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Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail

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Re: Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail

#291

Post by hanru »

agrinman wrote: post #137

"Zero Knowledge Encryption" is just a marketing term... I wish marketing would not cross wires with real crypto, it makes me skeptical that they really know what they're doing. They're not the only company doing this and they should be called out for it like spideroak [1]. ZKP[2] is real branch of cryptography and they do not use it AFAIK. [1] https://spideroak.com/articles/why-we-will-no-longer-use-the... [2] https:…

It also makes me feel uncomfortable when reading zero knowledge things in non-cryptography sense.

Re: Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail

#292

Post by Pyxl101 »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #290
singron wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cigar seller sells its customer list to a data broker or uses a third party service that does the same (e.g. it uses your email address as a user identifier in a third party analytics product). Then advertisers buy that data.

The sold it in less then 24 hours?

Well, it's not like they need to ship the list of email addresses across the company in a truck.

Re: Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail

#293

Post by sitepodmatt »

A heavy amount of ProtonMail's infrastructure is in New York at NYI [1] accordingly to blog posts however they say 'ProtonMail stores user data exclusively in European countries with strong privacy protections such as Switzerland.' Now I am confused

[1] https://blog.fastmail.com/2017/05/13/nyi-datacentre-move/

Re: Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail

#294

Post by dfc »

agrinman wrote: post #137

"Zero Knowledge Encryption" is just a marketing term... I wish marketing would not cross wires with real crypto, it makes me skeptical that they really know what they're doing. They're not the only company doing this and they should be called out for it like spideroak [1]. ZKP[2] is real branch of cryptography and they do not use it AFAIK. [1] https://spideroak.com/articles/why-we-will-no-longer-use-the... [2] https:…

I was just as bothered / put off by the "Zero Knowledge Encryption." But your comment is a little disingenuous. Spider Oak ultimately did the right thing and given your link it is clear you are aware that SO has stopped using the term.

Re: Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail

#295

Post by bogomipz »

jszymborski wrote: post #277
bogomipz wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"They're also based in Germany, which is nice." They're based in Switzerland which is no longer a safe haven, although ProtonMail seems to still trade on the idea that it is. See: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/25/switzerland-vo...

I meant mailbox.org is based in Germany :)

Ah sorry, I didn't read closely enough, mailbox.org looks good. Cheers.

Re: Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail

#296

Post by xfer »

linkregister wrote: post #110
skybrian wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Without any warrant": what do you mean?

Under the Stored Communications Act, law enforcement may get emails or other information under third party control with only a subpoena. Retrieving email via the POP3 protocol typically deletes the email upon retrieval, making it impossible for the third party to comply with requests for already-retrieved emails.

So you think google storage systems work like your normal filesystem?

Re: Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail

#297

Post by linkregister »

xfer wrote: post #296
linkregister wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under the Stored Communications Act, law enforcement may get emails or other information under third party control with only a subpoena. Retrieving email via the POP3 protocol typically deletes the email upon retrieval, making it impossible for the third party to comply with requests for already-retrieved emails.

So you think google storage systems work like your normal filesystem?

You don’t think that files can be deleted from a Google file system? Does gmail even store email like that, in flat files?

Re: Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail

#298

Post by sitepodmatt »

sitepodmatt wrote: post #293

A heavy amount of ProtonMail's infrastructure is in New York at NYI [1] accordingly to blog posts however they say 'ProtonMail stores user data exclusively in European countries with strong privacy protections such as Switzerland.' Now I am confused [1] https://blog.fastmail.com/2017/05/13/nyi-datacentre-move/

Oops I've got fastmail confused with proton

Re: Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail

#299

Post by rtpg »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #205
md_ wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, one might reasonably ask whether "reading your mail" (as in, running an algorithm on it to try to classify phishing vs non) is a security cost or benefit. Spearphishing is a huge source of compromise at the moment; antiphishing filters might, in that view, be considered a security feature rather than a security fault. On the other hand, I have, frankly, never understood these privacy arguments. Is it a privacy…

>Is it a privacy violation if someone checks a checksum of my incoming mail against a blacklist? No, the privacy concern is about the potential for abuse if there is a known place in the world where a very detailed account of all my online (and some offline) activities, contacts, communication and personal interests is stored. It obviously arouses the interest and desires of criminals, governments, employers, politic…

Spam filters don't need to store all the contents. They can simply store hashes of contents.

So even if someone hacks into the spam filters, they won't be able to reconstruct content from your account. They _might_ have insight into things like word usage, but they won't have reconstructed sentences or the like, a priori.

You can build systems like this without having long-term storage of the content, which protects against data issues for one-time leaks.

Re: Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail

#300

Post by fauigerzigerk »

mentat wrote: post #267
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a threat that Gmail faces as well though.

With a security budget several orders of more, yes.

Google also has much more diverse security problems to solve so that's not a good argument either way.
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