Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Why Are We Ignoring the Urgent Need for End-to-End Encrypted Emails?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 20 posts

Re: Ask HN: Why Are We Ignoring the Urgent Need for End-to-End Encrypted Emails?

#11

Post by manuelmoreale »

reify wrote: post #8

I dont send emails to anyone who has a gmail, googlemail. yahoo mail or microsoft or any of the other careless email providers. It really is as simple as telling people that I do not reply to emails unless they respect my privacy and use an encrypted privacy oriented email provider. I use the Protonmail SimpleLogin addon account to send them an annonymous email stating my terms for email correspondence. It does work.…

How do you behave when someone has an email hosted on a custom domain name? Do you perform some checks to figure out if the service they’re using is up to your standard? And what if I didn’t trust your ProtonMail address? Would you be willing to switch to something else?

Re: Ask HN: Why Are We Ignoring the Urgent Need for End-to-End Encrypted Emails?

#12

Post by landosaari »

Could someone explain what happened via telephony?

Telegraph->Operator->Rotary->Touch-tone->Cellphone.

It would seem everyone of these would be a next step in technology and protocols.

Sending a text message via rotary phone is probably not possible. However, calling a rotary phone via smartphone should work.

Is there a reason why newer protocols could not be implemented/enforced?

Whereby email from proton to tuta (and similar new email services) it acts differently than when sent to the older version of email (current method).

Re: Ask HN: Why Are We Ignoring the Urgent Need for End-to-End Encrypted Emails?

#13

Post by LinuxBender »

you have to jump through hoops with third-party tools

I personally find it very easy to send PGP encrypted emails with Thunderbird. [1] Thunderbird makes encrypting email platform agnostic. I can switch vendors without losing my ability to maintain E2EE with friends and business partners. I have been able to get non technical friends and lawyers to use Thunderbird and PGP as they just follow the picture instructions.

This is just my own silly opinion but I would never personally rely on a platform to manage "E2EE" for me. If I do not generate and control the keys then I can not seriously call it E2EE. As such I do not consider WhatsApp and Signal to be end to end encrypted. That's just my personal opinion but perhaps I am just a bit touched in the head.

[1] - https://www.linuxbabe.com/security/encrypt-emails-gpg-thunde...

Re: Ask HN: Why Are We Ignoring the Urgent Need for End-to-End Encrypted Emails?

#15

Post by malfist »

LinuxBender wrote: post #13

you have to jump through hoops with third-party tools I personally find it very easy to send PGP encrypted emails with Thunderbird. [1] Thunderbird makes encrypting email platform agnostic. I can switch vendors without losing my ability to maintain E2EE with friends and business partners. I have been able to get non technical friends and lawyers to use Thunderbird and PGP as they just follow the picture instructions.…

Even then, your content is encrypted, but not any of the metadata.

Re: Ask HN: Why Are We Ignoring the Urgent Need for End-to-End Encrypted Emails?

#16

Post by LinuxBender »

malfist wrote: post #15
LinuxBender wrote: post #13

you have to jump through hoops with third-party tools I personally find it very easy to send PGP encrypted emails with Thunderbird. [1] Thunderbird makes encrypting email platform agnostic. I can switch vendors without losing my ability to maintain E2EE with friends and business partners. I have been able to get non technical friends and lawyers to use Thunderbird and PGP as they just follow the picture instructions.…

Even then, your content is encrypted, but not any of the metadata.

If I need to protect metadata then I just have people SFTP encrypted files to me and keep everything off of all the shared platforms all together. For me personally that's a one-off as I rarely have such a need.

Re: Ask HN: Why Are We Ignoring the Urgent Need for End-to-End Encrypted Emails?

#18

Post by bdjsiqoocwk »

reify wrote: post #8

I dont send emails to anyone who has a gmail, googlemail. yahoo mail or microsoft or any of the other careless email providers. It really is as simple as telling people that I do not reply to emails unless they respect my privacy and use an encrypted privacy oriented email provider. I use the Protonmail SimpleLogin addon account to send them an annonymous email stating my terms for email correspondence. It does work.…

What do you do when you buy a ticket and the only way of receiving the ticket is by email? It won't be encrypted on their side. Do you just never travel?

What do you do when someone just sends you an email anyway? You have no option to prevent them from sending it.

Re: Ask HN: Why Are We Ignoring the Urgent Need for End-to-End Encrypted Emails?

#19

Post by 486sx33 »

manuelmoreale wrote: post #11
reify wrote: post #8

I dont send emails to anyone who has a gmail, googlemail. yahoo mail or microsoft or any of the other careless email providers. It really is as simple as telling people that I do not reply to emails unless they respect my privacy and use an encrypted privacy oriented email provider. I use the Protonmail SimpleLogin addon account to send them an annonymous email stating my terms for email correspondence. It does work.…

How do you behave when someone has an email hosted on a custom domain name? Do you perform some checks to figure out if the service they’re using is up to your standard? And what if I didn’t trust your ProtonMail address? Would you be willing to switch to something else?

Most people I know with custom domains for email use gsuite anyway.

I went the Apple route but it’s very restrictive (easy though).

Re: Ask HN: Why Are We Ignoring the Urgent Need for End-to-End Encrypted Emails?

#20

Post by 486sx33 »

It’s really because Microsoft and Google control such a huge percentage of email now

No one has their own email server anymore because your mail won’t get through to those platforms and you can’t touch the uptime… it’s a different sort of monopoly… a free-opoly?

Post reply on HN