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.
Protonmail can delete the wrong email and nobody cares
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Re: Protonmail can delete the wrong email and nobody cares
#42[deleted]
Re: Protonmail can delete the wrong email and nobody cares
#43Could 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.
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.
Re: Protonmail can delete the wrong email and nobody cares
#44To clarify because comments (so far) seem to ignore what Proton Bridge does.
Proton Mail is web mail, like Gmail. That part is fine.
You use Proton Bridge as a connector to mail client software.
The thing that’s perhaps unclear is, Proton Mail is end-to-end encrypted email. You use Proton Bridge to walk your secure email beyond that enclave into whatever YOU are running in your userland scenario.
Part of all this is, you’re completely unclear on the concept of secure email the moment you need to use this bridge.
Which begs the question, why would you use Proton Mail if you’re gonna negate its unique value proposition?
Proton Mail is fine. It’s this misguided extension that’s the problem here.
If you’re fine with web mail then this issue doesn’t matter. If you’re not fine with web mail, maybe Proton Mail isn’t really for you.
Re: Protonmail can delete the wrong email and nobody cares
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
First of all, bring your own domain. That way you can just point the same address elsewhere if you need to switch again without having to deal with forwarding. edit: As mentioned by a sibling comment, my email is currently on Fastmail, zero problems.
HN thread discussing Fastmail experiences: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31989061
Re: Protonmail can delete the wrong email and nobody cares
#46For a bit of context/back-story, Richard, who opened this issue, later also wrote a blog post about the whole ordeal:
https://blog.sigma-star.at/post/2022/07/protonmail-adventure...
In short: The idea was to move from a custom mail server to a paid, hosted solution. ProtonMail was chosen, with the bridge being used to get mails into a local mail client. Issues with the bridge eventually cropped up.
Re: Protonmail can delete the wrong email and nobody cares
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
First of all, bring your own domain. That way you can just point the same address elsewhere if you need to switch again without having to deal with forwarding. edit: As mentioned by a sibling comment, my email is currently on Fastmail, zero problems.
Sounds reasonable. Any gotchas there? I already read that vanity TLDs are bad, obscure countries' TLDs are bad, and even .eu may be unstable. Which are good services that can sell me an .org or .de domain for a fair price?
I wouldn't go for the cheapest price, I'd go to some established place in your jurisdiction with a wider product range and size, that targets small businesses. You have a chance to get some useful hotline, and things can be 'integrated' and are more likely to work, i.e. host your website - book the domain example.com - book a managed nextcloud and have it be at cloud.example.com etc.
Their email service is likely to have some credibility from the global anti-spam force. They probably have the budget for best practices and reasonable security. As you mention .de domains: The online legal text generators for Impressum/Datenschutzerklärung are likely to have the correct text fragments to use for larger vendors. Overall they just have to uphold some level of reputation I hope.
Example: ionos.de
Re: Protonmail can delete the wrong email and nobody cares
#48To clarify because comments (so far) seem to ignore what Proton Bridge does. Proton Mail is web mail, like Gmail. That part is fine. You use Proton Bridge as a connector to mail client software. The thing that’s perhaps unclear is, Proton Mail is end-to-end encrypted email. You use Proton Bridge to walk your secure email beyond that enclave into whatever YOU are running in your userland scenario. Part of all this is,…
The bridge is just another client in the sense that any ProtonMail client would need to decrypt emails so you can view them. To be honest, their web client is probably less secure and trustworthy than other mail toolchains you could run locally. So if the bridge was reliable and trustworthy (which it may not be, hence this submission), using it is probably the most secure option.
Re: Protonmail can delete the wrong email and nobody cares
#49I'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-action button that wasn't there before to go buy a new tier. Have I mentioned that I have been a customer already for years?
Never used the bridge, but honestly I am not surprised that it may be broken and not receiving the attention it deserves.
It feels like Proton (with its vpn, email and the whole 'suite' they are promoting under the brand) is simply another growth company, focused on adding more and more features rather than on good old fashioned stable products.
Re: Protonmail can delete the wrong email and nobody cares
#50To clarify because comments (so far) seem to ignore what Proton Bridge does. Proton Mail is web mail, like Gmail. That part is fine. You use Proton Bridge as a connector to mail client software. The thing that’s perhaps unclear is, Proton Mail is end-to-end encrypted email. You use Proton Bridge to walk your secure email beyond that enclave into whatever YOU are running in your userland scenario. Part of all this is,…
> Which begs the question, why would you use Proton Mail if you’re gonna negate its unique value proposition?
Because most users don't care about the end to end encryption. They just want to host their email somewhere [1]. And perhaps have it available offline.
All this encryption on everything is mostly turning into security theatre. All mostly because identity theft is so easy in the US. Perhaps that's the problem that needs to be fixed.
[1] lately somewhere that is not Google.