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Proton is trying to become Google without your data

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141–150 of 185 posts

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#141

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.

Are you suggesting that because the only way to have truly private email (in the U.S. at least), is to own the server hardware, the property it's colocated on, and the Internet connection. Because this is true, but not helpful.

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a silent backlash against Proton, the most obvious is the domain is blocked by the US Antivirus company who scans all UK politicians emails through the UK parliament email address parliament.uk or British politicians are ignoring their constituents, some website contact forms reject protonmail email address as well. So I hope they give Google a run for their money. Edit IF its not politicians ignoring emails…

I've definitely blocked protonmail domains before. The calculus is that 100% of the accounts from that domain are fraud and 0% are legitimate, so it just saves a lot of time to block it. Stops fraud before it even starts. This is, of course, annoying for the 1 legitimate customer mixed in with the billions of bots. But basically, they have an abuse problem that they need to solve. Gmail also has plenty of fraudulent…

Well the irony is that Shodan.io also blocks protonmail email accounts and yet Shodan is your goto search engine to launch surgical hack attacks on entities.

I known www.urban-automotive.co.uk are losing out on business because they block protonmail accounts as I'm sure many other businesses are!

Hitting those who dont understand privacy in the wallet is an easy accomplishment!

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#143
post #133

The problem with Proton email is that is full of fraudulent accounts this they domain and emails send via proton are blocked by many companies, ISPs and firewalls. I tried it and it was unable to send email to my wife’s work. In short alot of dickheads use it for spam/scam and ruin it for the rest of us. I do not know how they can overcome that…

I use a custom domain and have never once had a problem with delivery.

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#144
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one they rolled out yesterday was pretty good. Including phone apps. Now just waiting for the the iOS calendar to finally be released.

It looked nice, but it was essentially the same UI. But I didn't try the new phone apps, they were really bad in the past.

Both, phone and web feel much snappier.

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#145
post #36

But they'll give your data away if asked.

The value of proton is not that they'll break the law for you -- they absolutely will not. They are bound by the laws of the land, and when compelled will hand over all the data they are required. The value IS that they simply don't have that much data. All your emails are encrypted at rest with a key they can't read. All your data is stored in such a way that they can't decrypt it on demand. Think about it. When Mic…

They also know who you send and receive emails to, but your point still stands.

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#146

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?

The content of your email is encrypted.

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the article states, they were forced to by Swiss authorities. They tried to fight against it, but in the end no reputable provider is going to put the whole company on the line for 1 user against a lawful order from their government.

Uh-huh. Then perhaps they shouldn't be touting Swiss privacy laws like they're some holy golden shield. And once again: > Why's a privacy-first service logging IPs in the first place?

Did you read the article you yourself linked?

> French police sent a request to Swiss police via Europol to force the company to obtain the IP address of one of its users

They weren't logging until they were forced to.

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#148
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 agree it's not perfect but they have some pretty great instructions. I've been using the Bridge with thunderbird for multiple accounts and it works awesome.

Yep, me too. I have Thunderbird running in the background essentially as an email backup, but I wind up using the web version more. However Thunderbird and Bridge work extremely well that I forget they're running in parallel.

I'm a recent Google GSuite refugee, so it's hard breaking the habit of web based mail I suppose.

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#149
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Lots of "likely" and "were" in your comment... I'll be honest, this is really the first time I've seen a tech circle in which this whole surveillance apparatus is not a common established knowledge.

To be clear I'm not saying there isn't an extensive surveillance apparatus. I'm saying the claim that giant tech companies are willfully providing unrestricted access to user data to the intelligence community is not at all an "obvious" one as claimed and requires evidence. Do you disagree with that?

Re: Proton is trying to become Google without your data

#150
post #116
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's an interesting article, thanks for the link. It doesn't support the original claim very strongly however. It showcases there's a flawed process for obtaining user data (which is still obviously bad) but it's far removed from Microsoft, Google, or Fb directly piping their data over to the NSA.
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