So you expect the average person to host their own email, cloud file storage, VPN, and web calendar?

Nope, just people who care about their privacy.

You have to live in reality dude. I mean, are you hosting your own instance (I see you have a blahaj account)? Do you not have any logins online on sites that are closed or you don’t control? Do you pay an ISP and let them handle your traffic? Do you use any streaming services? Do you use Steam or play console games?

I am living in reality, and you're literally making my argument for me.

Just because I understand the implications doesn't mean I'm a privacy nut myself. I understand the limitations of privacy on the internet, which is why I felt the need to comment on the idea that as long as someone else controls it, it's not really private. It's much like cryptocurrency in that respect "Not your keys, not your crypto."

I'm not saying everyone should do this, but people who are using services like ProtonMail who think they're a panacea are fucking naive and really should be considering better options if they're that concerned.

The only way to have real privacy is to disconnect from it all, own your own hardware, and internet connection. I don't mean renting one from Xfinity. I mean literally owning your own infrastructure. It's nearly impossible unless you're ridiculously rich and incredibly tech savvy. Even with that, your data will still pass through other infrastructure not owned by you.

Yet people are dumping money into privacy services whose privacy rules can be changed at any time.

It's great they're all open source, but you're still putting your data on their servers. If the business changes hands, or just changes how they operate, you only have their word that your data is removed, if you want to remove it.

That's the point I'm making. If you really want online privacy, you're going to have to go real far to get it, and putting your faith in third parties is just the same game we've been playing for decades already. When you give you data to a business, it's no longer "your" data, it is now a business record.

Sorry that talking about the reality of it means I should go out into the woods myself or something. You can accept the reality without feeling the need to do it yourself, you know? It's why such services are pointless because they can't actually offer you a permanent promise of privacy.