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

Russia blocks ProtonMail

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 186 posts

Re: Russia blocks ProtonMail

#141

Post by slenk »

noelsusman wrote: post #140
fraktl wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would. It's not Protonmail who's to be blamed for the potential attack and deaths. There are series of events that lead to people deciding to be terrorists. I'd focus on those reasons rather than hotfixing stuff by exposing 99.9% of other Protonmail users. I would never opt in to affect 99.9% of users because of 0.01% of users. We are all educated enough through events in recent history that clearly tell us how sim…

I can understand this in the specific context of Russia, but I honestly don't understand this as a general principle. Allowing the police to convince a judge to issue a warrant for information on a few ProtonMail users doesn't expose 99.9% of other ProtonMail users to anything. Why would a warrant to kick somebody's door down be okay while a warrant for this is not? Are you opposed to all types of police warrants? Th…

The most important point - The owners of ProtonMail cannot decrypt the email of their customers.

Second, a warrant for breaking into physical property in their jurisdiction is very different than digital property on servers in a different country. For one, Russia's judges have no authority there.

Re: Russia blocks ProtonMail

#142

Post by Kinrany »

mapcars wrote: post #61
dmos62 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing how often Kremlin retreats to shaping public perception through theatrics, it's easy to think of the bomb threats as an inside job.

There is some information that the threats were sent by a guy who lost ton of money on recently crashed biggest Russian bitcoin exchange.

Do you have a source?

Re: Russia blocks ProtonMail

#143

Post by craftinator »

kragen wrote: post #107
craftinator wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya know, therapy is actually relatively cheap now a days.

That reply really falls short of engaging in any actual reasoning, to say nothing of civility — can't you do any better than that? I explained in some detail why police don't ignore anonymous bomb threats, and your only response is to try to insult me. This is disappointing and does not rise to the level of conversation I expect to see on this site.

Oh, you're right. It was a personal attack based on just how weird your fictional dialogue was, but personal attacks are anathema on HN. I apologise for mixing up platform social norms.

Re: Russia blocks ProtonMail

#144

Post by outworlder »

eatbitseveryday wrote: post #133
Timpy wrote: post #3

I've been considering leaving Gmail for a privacy focused email service but it seems so difficult to switch. So many accounts and services have my Gmail registered, I don't think I could collect them all. Can anybody using ProtonMail (or any other privacy focused email) recommend it? I feel like choosing an email provider these days is as serious as choosing a bank.

> so difficult to switch. So many accounts and services have my Gmail registered, I don't think I could collect them all. Register a domain (e.g. something23423.de for 15USD/year) and use that as your primary email address (e.g., name@something23423.de), then connect it to any provider you wish underneath via editing the MX records at the registrar. Many email providers support this and have instructions [1,2,3]. You…

Note that there's often an additional cost charged on the email provider's side to use custom DNS.

Re: Russia blocks ProtonMail

#145

Post by ebcode »

whoo wrote: post #125
joering2 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference was that number one Lavabit was made by a US citizen, and its servers were in the USA. Number two, Lavabit kept all keys to your email at their own premises and could de-crypt your email on their side. Protonmail cannot do so, because your password is a part of they key to decrypt email, and they do not know it, nor they can crack it in a reasonable amount of time, so AFAIK there is nothing they can pr…

Have you considered how proton mail filters spam? It has to be stored in memory for this to happen before it's encrypted and flushed to the disk. Unless your emails are encrypted for you on someone else's client before they're sent to your protonmail, in which case protonmail still has all of the metadata (time sent, where it was sent from, length of the message, etc.) Do you believe proton mail can keep state level…

Do you use protonmail? I do, and I'm finding it actually refreshing to see spam and phishing emails in my inbox. At first I thought, why aren't they blocking this? Then I realized, "oh right, that's because they aren't reading it".

> Do you believe proton mail can keep state level actors like Russia, China, and the United States out of their prod infra?

