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ProtonMail takes aim at Google with an encrypted calendar

venturebeat.com

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Re: ProtonMail takes aim at Google with an encrypted calendar

#31

Post by Youden »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #20

I lost a lot of faith in Proton when I learned how much funding they took from the EU. It just runs entirely counter to evidence we’ve seen of Snowden, 5eyes/14eyes, and other programs that the EU truly wants end to end encrypted comms for people. Am I wrong to be skeptical? Edit: oh apparently I’m wrong to even suggest something we have other examples of

I disagree with much of your comment:

> I lost a lot of faith in Proton when I learned how much funding they took from the EU.

Unless the origins of the money are unethical (e.g. blood money), it's not where it comes from that matters, it's what's done with it. I haven't seen any misconduct from ProtonMail and the EU's motivations for giving the money seem to be economic, which makes a lot of sense. They want competitive EU tech companies.

> It just runs entirely counter to evidence we’ve seen of Snowden, 5eyes/14eyes, and other programs that the EU truly wants end to end encrypted comms for people.

The EU is not a member of the 5 eyes nor 14 eyes, some of its member states are. The EU is composed of 28 member states, so not even half are participants in those groups.

Even if the EU were a member of the 5 eyes, the EU is not a monolithic entity. The SIGINT arm of the EU (if such a thing exists) may very well oppose end to end encryption while the economic arm promotes it. The same is true in the US, where the NSA attempts to break encryption while the Department of State funds Tor development.

Re: ProtonMail takes aim at Google with an encrypted calendar

#34

Post by Youden »

EduardoBautista wrote: post #8

I recently left ProtonMail and went back to Fastmail. My reason was that they will never be able to fully support IMAP and now CalDAV because of the encryption they use. I grew to accept that email is not for secure messaging and my paranoia of "I'm being watched" just went away. If you need secure messaging, use something other than email.

I agree that email shouldn't be considered secure but disagree that you should just give up as a result.

It's trivial to use an email provider in a more privacy-friendly jurisdiction (e.g. Mailbox.org in Germany) and with a bit of effort you can even move to a provider the PGP-encrypts incoming email which can then be decrypted by your email client (which can connect with IMAP).

Given that the first measure is near-zero effort and saves you from silent/warrantless law enforcement requests, I think it's worth it.

Encryption is a bit more annoying but it does save you from later disclosure of your emails.

Re: ProtonMail takes aim at Google with an encrypted calendar

#35

Post by vabmit »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #20

I lost a lot of faith in Proton when I learned how much funding they took from the EU. It just runs entirely counter to evidence we’ve seen of Snowden, 5eyes/14eyes, and other programs that the EU truly wants end to end encrypted comms for people. Am I wrong to be skeptical? Edit: oh apparently I’m wrong to even suggest something we have other examples of

Possibly. There is very little to no private funding for true privacy products. I think this is one of the reasons that Proton had to initially rely on crowdfunding. Perhaps, this is because so many tech companies are stuck in the AdRev mindset where sharing customer private data is how they make their real money? If you look at the ecosystem, you see many privacy products are actually government supported either directly or indirectly. For example, the Tor Project has directly taken massive amounts of funding from the US Military and you may recall the story of how Microsoft was forced to buy Skype in order to open it up to surveillance or lose massive amounts US DoD software license contracts. Those are just two examples. But, there are really limitless cases. Trust Google? But, Google receives massive DoD/EU contracts. Apple? Same thing. Role your own? But, nearly all standard encryption and hashing algorithms were either developed by or reviewed by government funded academic researchers in the US or EU.

The way I think of the privacy ecosystem is that it makes dragnet surveillance much harder and it provides some protection if the government has specifically targeted you for data collection. So, companies/products like ProtonMail and ProtonVPN are good things. But, creating something that is 100% safe for the individual is impossible (or at best so impractical to be untenable).

Re: ProtonMail takes aim at Google with an encrypted calendar

#36

Post by newscracker »

steveeq1 wrote: post #15
EduardoBautista wrote: post #8

I recently left ProtonMail and went back to Fastmail. My reason was that they will never be able to fully support IMAP and now CalDAV because of the encryption they use. I grew to accept that email is not for secure messaging and my paranoia of "I'm being watched" just went away. If you need secure messaging, use something other than email.

> I grew to accept that email is not for secure messaging and my paranoia of "I'm being watched" just went away. Agreed. Even if you use protonmail, google still has most of your email because they have the most of everyone else's.

I feel very frustrated when I hear this argument, as if it’s futile to switch to a different email provider. It’s actually hyperbole. Most people use chat and messaging platforms (or social media platforms) to communicate with others. Personal email, IME, has reduced drastically over the years. That leaves emails that businesses send to individuals, which are usually sent through non-free-profiling-based-Gmail methods (including GSuite, which Google cannot use to profile people). Only small businesses that don’t know any better or don’t want to spend money on email would use an @gmail address (or @yahoo, @outlook, etc.) to correspond with potential and current customers.

Re: ProtonMail takes aim at Google with an encrypted calendar

#37

Post by sandworm101 »

sverige wrote: post #10

This is a welcome development. ProtonMail has worked well for me. Now if I could only find a way to make a Pixel phone accept that email address instead of one of my several one-off fake name gmail addresses that I use for such things.

Don't integrate privacy-focused email service (hushmail/proton etc) into a non-private phone. Access it via the webmail interface.

I've been asked several times to decrypt my phone at international boarders. If you leave things to webmail, unlocking your phone doesn't give them access to your email account, or even tell them where it is. All the TSA/Cops get is my "gmail-for-phone-2018@gmail.com" address that I haven't checked since day one with the phone. My access to my real email is covered by a web browser that doesn't keep records.

Re: ProtonMail takes aim at Google with an encrypted calendar

#38

Post by C14L »

stabbles wrote: post #13

I'm a bit confused it took Protonmail more than a year yo develop ProtonCalendar. Is it really that difficult to develop?

Trying it out now. Its a complete rewrite of "mail" and "contacts", plus new "calendar". Looks pretty nice, so far, and good usability.

Feels really good to be able to migrate more personal data away from G.

Re: ProtonMail takes aim at Google with an encrypted calendar

#39

Post by tomlagier »

stabbles wrote: post #13

I'm a bit confused it took Protonmail more than a year yo develop ProtonCalendar. Is it really that difficult to develop?

A couple of references for why building a time-based application is difficult:

Falsehoods programmers believe about time: https://infiniteundo.com/post/25326999628/falsehoods-program...

Falsehoods programmers believe about time part 2 (this one contains most of the timezone related madness): https://infiniteundo.com/post/25509354022/more-falsehoods-pr...

Re: ProtonMail takes aim at Google with an encrypted calendar

#40

Post by BlueTemplar »

mechhacker wrote: post #17
EduardoBautista wrote: post #8

I recently left ProtonMail and went back to Fastmail. My reason was that they will never be able to fully support IMAP and now CalDAV because of the encryption they use. I grew to accept that email is not for secure messaging and my paranoia of "I'm being watched" just went away. If you need secure messaging, use something other than email.

For me it was their app just being so far behind Fastmail. If they had a better app I'd gladly pay. I just can't stomach gmail anymore and Fastmail was next best.

How do both of these compare to Thunderbird?
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