

Is this more of an argument of privacy vs anonymity? Am I looking at this wrong ?

I understand the ultimate privacy is self hosted but for some things like search that limits options. I understand there is crypto for some of these options. But bitcoin isn’t cheap.

Curious to get others thoughts on this ? Please be respectful i am trying to learn…

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[-] hersh@literature.cafe 5 points 6 days ago

There are services that allow anonymous payments. I think Proton, Mailbox.org, and Posteo all accept cash payments.

Kagi has a "privacy pass" feature, which uses some fancy ephemeral authentication tokens that are not traceable to your specific account. You lose personalized settings, naturally (like site rankings) but you can do searches that aren't directly tied to your account.

For email, there's no one-size-fits-all risk model. I mean, my email address is my full name, @ a domain that I own and is itself traceable to me. I have no need for anonymity, but I DO need privacy and security.

this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2026

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