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Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail

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Re: Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail

#111

Post by HenryBemis »

pushcx wrote: post #2

This post would be improved by discussing that their [threat model]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threat_model ) is so different than Google's that it regards some of Google's business practices as threats. And that, in turn, there are threats that Google treats as much bigger threats, bringing their own world-class security team to. Calling this fundamental difference in approach "more secure" manipulates the less-…

It can be simplified to:

Gmail + 0$ per month = zero privacy for you and anyone who emails you, plus Uncle Sam has full access to your life.

Protonmail + 4$ per month = you will never see ads for a like the one you just bought, plus you will be driving Uncle Sam crazy!

Re: Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail

#112

Post by vk23 »

thrownsjdke wrote: post #68
flashdance wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no evidence that PGP is compromised. In fact, the snowden leaks revealed that the NSA has "serious problems" following people through TOR, and is unable to decrypt some OTR and PGP encrypted messages. https://www.theverge.com/2014/12/28/7458159/encryption-stand...

Right, Snowden weakened US national security. He clued in the public to important secrets related to our intel operations, and ticked off public backlash against our intelligence agencies. Now, Snowden sits comfortably in a country who is actively hacking us. I’d bet my life that high school students from St. Petersburg have more reverse engineering skills than all US undergrads, at least those who are now interested…

It's a question of perspective. The US government and the NSA commited treason against basically every person using the internet. Also you calling him "Snow dawg" says a lot about you...

Re: Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail

#113

Post by cwyers »

I would not view being hosted outside of the US as an unalloyed good, especially for a US citizen. Legally, the NSA has a much freer hand in terms of surveillance of targets outside of the US. Putting your e-mail traffic outside of the US is no guarantee of anything, it's a set of tradeoffs. As others have noted, security isn't absolute, and depends on your threat model.

Re: Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail

#114

Post by thrownsjdke »

vk23 wrote: post #112
thrownsjdke wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, Snowden weakened US national security. He clued in the public to important secrets related to our intel operations, and ticked off public backlash against our intelligence agencies. Now, Snowden sits comfortably in a country who is actively hacking us. I’d bet my life that high school students from St. Petersburg have more reverse engineering skills than all US undergrads, at least those who are now interested…

It's a question of perspective. The US government and the NSA commited treason against basically every person using the internet. Also you calling him "Snow dawg" says a lot about you...

I’ve edited the post.

Just a guess based on your username. Are you Russian?

Re: Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail

#115

Post by thrownsjdke »

thrownsjdke wrote: post #68
flashdance wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no evidence that PGP is compromised. In fact, the snowden leaks revealed that the NSA has "serious problems" following people through TOR, and is unable to decrypt some OTR and PGP encrypted messages. https://www.theverge.com/2014/12/28/7458159/encryption-stand...

Right, Snowden weakened US national security. He clued in the public to important secrets related to our intel operations, and ticked off public backlash against our intelligence agencies. Now, Snowden sits comfortably in a country who is actively hacking us. I’d bet my life that high school students from St. Petersburg have more reverse engineering skills than all US undergrads, at least those who are now interested…

Just watch how I get down voted here. Tells you a lot about the culture here.

Re: Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail

#116

Post by tony101 »

Flimm wrote: post #49

What are the security guarantees when emailing someone who does not use ProtonMail? If there is an encrypted mode, can this mode be turned off? This is critically important, and yet most of these email providers who talk up their security fail to bring it up. This article is the same.

From the article:

"ProtonMail can also support sending/receiving end-to-end encrypted messages with recipients who are not using ProtonMail."

Re: Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail

#117

Post by geofft »

ploggingdev wrote: post #67
geofft wrote: post #41

Threat model, threat model, threat model. There are some people for whom "The government is literally after me, personally" is a valid threat model. There are some people for whom "Google employees with privileged access to Gmail are conspiring to be after me, personally" (one assumes there's a two-person rule for access to individual inboxes or deploying code that scans inboxes) is also a valid threat model. However…

> "Google employees with privileged access to Gmail are conspiring to be after me, personally" I thought employees do not have access to user data. Can anyone comment on this?

I don't know anything about Google's internals, but, like, there's some data. It gets to your screen. There's code written by Google employees that makes that happen. That code gets modified on a regular basis by Google employees. If enough Google employees get together, they can modify that code to do whatever they want.

I expect that any single Google employee does not have access, in the sense that they've locked themselves out of making changes to their systems without a computer seeing multiple human approvals. But there is a point at which someone can fix that computer.

But yes, my point was that the threat model here isn't "one Google employee goes rogue," it's "multiple Google employees with extremely privileged access to Gmail and/or their code deployment servers all decide that they want to read your email without telling you, and nobody blows any whistles," which seems much more far-fetched.

Re: Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail

#119

Post by 3pt14159 »

HenryBemis wrote: post #111
pushcx wrote: post #2

This post would be improved by discussing that their [threat model]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threat_model ) is so different than Google's that it regards some of Google's business practices as threats. And that, in turn, there are threats that Google treats as much bigger threats, bringing their own world-class security team to. Calling this fundamental difference in approach "more secure" manipulates the less-…

It can be simplified to: Gmail + 0$ per month = zero privacy for you and anyone who emails you, plus Uncle Sam has full access to your life. Protonmail + 4$ per month = you will never see ads for a like the one you just bought, plus you will be driving Uncle Sam crazy!

Uncle Sam can root your machine. If Uncle Sam is the threat vector you're better off using pen and paper.

Re: Why ProtonMail is more secure than Gmail

#120

Post by flashdance »

thrownsjdke wrote: post #115
thrownsjdke wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, Snowden weakened US national security. He clued in the public to important secrets related to our intel operations, and ticked off public backlash against our intelligence agencies. Now, Snowden sits comfortably in a country who is actively hacking us. I’d bet my life that high school students from St. Petersburg have more reverse engineering skills than all US undergrads, at least those who are now interested…

Just watch how I get down voted here. Tells you a lot about the culture here.

It's probably because you're calling him snow dog.
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