I think I know the answer, bit maybe I’m missing something
Since proton only sends and receives encrypted emails to other proton accounts, that means that when you get or send an email to someone else, they have to send / receive unencrypted and there is no way for us to verify what they are doing. Right?
Also if most accounts are google Microsoft, they still get 90% of my emails. By switching to proton I think I’ve gained nothing, while losing convenience , added another trust point, and having two different companies have my data instead of just one
Proton drive, calendar and VPN I think are fine
Sorry for the poor syntax. I’m at work working on email related things, and this topic kept distracting me. I might correct it later
I have private email for two reasons: using my own domain, and to promote it in general. Sure, everyone else is on Google/MS right now, but as they continue to enshittify things, maybe more people will want to move away from that. And the more people do that now, the faster/easier it will be for others.
Note that ProtonMail actually supports automatic encryption to email accounts that publish their public keys in a Web Key Directory, which I’ve set up for mine. When you type such an email address in the To field, it’ll turn into a special color with a lock symbol.
Likewise, ProtonMail also exposed a WKD so people can send encrypted emails to ProtonMail accounts. I don’t know of any mail clients that support this though (I used the command line to pull keys)
Wow, til I learn about WKD! I used to have a key on keyservers, but hated how that was basically a spam trap and the fact that anyone could upload a key there for my own address. It was easy because I own my own domain and already have a web server there.
I set it up and tested it with help from https://www.webkeydirectory.com/
Looks like it’s being added to clients: https://wiki.gnupg.org/WKD/DistributionOfWKD
Assuming that you trust what Proton says, when they receive a (possibly unencrypted) message they re-encrypt it with your key as soon as possible and they don’t log the content. So, after that point, they (or anyone else) can’t read the email contents. If it was also encrypted in transit, then there’s only a small window inside their email processing system where the plaintext was passed from one encryption to the other. It’s only decrypted again in your browser or proton mail app with the key that only you have. It’s not bulletproof, but it’s better than most providers.
Mail transport these days is usually encrypted over the wire, but once it lands at the receiving server (i.e. gmail) it is stored in the clear, or at least in a way that the host can read it.
Exactly. It has to be sent unencrypted. So there is no way to know what either of the providers are doing and is just a big “trust me bro”
It’s usually sent encrypted (by TLS) so it can’t be read by external entities monitoring internet traffic. Then the host decrypts it and stores it and can access it. Yes it’s trust me bro. Email is fundamentally not all that private, because of that.
I think Proton mail is worth it just to diversify off Google but I don’t lend much faith in how effective privacy will be with email. The free service is enough for that. If I wanted more faith in encrypted communications, encrypted chat applications. I sub to proton for drive and VPN. ProtonPass has all the email aliases for throwaway websites
I use Tuta mail and protonmail.
There is no “unencrypted” transfer between sender and receiver if you both use tuta or proton.
If you send an email to me from a Gmail account, it is unencrypted until it reaches the Tuta servers and the Proton severs, once there it is encrypted and remains so until I login to my account to access the email.
TUTA MAIL:
The entire mailbox – emails, calendar and address book – are stored end-to-end encrypted in Tuta.
Data that Tuta encrypts end-to-end:
Emails, including subject lines and all attachments
Entire calendars, even metadata such as event notifications
Entire address book, not just parts of the contacts
Inbox rules / filters
And the entire search index.
Tuta uses symmetric (AES 256) and asymmetric encryption (RSA 2048 or ECC (x25519) and Kyber-1024 as quantum-safe algorithms) to encrypt emails end-to-end. When both parties use Tuta, all emails are automatically end-to-end encrypted (asymmetric encryption).
PROTONMAIL:
Emails from non-Proton Mail users to Proton Mail users
The email is encrypted in transit using TLS. It is then unencrypted and re-encrypted (by us) for storage on our servers using zero-access encryption. Once zero-access encryption has been applied, no-one except you can access emails stored on our servers (including us). It is not end-to-end encrypted, however, and might be accessible to the sender’s email service.
