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Proton is trying to become Google without your data

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Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#71

Post by cowtools »

yupper32 wrote: post #57
cowtools wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, they are legally obligated to. At least they are not selling my data to advertisers or arbitrarily locking me out of my account like google. Hell, i'd pay for their premium service if wasn't so expensive and they accepted anonymous payments through monero or something. I mean, this is what email has basically come to. I've tried to host my own email server, all my outbound mail ends up in spam. If you want pr…

> At least they are not selling my data to advertisers That's almost never what actually happens, though. They sell access to you and use your data internally to target ads. A law enforcement request does literally release your data.

It doesn't matter to me whether or not they only use the advertising data internally. Google is such a large monopoly at this point that I am basically forced to deal with them on a daily basis through the businesses and institutions I work with.

It's not even the surveillance that I am concerned with at this point. I just am trying to disentangle all these services that I use that demand to become linked in difficult ways.

Like let's say you have a gmail account linked to a youtube account, and you upload a video or like something that sets off google's automated spam heuristic. Boom, your google account is deleted and you can no longer access your email or sign into your accounts that require email verification. All this extra surveillance is just going to increase the odds of my account getting falsely flagged as a bot or something.

Let's say you lose your phone. You have to use your phone to login to some institution's service, so you get a new phone and try to reset the 2FA with your email. However you need access to your phone as a 2FA to access your email. (this exact scenario happened to a family member the other day, just goes to show you should NEVER link your accounts with a cell number).

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#72

Post by ziddoap »

post_break wrote: post #34
imwillofficial wrote: post #23

But they'll give your data away if asked.

Exactly, which leads me to the spiral of what's the point? If there is nothing truly encrypted, then what do they really offer?

You're conflating different things. It doesn't help that people who seem to have a bone to pick with companies obeying the laws of the country they operate in continuously leave out the nuance and detail of the event.

The court order that Proton complied with released the IP address of the suspect, not the encrypted contents of the emails in the suspects inbox.

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#73

Post by tediousdemise »

DashAnimal wrote: post #58
hammock wrote: post #43

Proton is mired in shenanigans. Evidence points to ProtonVPN being a white-labeled version of Nord VPN. Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23571653 and https://archive.is/iZ2l2 (archive of relevant but broken [2] link @ HN thread) Protonmail has its own issues that have been discussed on HN. Source: https://encryp.ch/blog/disturbing-facts-about-protonmail/ Obviously Gmail and such are piped directly into gl…

"Obviously Gmail and such are piped directly into global intelligence databases" Wait --- 'obviously'?!? Do you have any info on this because that is a wild claim.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XKeyscore

> XKeyscore (XKEYSCORE or XKS) is a secret computer system used by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) for searching and analyzing global Internet data

> XKeyscore is a complicated system, and various authors have different interpretations of its actual capabilities. Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald explained XKeyscore as being a system which enables almost unlimited surveillance of anyone anywhere in the world, while the NSA has said that usage of the system is limited and restricted.

Think about that for a split second: anyone, anywhere. Also, who would you trust more: the US government, or a man who sacrificed his life, health and wellbeing to expose this scandal to the world?

Alas, privacy for the masses is dead.

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#74

Post by [deleted] »

0daystock wrote: post #56

Asserting "private email" is a modern litmus test for someone's technical understanding and capabilities, or lack thereof. Snake oil companies will always hide behind "it's encrypted" and "it's hosted in Switzerland" tropes that mean nothing to anyone who has done a modicum of research. Real privacy is not the result of some product, especially not when its so desperately and obviously shilled.

[deleted]

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#75

Post by metadat »

vzaliva wrote: post #40

I have been a ProtonMail user for a long time but have yet to make it my default email provider. The main problem is that I keep an email archive of all my emails: all sent and most received since 1995. It is 17Gb. I've imported it into Gmail, and it is instantly searchable. With ProtonMail, such a search must happen on the client-side due to encryption. I suspect it will not work very well.

The searching encrypted content problem goes away once you build an MS Outlook-ish standalone desktop (or otherwise offline-first, in the case of mobile) email client app which builds local-only indexes.

The real cost (or long-term benefit) is you'll need a bit more local storage to have your cake and eat it privately.

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#76

Post by ziddoap »

0daystock wrote: post #56

Asserting "private email" is a modern litmus test for someone's technical understanding and capabilities, or lack thereof. Snake oil companies will always hide behind "it's encrypted" and "it's hosted in Switzerland" tropes that mean nothing to anyone who has done a modicum of research. Real privacy is not the result of some product, especially not when its so desperately and obviously shilled.

>Snake oil companies will always hide behind "it's encrypted" and "it's hosted in Switzerland" tropes that mean nothing to anyone who has done a modicum of research.

Do you have evidence that Proton does not actually encrypt their emails?

>Real privacy is not the result of some product,

I do wholeheartedly agree with this, at least. Privacy is a scale and there are many, many pieces which tip the scale one way or the other.

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#78

Post by randomhodler84 »

tediousdemise wrote: post #69
0daystock wrote: post #56

Asserting "private email" is a modern litmus test for someone's technical understanding and capabilities, or lack thereof. Snake oil companies will always hide behind "it's encrypted" and "it's hosted in Switzerland" tropes that mean nothing to anyone who has done a modicum of research. Real privacy is not the result of some product, especially not when its so desperately and obviously shilled.

Couldn't have said it better myself! Privacy is first and foremost a discipline and a practice, just like security. It's a form of self-respect, in my eyes. Some would say it's even a natural human right. Commoditizing it is a recipe for disaster. Edit: Expansion of the self-respect tidbit. Lack of privacy enables others to have control over you. Feeling like you are not in control, or actually being controlled by so…

I don’t know. I don’t think all “commoditization” of privacy is a bad thing. WhatsApp commoditized it, Signal; SSL/TLS; Tor; Privacy Coins; these all vastly improved the privacy of comms on the planet. One needs to determine outcomes rather than declaring it app disasters.

maybe democratizing privacy is a better way to phrase than commoditization — which implies some cost savings rather than the just consumer availability.

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#79

Post by almet »

lvass wrote: post #66
airstrike wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MAGMA is still a better acronym

Using Google and Meta in the acronym sounds wrong. I'd rather MAAMA or MAGFA.

In french we say GAFAM, I naively though it was the same in the US. Gasp, I'm still too focused on my culture =D

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#80

Post by mden »

charles_kaw wrote: post #62
DashAnimal wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Obviously Gmail and such are piped directly into global intelligence databases" Wait --- 'obviously'?!? Do you have any info on this because that is a wild claim.

>Do you have any info on this because that is a wild claim. Not only has the concept and implementation of automated law enforcement portals been around since the 90s, the Snowden docs revealed that major providers were providing such portals. AND that their inter-datacenter communications were being piped directly into global intelligence databases without. These portals, NSLs, and other mechanisms have also been co…

You're making a wildly different claim than the initial one. The initial claim is "obviously Gmail and such are piped directly into global intelligence databases". Portals for law enforcement which likely require some kind of warrant and very likely have regular audits are not slightly the same thing as directly piping the data to the intelligence community. As for "their inter-datacenter communications were being piped directly", that was revealed by Snowden and you correctly used the past tense "were". Is there evidence that either Alphabet or Meta are giving direct access to their users' data beyond what the law requires?

(Disclaimer, employee of Google, my opinions are my own and all that. I have no info beyond what is public knowledge.)

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