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Protonmail can delete the wrong email and nobody cares

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Re: Protonmail can delete the wrong email and nobody cares

#131

Post by FredPret »

MrDresden wrote: post #49

I've been a paying Protonmail customer for years and recently started worrying about having put my eggs into the Protonmail basket. /rant Recent outage issues surfaced some major flaws with the mobile clients, on top of shaking my faith in the infrastructure (though no one can easily stand up to nation state actors so I do not blame PM). And yesterday I was shown ads inside the web portal, along with a big call-to-ac…

I had recent concerns too; between the mobile app not really working well anymore, and their confusing rebrand where I now have to go to a different URL, and these popups, and now this.

Issues with the app:

- notifications sometimes don’t pop up on iPhone. Yes, I have the enabled.

- app can take a minute to load

- when you click on a notification, it opens the app on the previous email you read, while taking a very long time to load the one you clicked on

I seriously hope they refocus on their core product. These issues are new.

Re: Protonmail can delete the wrong email and nobody cares

#132

Post by alpaca128 »

mr_mitm wrote: post #8
highwaylights wrote: post #2

They also don’t care about locking you permanently out of your own e-Mail with no warning, for no reason, with no recourse. Honestly - there are far better options out there. They’re not in anyway a responsible enough business to manage an e-mail service. It’s run more like a hobby project than critical infrastructure.

What are those better options that HN likes? I just switched all my accounts to protonmail, but stories like this make me want to reconsider. The fact that they won't allow me to set up a forwarding rule in case I want to switch again doesn't help.

I personally use mailbox.org for years now. Granted, I don't have remotely the usage mentioned in the linked issue and I know users that aren't very satisfied with features like the integrated office webapp, but it does everything I need (emails & calendar sync) and I haven't found a reason not to trust them.

Originally my reason to choose them instead of Protonmail was that Protonmail only works with their official client, which is a far too limiting dependency in my eyes.

Re: Protonmail can delete the wrong email and nobody cares

#133

Post by coldtea »

NayamAmarshe wrote: post #55
ogogmad wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is they've been aware of this very serious bug for more than a year, and haven't tried informing their users. So "Protonmail" in this context refers to the business, and the issues surrounding their responsibility, competence and ethics.

The business is just 'Proton' though, ProtonMail is one of their offerings.

Doesn't matter much, if most refer to them by ProtonMail, by their main product.

Same way people would refer to "Facebook" meaning the whole of Meta

Re: Protonmail can delete the wrong email and nobody cares

#134

Post by BirAdam »

gobip wrote: post #74
that_lurker wrote: post #41

Could the title be update to contain the word bridge as the issue is in the Protonmail bridge application and not on Protonmail itself. The entire title is clickbaity, but adding the birdge moves it away from being misleading.

Read the issues, it’s happening to people using the web ui too.

Happens occasionally on the mobile app on iOS for me.

I am slowly migrating everything away from my paid ProtonMail account, and I intend to just go back to using a megacorp email... despite absolutely loathing and detesting megacorps. At this point in life, email is simply too important. Notices from government agencies, my accountant, my lawyers, my various banks... I quit self hosting for these reasons (no matter how good I am, I am not full time keeping my self-hosting pristine), and now I apparently cannot fully trust Proton.

Re: Protonmail can delete the wrong email and nobody cares

#135

Post by coldtea »

miohtama wrote: post #129
ogogmad wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is they've been aware of this very serious bug for more than a year, and haven't tried informing their users. So "Protonmail" in this context refers to the business, and the issues surrounding their responsibility, competence and ethics.

If there is a critical issue with an open source software any user can fix it. If no user steps up then it might not be that important issue in the first place.

Or it's important, but nobody has the skills/time/familiarity/acceptance from upstream maintainers combo.

Compared to the FOSS origin myths, many huge projects, with tons of end users, including very foundational ones, like GTK+ and OpenSSL and such, are understuffed (or just 1-2 base maintainers heavily overworked, who do 99% of the work and can't take it anymore), and nobody cares or has the time to dive in and fix anything.

Other projects that might have some person interested to bugfix, have maintainers that don't like contributions outside a clique, and ignore bugfixes submitted for years or forever.

So, "any user can fix it" is sometimes just in principle, while actual users than can fix and do fix it are thin on the ground, and othertimes it's just an option for external patches, that will not be merged upstream.

Re: Protonmail can delete the wrong email and nobody cares

#137

Post by cpburns2009 »

pkrumins wrote: post #17

How does Protonmail compare to Gmail? Has anyone switched to Protonmail from Gmail?

I switched from Gmail to Proton Mail earlier this year in an attempt to de-Google. The Proton Mail website and Android app is just about on par with Gmail's. My only complaint is Proton Mail will refuse to load images if something about the host domain isn't configured 100% to spec which is common for non-tech companies such as home utilities. You can only reply from "+tag" addresses, not send outright from them which is a feature of Gmail. Though Proton Mail's email aliases alleviates my need for that.

Re: Protonmail can delete the wrong email and nobody cares

#138

Post by miohtama »

coldtea wrote: post #135
miohtama wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is a critical issue with an open source software any user can fix it. If no user steps up then it might not be that important issue in the first place.

Or it's important, but nobody has the skills/time/familiarity/acceptance from upstream maintainers combo. Compared to the FOSS origin myths, many huge projects, with tons of end users, including very foundational ones, like GTK+ and OpenSSL and such, are understuffed (or just 1-2 base maintainers heavily overworked, who do 99% of the work and can't take it anymore), and nobody cares or has the time to dive in and fix…

When OpenSSL got and noticed to be critical, it was fixed, funded and also forked tons of time. So open source model works here.

I gut feeling is that Protonmail Bridge is such an obscure project that no one really cares enough, and thus it cannot be “important” or “critical”.

Alternatively, users have an option to change to another system if they are unhappy. Protonmail has no monopoly. But complaining about open source maintenance is not going to change anything. Especially complaining on HackerNews is ungentlemanly.

Re: Protonmail can delete the wrong email and nobody cares

#139

Post by antpls »

Some years ago, I evaluated Protonmail as a replacement for my personal gmail account.

When came the steps "can I easily move from this service?", I realized you have to _pay_ to export all your emails from the service. They make it super easy for you to open an account and receive emails, and then makes you pay if you want to get a copy of your own data.

I contacted the support to tell them it is likely illegal under European Data Privacy laws. They replied I can still export email for free one by one if I wanted to... (which is obviously not a valid answer when you have 5000 emails)

Then I looked in Swiss laws for a similar clause, and found that Swiss laws doesn't give users of online services the right to easily and freely get a copy of their data. It was a law proposal at the time of my research.

So yeah... Your data is so secure in Switzerland that you don't even own your data !

Re: Protonmail can delete the wrong email and nobody cares

#140

Post by flupe »

antpls wrote: post #139

Some years ago, I evaluated Protonmail as a replacement for my personal gmail account. When came the steps "can I easily move from this service?", I realized you have to _pay_ to export all your emails from the service. They make it super easy for you to open an account and receive emails, and then makes you pay if you want to get a copy of your own data. I contacted the support to tell them it is likely illegal unde…

Nowadays they do provide an app (Import-Export) to export all your mail, even for free tier accounts, so it's quite easy to move away.

See: https://proton.me/support/export-emails-import-export-app

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