All messages in your Proton Mail mailbox are stored with zero-access encryption. This means we cannot read any of your messages or hand them over to third parties. This includes messages sent to you by non-Proton Mail users, although keep in mind if an email is sent to you from Gmail, Gmail likely retains a copy of that message as well. Password-protected Emails are also stored end-to-end encrypted.
Subject lines and recipient/sender email addresses are encrypted but not end-to-end encrypted.
Well, the way I see it is it’s like taking candy from someone who says “I put razorblades in this candy” versus somebody who says “I did not put razors in this candy.” Sure, maybe the latter is lying but are you going to pick the former? There’s really no viable way to run your own email server with actual delivery anymore, and it’s clearnet in transit anyway, so I don’t really see the downside in “trusting” Proton or another provider enough to pick that over Google. To get any benefit, you would need to move things over though. If you’re unwilling to do that work, the reality is you’re just on Google and Microsoft and training their AIsand it is what it is. If you think about it, though, even if you move half of your logins to Proton or Tuta or whatever instead of Google, you are depriving them of half of what they know about you going forward.
There’s really no viable way to run your own email server with actual delivery anymore
SMTP relays make IP reputation a complete non-issue. As long as you aren’t sending hundreds of emails a day, there are multiple free options (free tier, subsidized by paying corporate customers who send a lot of emails).
I think a Proton or Tuta is a better option for most people than dealing with a transactional SMTP provider, which is almost certainly selling all outgoing email contents for AI training at least if not even more nefarious things.
a transactional SMTP provider, which is almost certainly selling all outgoing email contents for AI training at least if not even more nefarious things.
That’s a big assumption, and that kind of behavior is specifically prohibited in the privacy policy of most, if not all SMTP relay providers, as well as GDPR regulations. If you think they’re violating their own privacy policy and government regulations and doing it anyway, there’s no reason to think Proton isn’t as well, or any other email provider, so that’s kind of a non-starter argument IMO. Plus this only applies to outgoing emails, not incoming. I don’t know about you, but I send about 5-10 outgoing emails a year, there’s not much to be gleaned there. Incoming is what you’d want to protect more than anything.
Tuta lets you encrypt a message for the sender only, with a passphrase.
They’ll have to follow a link but still…Makes me feel like I’m doing the best I reasonably can, even if it’s of limited effect. Also, built-in aliasing service.
This is the best reply so far. Probably not enough for me to stay, but at least not pretending it’s safer
Email is never private, even with encrypted email, headers give away metadata. HOWEVER, Tuta & Proton are not scanning your emails to market shit to you and train AI. That’s the main advantage.
You can’t know if they are not reading you emails to do anything. That is the issue. Because of how email works, we know that they COULD. And experience tells us that tech companies profit from breaking promises and laws.
Problem is where you send emails to is.
Yeah. That’s ops whole point.
Except that proton released their LLM AI so maybe they will start doing that?
No they probably won’t, proton is not a big enough company to train it’s own large language model instead they are using already available open source models.
GPG and mailbox.org or anothet “just” email service
Hold on, am I missing something? I don’t see anyone in here talking about that time proton openly endorsed the Republican party. Did we forget about or forgive them for that? Is it just irrelevant right now? They backtracked later but like https://archive.ph/2yWGz
When organizations make a move like that, they usually don’t stop pushing in that direction, even if they backtrack in response to pushback. While I’m sure they’re still better than google, I have a hard time trusting them after that. It feels relevant to talk about because like you said, using proton is adding another trust point.
Their CEO did fuck up with that, so for me they are on thin ice, but I haven’t seen anything else problematic since then.
Got banned on their sub for criticizing that clown Andy the bootlicker.
They are happy to shill free speech when they take your money, but no free speech when they get criticized.
Tells you what you need to know about corpo.