No, I don't believe they'll be able to keep state actors out of their servers indefinitely. But it's more a matter of what the state actors find once they've gained access. As I understand it, the architecture of the service is what prevents protonmail themselves, as well as any intruder, from reading the encrypted mail files[0].

[0] https://protonmail.com/security-details

Re: Russia blocks ProtonMail

#146

Post by kragen »

craftinator wrote: post #143
kragen wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reply really falls short of engaging in any actual reasoning, to say nothing of civility — can't you do any better than that? I explained in some detail why police don't ignore anonymous bomb threats, and your only response is to try to insult me. This is disappointing and does not rise to the level of conversation I expect to see on this site.

Oh, you're right. It was a personal attack based on just how weird your fictional dialogue was, but personal attacks are anathema on HN. I apologise for mixing up platform social norms.

Please atone by responding to it with a thoughtful critique of my outline of the incentive structures of the different actors in the situation, or of my presentation thereof, even if you don't normally do such things. I know that's hard work, and you may doubt you can do it, but I have faith in you.

Re: Russia blocks ProtonMail

#147

Post by rapnie »

vageli wrote: post #91
bilekas wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would never opt in to affect 99.9% of users because of 0.01% of users Exactly. And thats the only point which needs to be made here. It's like if one person was drink driving and hit someone. saying : "Well now thats it, we need to ban driving".

Yeah, why aren't breathalyzers mandated in every vehicle? Even though we as a society pretty uniformly agree (from the people I've spoken with) that drunk driving is bad in every case, why don't we resort to such extreme measures? Why don't we just strip prisoners naked and keep them in glass cages? We would certainly need fewer armed guards if that were the case. Thank goodness we are not there yet.

Funny thing is in France they did require having breathalyzers in your car by law. But it is not really in effect now.

https://www.drive-france.com/faqs/france-breathalyzer-law/

Re: Russia blocks ProtonMail

#148

Post by logfromblammo »

xiphias2 wrote: post #55
bnt wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if those bomb threats proved right and people get killed? Would you still praise Proton for not working with Law enforcement?

I never understood why police even accepts anonymous bomb tips. They should respond by requiring the person giving the tip to identify himself.

Because if the tip is non-anonymous, the person making it is automatically the only known suspect.

It's not the difference between anonymous tip and non-anonymous tip, but between anonymous tip and no tip at all, because no one wants to be punished for doing the right thing.

Remember Richard Jewell from the Atlanta Olympics?

Re: Russia blocks ProtonMail

#149

Post by xiphias2 »

logfromblammo wrote: post #148
xiphias2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood why police even accepts anonymous bomb tips. They should respond by requiring the person giving the tip to identify himself.

Because if the tip is non-anonymous, the person making it is automatically the only known suspect. It's not the difference between anonymous tip and non-anonymous tip, but between anonymous tip and no tip at all, because no one wants to be punished for doing the right thing. Remember Richard Jewell from the Atlanta Olympics?

It's so sad, but that's why I wrote that protection of the person who called in is crucial. But with cases like this I understand why people don't trust the police with reporting bombs.

Re: Russia blocks ProtonMail

#150

Post by antpls »

Koshkin wrote: post #139
antpls wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Protonmail cannot do so, because your password is a part of they key to decrypt email, and they do not know it, nor they can crack it in a reasonable amount of time, so AFAIK there is nothing they can provide LE with to decrypt your email on the go. I don't think this is true. A hash of the password could be part of the key, but Protonmail already has that hash stored on its server (otherwise they would not be able…

> A hash of the password could be part of the key Except when it's not (and the full password is used instead).

After looking at the doc, it seems Protonmail uses GPG and computes the keys on the client device. (So I was wrong in my reply earlier).

However, when you send an unencrypted email with Protonmail, they claim that they encrypt the email at rest, but the claim is not verifiable.

Post reply on HN