ProtonMail now offers elliptic curve cryptography • Hacker News Board

Re: ProtonMail now offers elliptic curve cryptography

#31

Post by jamil7 » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 1:50 PM UTC

wil421 wrote: post #2

Anyone using ProtonMail regularly? I created an account but haven’t used it much. How are your experiences? Any iOS users who can comment on their experience with proton mail and the default mail client? I don’t went to switch to something that won’t be around in a decade or so.

Been using it as my main account for over a year, have an old gmail account which I'm giving a bit longer grace period until old clients and contacts stop emailing. Using it on iOS, it's works great but don't expect many features. Same can be said of the webapp. I use a custom domain so I'm not worried about it shutting down, I'll migrate to something else. One issue I've had is emails from new contacts sometimes showing up in junk.

Re: ProtonMail now offers elliptic curve cryptography

#32

Post by Abishek_Muthian » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 1:52 PM UTC

tristor wrote: post #29

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #22

Off topic I had a proton email created when it was announced & didn't use it. I found out that my mailbox decryption for that email id is not working (not sure how, I use password manager) & I haven't set a recovery email to recover my account. I saw a HN comment earlier telling, the user had recovered their Proton mail account by answering few questions to customer service. I attempted the same, the issue is that I…

There’s two separate passwords. If you reset your encryption password it’s supposed to make all prior received mail unreadable. Was this the case for you?

Correct, existing emails become inaccessible when the mailbox is reset. Can be recovered though, if there's a backup & the original decryption password is found again.

Re: ProtonMail now offers elliptic curve cryptography

#33

Post by oedmarap » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 1:57 PM UTC

wil421 wrote: post #2

Anyone using ProtonMail regularly? I created an account but haven’t used it much. How are your experiences? Any iOS users who can comment on their experience with proton mail and the default mail client? I don’t went to switch to something that won’t be around in a decade or so.

I use a ProtonMail address for online accounts whose content I don't need intermingled with my personal mail.

I also use a ProtonMail "+" alias when signing up for a totally new service (with a filter to place emails from that alias directly in Spam; as all it does is handle account signup/verify). If I can't change my email after signing up for a service I don't continue using that service, as I define that to be user-hostile. If I can't use "+" in an address when signing up I default to GetNada.

The other use case for a PM address is for anonymity (e.g. throwaway/whistleblowing) with a requisite VPN and browser-only login, etc.

As an aside, I use a free Outlook address as my newsletter spam box (good storage size and Android interoperability for consuming content).

Re: ProtonMail now offers elliptic curve cryptography

#34

Post by nothrabannosir » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 1:57 PM UTC

wil421 wrote: post #2

Anyone using ProtonMail regularly? I created an account but haven’t used it much. How are your experiences? Any iOS users who can comment on their experience with proton mail and the default mail client? I don’t went to switch to something that won’t be around in a decade or so.

Definitely make sure to use this, or any email service, with a custom domain. You’ll have to get an appropriate subscription, but it pays for itself thousandfold when changing providers without having to reverse update your entire contact list.

Aside from that, yes I use proton, it’s fine. The Mac bridge is a joke but the rest works ok.

Re: ProtonMail now offers elliptic curve cryptography

#35

Post by nothrabannosir » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 1:59 PM UTC

oedmarap wrote: post #33

wil421 wrote: post #2

Anyone using ProtonMail regularly? I created an account but haven’t used it much. How are your experiences? Any iOS users who can comment on their experience with proton mail and the default mail client? I don’t went to switch to something that won’t be around in a decade or so.

I use a ProtonMail address for online accounts whose content I don't need intermingled with my personal mail. I also use a ProtonMail "+" alias when signing up for a totally new service (with a filter to place emails from that alias directly in Spam; as all it does is handle account signup/verify). If I can't change my email after signing up for a service I don't continue using that service, as I define that to be us…

Outlook has an amazing feature that allows you to make top level whateveryouwant@outlook.com aliases. Make one for the service, sign up, delete it.

This guards you from spammers stripping the + label, which I’m sure they all do by now.

Re: ProtonMail now offers elliptic curve cryptography

#36

Post by woadwarrior01 » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 2:00 PM UTC

wil421 wrote: post #2

Anyone using ProtonMail regularly? I created an account but haven’t used it much. How are your experiences? Any iOS users who can comment on their experience with proton mail and the default mail client? I don’t went to switch to something that won’t be around in a decade or so.

I switched to ProtonMail from Gmail (with a custom domain) about 6 months ago. The web app is a bit janky, compared to Gmail, but I use Apple Mail with their desktop bridge app and they work fairly well, together. Their iOS client is comparable to the default mail client, but not to the Gmail app in terms of features.

Re: ProtonMail now offers elliptic curve cryptography

#37

Post by jbarberu » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 2:04 PM UTC

wil421 wrote: post #2

Anyone using ProtonMail regularly? I created an account but haven’t used it much. How are your experiences? Any iOS users who can comment on their experience with proton mail and the default mail client? I don’t went to switch to something that won’t be around in a decade or so.

I've been using it as my primary email since around May of 2017. I can only speak for the web and Android versions of protonmail, and those work pretty well (comparable to the gmail app and gmail in the browser).

I'm using the paid version of protonmail with a custom domain, giving me the ability to somewhat easily switch to a different provider in the future if they go out of business or end up losing my trust.

Re: ProtonMail now offers elliptic curve cryptography

#38

Post by __ralston3 » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 2:04 PM UTC

As a PM customer of almost a year, I'd definitely say they should focus more efforts on the UI/UX as opposed to advancing the crypto for now. What's the point of having the world's most cryptologically advanced, unusable inbox. Specifically conversation threading/nesting. I don't expect everyone to be as streamlined as say a Gmail, but basic "1 conversation - 1 email" in the inbox would be nice for starters.

Re: ProtonMail now offers elliptic curve cryptography

#39

Post by calvinmorrison » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 2:07 PM UTC

__ralston3 wrote: post #38

As a PM customer of almost a year, I'd definitely say they should focus more efforts on the UI/UX as opposed to advancing the crypto for now. What's the point of having the world's most cryptologically advanced, unusable inbox. Specifically conversation threading/nesting. I don't expect everyone to be as streamlined as say a Gmail, but basic "1 conversation - 1 email" in the inbox would be nice for starters.

I really really really like thier conversation threading. Because I get so many recurring transactional emails (eg bank statements, auto pay, etc) it makes it very easy for me to view ALL of these in one thread, and not take up a lot of space in my inbox.

Honestly I wish other providers would give me this sort of 'transactional email' conversation tie up because it's convienent. I can see in the last 12 months for example, I have always paid my gas bill on time, at a glance too!

Re: ProtonMail now offers elliptic curve cryptography

#40

Post by philshem » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 2:07 PM UTC

Unsolicited opinion on ProtonMail: I'm a big fan. It's not as flashy as gmail, but so far my mails haven't been marked as spam, which was happening with zoho. Unfortunately, zoho doesn't provide free email forwarding, so the migration to PM is taking longer than hoped for.

I'll probably soon subscribe to PM for two reasons: to use the @pm.me domain for outgoing (currently only incoming), and for custom domain support. Also subscribing gets IMAP support (I think).