Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail • Hacker News Board

Re: Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail

#71

Post by Canada » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 3:24 PM UTC

zabuni wrote: post #57

geofft wrote: post #41

Threat model, threat model, threat model. There are some people for whom "The government is literally after me, personally" is a valid threat model. There are some people for whom "Google employees with privileged access to Gmail are conspiring to be after me, personally" (one assumes there's a two-person rule for access to individual inboxes or deploying code that scans inboxes) is also a valid threat model. However…

I think what's telling here is that the blog post does not point to Protonmail's own threat model. https://protonmail.com/blog/protonmail-threat-model/ Which says don't use it if you are up against state actors and: "Sensitive business communications – You have sensitive business information that you want to make sure is protected from competitors and other malicious parties. For example, you fear a competitor may wa…

This attack actually happened years ago at a company called Hushmail. Law enforcement had the encrypted email provider serve malicious code to the target which leaked the secret key.

Re: Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail

#72

Post by robin_reala » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 3:25 PM UTC

drdaeman wrote: post #40

robin_reala wrote: post #12

Unfortunately this doesn’t work with IMAP. That’s understandable given the encryption at their end, but it does tie you into their apps.

It certainly does, but require client software that's capable to decrypt the data. I think almost every desktop mail client support S/MIME. Many support PGP/MIME, using plugin/extension or natively. Unfortunately, the situation is much worse on mobile. Anyway, if the client software is capable - which is rarely true but sometimes is the case - any classic mail server can store everything encrypted. If you self-host -…

Right, I was going by their knowledge base article titled ‘IMAP, SMTP, and POP3 setup’ where they say:

At this time Protonmail does not support IMAP/SMTP or POP3 due to the technology ProtonMail utilizes within web browsers to encrypt and decrypt your messages. We apologize for the inconvenience and are working on creative solutions to allow IMAP/SMTP use.

https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/imap-smtp-and-...

Re: Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail

#73

Post by darkhorn » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 3:25 PM UTC

May be ProtonMail is owned by CIA. Who knows.

Re: Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail

#74

Post by pcrock » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 3:25 PM UTC

Anyone remember HushMail? The end-to-end encrypted email service that didn't have the ability to decrypt your emails? They were eventually coerced to change their code and record passwords in order to gain access to an encrypted email account. ProtonMail is the same thing, give or take, just in Switzerland. They can be coerced just like anyone else.

People whose lives are dependent on secure communication still need to manage their own PGP keys. Once protonmail makes it possible to use your own email client with your own keys, then I'd say it's worth trusting.

Re: Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail

#75

Post by pmlnr » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 3:25 PM UTC

corobo wrote: post #9

Hows the spam filter? I fell in love with the idea of switching to other services before on their marketing copy but I'm back in Gmail. It all rests on how good the spam filtering is by default not after I've received x good and y bad emails. Unfortunately in this case it sounds like there might be a tradeoff between securing my internet postcards[1] and training spam filters. [1] and that's all they are really, post…

Better than gmail for certain. The false positive rate in gmail is outrageous.

Re: Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail

#76

Post by ocdtrekkie » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 3:26 PM UTC

gcb0 wrote: post #28

devmunchies wrote: post #4

I'm a paying user, and have to say, I think I may want to give up this extra security for Google's world class spam filtering.

you might want to check yahoo mail then. I work for them (oath now). and at some point all employers were forced to dogfood it. the UI took a while to get used, but now I miss in app tabs witg several emails (in Gmail I need browser tabs). ...Long story short: after yahoo was acquired we moved to gmail. you cannot belive how much more spam shows up on my imbox that I had never seens before. not to mention yahoo took…

Wait, Yahoo uses Google Mail internally? o_o

Re: Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail

#77

Post by JumpCrisscross » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 3:26 PM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #64

geofft wrote: post #41

Threat model, threat model, threat model. There are some people for whom "The government is literally after me, personally" is a valid threat model. There are some people for whom "Google employees with privileged access to Gmail are conspiring to be after me, personally" (one assumes there's a two-person rule for access to individual inboxes or deploying code that scans inboxes) is also a valid threat model. However…

> "I don't want to lose access to my email" (remember that availability is a part of security!). Arent there many (difficult to judge how many) cases of people losing access to their Google account, and therefore about everything they had online (photos, email, videos, etc...). That is also scary enough, especially when it happens randomly with no clear reason why and the support of Google seems to be limited to send…

> the support of Google seems to be limited to sending info via forms in the hope of a future human interaction

People underestimate the power of a calm, deliberate letter sent by post with an elected representative or two copied.

Re: Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail

#78

Post by chimeracoder » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 3:27 PM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #64

geofft wrote: post #41

Threat model, threat model, threat model. There are some people for whom "The government is literally after me, personally" is a valid threat model. There are some people for whom "Google employees with privileged access to Gmail are conspiring to be after me, personally" (one assumes there's a two-person rule for access to individual inboxes or deploying code that scans inboxes) is also a valid threat model. However…

> "I don't want to lose access to my email" (remember that availability is a part of security!). Arent there many (difficult to judge how many) cases of people losing access to their Google account, and therefore about everything they had online (photos, email, videos, etc...). That is also scary enough, especially when it happens randomly with no clear reason why and the support of Google seems to be limited to send…

> Arent there many (difficult to judge how many) cases of people losing access to their Google account, and therefore about everything they had online (photos, email, videos, etc...). That is also scary enough, especially when it happens randomly with no clear reason why and the support of Google seems to be limited to sending info via forms in the hope of a future human interaction.

There are, but that's not incorporated into a threat model because it's not a security issue (at least not a first-order security problem).

Re: Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail

#79

Post by matthewaveryusa » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 3:27 PM UTC

blfr wrote: post #54

icebraining wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand, there are two passwords; the Mailbox passwords, used for encrypting and signing emails, is in fact unrecoverable, and you'll lose your emails if you forget it: https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/resetting-mail...

Yes. But you enter the second password into the Proton webapp if you use it so it's not exactly beyond their reach.

You are correct in your assessment, but this statement holds true for any application. You must read the source before executing it -- and en suite you need to trust the hardware that's executing said code.

As it stands you don't send your password to proton -- they send you an encrypted private key that the password you type decrypts (at email creation time you generated that private key in your browser via openppg.js ) They most certainly could change their API to send the password to the server once it's typed in the UI. This isn't unheard of and there is large suspicion that law enforcement made hushmail modify their API for certain users of interest in order to decrypt their mail.

Re: Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail

#80

Post by ocdtrekkie » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 3:28 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #43

Encryption is cool, but in terms of security, Google probably hires more security researches than the entire staff of ProtonMail. > Protected by ... European privacy laws So is GSuite ( https://gsuite.google.com/ ) > No conflict of interest There is no conflict of interest with G Suite either, which is governed by a different Terms of Use than normal Gmail. If that wouldn't be the case, being the "business" version,…

Bear in mind, European privacy laws only help you with Google (or other US-based providers) if you're a European citizen (via things like Privacy Shield). Whereas with ProtonMail being located in Europe, they're likely to be better protected from US law enforcement requests as a whole. US providers have no obligation to provide US citizens European-quality privacy protections.