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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

#111

Post by ziddoap »

pretext-1 wrote: post #105
ziddoap wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

> Do you have evidence that Proton does not actually encrypt their emails? Their encryption is based on PGP and therefore only message contents are "E2E" encrypted. Subject, From, To, etc. are not. These fields contain most of the information already. For example, Amazon puts the name of the ordered item in the subject line, so they can still see what you ordered. And I'm putting "E2E" in quotes because if the sender…

>Subject, From, To, etc. are not.

I never claimed they were.

>These fields contain most of the information already

Except, you know, the body of the email.

>Amazon puts the name of the ordered item in the subject line, so they can still see what you ordered.

Yes, Proton is not a panacea. Again, never claimed it was. You can't just abandon all opsec because you use Proton, I agree.

>Long story short: you still have to trust your email provider after all. If I'd want to switch away from Google, I'd probably switch to some "normal" email provider (Fastmail, Apple, etc.). The benefits of "E2E" encryption for email are questionable and the drawbacks huge (for example search is very limited).

I agree with the point about trust. You have to trust your hardware wasn't backdoored on the way out of the factory, too. Security and privacy are about trade-offs and weighing risks. I've weighed my risks and made my choices.

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#112

Post by adamhearn »

almet wrote: post #84
ptero wrote: post #24

Proton is not perfect, but nothing is. We need more competition on the internet, and if Proton has a chance to provide an email and storage for an upfront price without trying to distract me with ads or pimp my data to advertisers, I want to support them. As a data point, I have been a very happy user of their plus service for the last 3 years.

The only thing that bugs me with Proton is that it's still very complicated to integrate with thunderbird (or any mail app?), which makes it practically unusable for my needs. Having a tab always open in my browser for my mail seems so wrong.

Genuine question, how is a browser tab different than thunderbird? Besides storing a local copy of mail (which is obviously a huge win), I don't see a big difference. If anything I like the web UI better.

However, for my uses I simply installed proton bridge + apple mail. It just works with all email services I use.

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#113

Post by blangk »

almet wrote: post #84
ptero wrote: post #24

Proton is not perfect, but nothing is. We need more competition on the internet, and if Proton has a chance to provide an email and storage for an upfront price without trying to distract me with ads or pimp my data to advertisers, I want to support them. As a data point, I have been a very happy user of their plus service for the last 3 years.

The only thing that bugs me with Proton is that it's still very complicated to integrate with thunderbird (or any mail app?), which makes it practically unusable for my needs. Having a tab always open in my browser for my mail seems so wrong.

I find it works very well using the bridge on my Manjaro desktop, and was fine on Debian before that.

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#114

Post by ziddoap »

0daystock wrote: post #109
ziddoap wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why you used quotes around encryption? They encrypt the email. That very obviously does not mean Proton somehow encrypted the sent email in the senders Gmail account. However, lacking the other data point (e.g. knowing who has sent me an email from a service that does not encrypt their emails, and being able to access that email from that account), my emails are not readable without my secret. I never claime…

I think the point of contention is exactly how obvious this is to most Protonmail users. I worry too many read "it's encrypted" and make dangerous assumptions about what can actually be guaranteed rather than investigating first-hand; this is the real risk of such services, in my opinion. I put "encryption" in quotes to indicate nuance in the characterization. A locksmith installs an amazing door and lock at my home,…

I absolutely agree that the marketing and branding around almost every service that either does (or claims to) promote privacy and security leaves a lot to be desired.

It's a hard problem, and a problem applicable to many domains. How do you communicate nuance that requires multiple years of education to people who don't have multiple years of education? I don't know.

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#115

Post by jacooper »

ziddoap wrote: post #83
charcircuit wrote: post #77

The privacy of GMail is good enough, if not better than ProtonMail. Client side encryption also comes with downsides since they can't allow third party email clients to work and you have to do all processing client side.

> The privacy of GMail is good enough, if not better than ProtonMail. How do you figure? Google actively scans both email and drive for CSAM. If they can scan it for CSAM, they can scan it for whatever the hell they want.

And they already do, google and Microsoft both scan emails for ADs and tracking.

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#116

Post by bhk »

mden wrote: post #80
charles_kaw wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 pi…

> Portals for law enforcement which likely require some kind of warrant

It was recently reported that major tech companies (including Google) release user data without warrants, and without even authenticating the party requesting the data: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30842757

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#117

Post by brewdad »

drcongo wrote: post #31

Email and calendar aren't the things that keep people on Google, it's Docs etc. You can get good email and calendar anywhere. If their plan is really to take on Google, that's the bits they need to target.

Meh. Different users have different needs. GDocs could go away tomorrow and I would hardly miss it. I don't think I've created anything new on the service in over a year. I use email and calendar every day and need them available and accessible.

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#118

Post by uoaei »

ziddoap wrote: post #63
uoaei wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably the whole "oops we actually DO share IP addresses despite our ToS" followed by a rushed revision of the ToS to include that fact, among other recent news stories.

This is such a disingenuous retelling of what happened. Terms of Service don't trump lawful orders issued by a government. Never have, never will, for any service or company. They were issued a lawful order, did you expect them to just close the company instead? Whether or not you use Proton before or afterwards is of no matter, but please at least try to be honest with what happened.

> Terms of Service don't trump lawful orders issued by a government.

No, obviously they do not. But misrepresenting your policies (i.e., lying) to your users ("we don't track IP addresses" was understood literally at the time) is a serious error and, especially if you're marketing to a privacy-aware crowd, one of your top priorities should be to maintain their trust or else your customer base is going to fall out from under you.

What's disingenuous is implying that lawful orders trump the ethics of lying to your customer base, when saying "we don't track IPs..." but meaning "...until the government asks us to".

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#119

Post by BoyBlunder »

almet wrote: post #84
ptero wrote: post #24

Proton is not perfect, but nothing is. We need more competition on the internet, and if Proton has a chance to provide an email and storage for an upfront price without trying to distract me with ads or pimp my data to advertisers, I want to support them. As a data point, I have been a very happy user of their plus service for the last 3 years.

The only thing that bugs me with Proton is that it's still very complicated to integrate with thunderbird (or any mail app?), which makes it practically unusable for my needs. Having a tab always open in my browser for my mail seems so wrong.

Their mobile apps are also very lackluster and devoid of basic features. I understand that they are unable to open up to other mail apps due to the encryption, but for the past few years there have been little to no updates to their iOS suite.

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#120

Post by ptero »

blangk wrote: post #113
almet wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing that bugs me with Proton is that it's still very complicated to integrate with thunderbird (or any mail app?), which makes it practically unusable for my needs. Having a tab always open in my browser for my mail seems so wrong.

I find it works very well using the bridge on my Manjaro desktop, and was fine on Debian before that.

I have the same experience, for me it works flawlessly with the bridge, but the bridge itself is a complication. I would prefer a straight imap option (in addition to the bridge option). My 2c.
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