Their email is best in class though. Other services are mid at best.
That has nothing to do with privacy
Kind of tired of beating the dead horse on that story, but part of privacy is that you need to trust the company that you’re dealing with.
He’s out there openly praising on authoritarians move to install a puppet government and open the gateway to corporate corruption. If our privacy companies are going to be sneaky and dirty, we want it done in the shadows. All he had to do was stay quiet. But he got noisy, then the PR department started gaslighting, and none of that’s a good look for a privacy company.
The thing is, Trump doesn’t give two shits about anybody, and the guy running the company should have known this.
But now it’s old news, it can die. He can prove that he can run the company by good faith measures and doing the right thing instead of by trying to gaslight people through PR.
My general opinion is that if a company requires trust, it’s not a good privacy option. We have suffered the consequences of trusting companies a lot of times. I’m not doing that again. All I care right now is the code. If we have to alternatives with the same product but one CEO is an asshole and the other not, then I’m going with the non asshole. But I’m not going to sacrifice my privacy to switch companies jus because UNTIL NOW the other provider seems nicer. That can change at any time. Email is specially a problem since switching emails is the most time consuming part
You have to trust that:
They're not logging your IP on their VPN and coorelating it with output traffic. They won't dox you to motion pictures houses because of your torrents on their VPN. They wouldn't slip you some javascript in their client at the request of a foreign government to dox you without letting you know.Code is good, but there’s a lot of operational information there that doesn’t get exposed by being open.
Code in the face of no malice wouldn’t be a large worry. They rolled over on a French activist and doxxed them for the French government. Those logs should not have existed in a privacy company.
Again, this is all old news now. Let’s see him make hard decisions to protect the clients and turn the PR side of things from “the empire did nothing wrong” to hey, let’s have an open dialog.
i don’t care about their VPN. the issue you describe is very real, but it’s inherit to all vpn providers. what i care right now, is their email service. you can switch vpn providers in less than 15 minutes, but email takes days. so i wouldn’t want to go around doing all of that every time some employee says something stupid.
and btw, if you use native installed apps, then the worry of them serving malicious javascript goes way down because any change they make on the complied package would be very likely to be very obvios to someone, because its open source ( i won’t go into detail here).
IMAP + GPG
Right. So back to gmail?
No private registration or payment.
Sorry. I don’t understand
Tuta has no IMAP, vendor lock-in, bad.
Proton has IMAP with extra steps, almost vendor lock-in, bad.
Gmail has IMAP, good. So, we can use it with our own libre app, with GPG, but first we need an account.
Making a new Gmail account is not private. Also, paying for paid Gmail is not private.
POP is better than IMAP, the emails get deleted from the servers.
IMAP can delete too. When it’s not your server, there’s no proof it’s actually deleted. So, use GPG.
You could self host your email
Yes. But then again. If no one I know uses a private provider, my emails will still get scanned and read.but it its 1000% less convenient
There is an advantage of using a provider that suports MTA STS. This is Strict Transport Security and forces at least transport encryption.
There is an advantage to use a provider you pay for too and at least claims not to read your email.
It is also nice if they can host your domain and have good delivery.
Edit: I meant MTA STS not SMTP STS.
Haven’t heard of MTA sts. I’ll have to research it, but it probably doesn’t change the fact that when exchanging emails with another provider, they have to work with plaintext
Google is promoting MTA-STS. MS is at least testing it and some others. Proton mail might support, check. I use NameCheap shared hosting mail. They support incoming but not outgoing.
Sure it is clear inside each org but secures between. Nice because you can secure in your org by contract. Not as good as e2ee of course.
i read the first part of google’s article about MAT-STS. it is good for secury, but does nothing to prevent providersfor reading in and out email
No but if you have a contract with a providor you pay for, those are the terms. For example Google free servicies they mine data but their paid services they do not. Sure e2ee is better but transport encryption is good.
Makes sense. I still don’t trust them though
