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That sounds a bit formalistic and abstract to me. Perhaps you could educate us on which specific threats you think we should pay attention to when choosing betw

That sounds a bit formalistic and abstract to me. Perhaps you could educate us on which specific threats you think we should pay attention to when choosing between Gmail and Protonmail. What are some specific threats that Gmail defends us against more effectively than Protonmail?

metalliqaz 9y ago
Off the top of my head I think the number 1 "threat" that Google doesn't protect you from is privacy. They are actively watching your email with algorithms to use for advertising purposes. On the other hand, they have more resources than anyone else to protect against things like DDOS, nation-state hacking/phishing, and physical disasters. They also have a legion of lawyers to protect against improper legal requests, however they will roll right over for a government if it's legal. Protonmail is on point with the privacy, but their security engineering team is probably less than 1/10th that of Google's.
- fauigerzigerk 9y ago
  I think the right size of any security engineering team is largely determined by the diversity of threats it has to defend against. Same for the legal team. So team size alone doesn't convince me one way or the other, even if I were to completely disregard all privacy issues. I am a Gmail user as is my company, so I do trust them quite a bit. But I feel that Google has a much bigger problem on its hands than Protonmail. Both because of its business model and because Gmail does things like search and spam filtering, which Protonmail cannot do. [Edit] Protonmail actually does spam filtering.
- kbyatnal 9y ago
  Except this is no longer true. Google does not read your gmail anymore. https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in-the-enterprise-g-suites-gmail-and-consumer-gmail-to-more-closely-align/ https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in...
  - njarboe 9y ago
    From the link: "G Suite’s Gmail is already not used as input for ads personalization, and Google has decided to follow suit later this year in our free consumer Gmail service." They are definitely still reading your gmail. How else would the spam and other filters work? They can also use it under this policy for anything but "ads personalization". Machine learning, Google product integration, other recommendation not deemed to be ads, refining your google profile, etc. A very narrow scope of exclusion.
    - md_ 9y ago
      Well, one might reasonably ask whether "reading your mail" (as in, running an algorithm on it to try to classify phishing vs non) is a security cost or benefit. Spearphishing is a huge source of compromise at the moment; antiphishing filters might, in that view, be considered a security feature rather than a security fault. On the other hand, I have, frankly, never understood these privacy arguments. Is it a privacy violation if someone checks a checksum of my incoming mail against a blacklist? What if they compute a hash of my mail to check the DKIM signature? And if those are OK, why is an ML model more of a problem?
      - fauigerzigerk 9y ago
        >Is it a privacy violation if someone checks a checksum of my incoming mail against a blacklist? No, the privacy concern is about the potential for abuse if there is a known place in the world where a very detailed account of all my online (and some offline) activities, contacts, communication and personal interests is stored. It obviously arouses the interest and desires of criminals, governments, employers, politicians, landlords, insurance companies, creditors, marketers, ex partners, extremists and bigots, journalists, potential mates, researchers, etc. Some of these groups are overlapping and some of the concerns might only arise in the distant future. Governments change. Ownership of companies changes. Personal circumstances and opinions change, but you can't take anything back once its out.
        rtpg 9y ago
- criddell 9y ago
  Protonmail says they have no access to user data and so I guess that means they offer zero protection from spam and emailed threats. One could argue that Google's filtering of spam and potentially harmful mail is a point in favor of Google.
  - efitz 9y ago
    SMTP has headers that are visible to the email provider while the email is in transit. The absence of logs, etc., goes far to mitigate this threat. As an added benefit, there is a lot of anti-spam functionality that can be used with only this metadata available, and only ephemerally. I don't think it's true that zero-knowledge at rest means inability to provide common email provider value adds like anti-spam.
    - KGIII 9y ago
      To add to the above post, the headers have to be unencrypted, else they'd have no method to actually send the email. If it were encrypted, they'd have no idea what the address was, or who to bounce it to if the address doesn't exist. Email headers contain a lot of information. It has the various email addresses, servers involved, ip addresses, time stamps, subject, priority, and things like that. The body of the email is the only part that gets encrypted when encryption is in use.
      - rowyourboat 9y ago
        You are conflating the SMTP envelope and the mail headers. The SMTP envelope is necessary for delivery, the mail headers are not (the addressee information is duplicated)
        KGIII 9y ago
        Thanks for the correction. I had originally typed 'meta data' but thought headers were the same thing. Thanks!
  - Fnoord 9y ago
oldengoldie 9y ago
If Protonmail servers are hacked, it's game over (that could be mitigated by having verified client code, but at this time there's the web client that is served dynamically, and the mobile clients are closed source...). That is where Protonmail are at a huge disadvantage unless they have a really really good security team. Server hacking is done a dime a dozen nowadays.
- fauigerzigerk 9y ago
  That's a threat that Gmail faces as well though.
  - mentat 9y ago
    With a security budget several orders of more, yes.
    - fauigerzigerk 9y ago
      Google also has much more diverse security problems to solve so that's not a good argument either way.
    - ionised 9y ago
      It has to have a larger budget, it's operating on a larger scale.

metalliqaz 9y ago

Off the top of my head I think the number 1 "threat" that Google doesn't protect you from is privacy. They are actively watching your email with algorithms to use for advertising purposes. On the other hand, they have more resources than anyone else to protect against things like DDOS, nation-state hacking/phishing, and physical disasters. They also have a legion of lawyers to protect against improper legal requests, however they will roll right over for a government if it's legal. Protonmail is on point with the privacy, but their security engineering team is probably less than 1/10th that of Google's.

fauigerzigerk 9y ago
I think the right size of any security engineering team is largely determined by the diversity of threats it has to defend against. Same for the legal team. So team size alone doesn't convince me one way or the other, even if I were to completely disregard all privacy issues. I am a Gmail user as is my company, so I do trust them quite a bit. But I feel that Google has a much bigger problem on its hands than Protonmail. Both because of its business model and because Gmail does things like search and spam filtering, which Protonmail cannot do. [Edit] Protonmail actually does spam filtering.
kbyatnal 9y ago
Except this is no longer true. Google does not read your gmail anymore. https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in-the-enterprise-g-suites-gmail-and-consumer-gmail-to-more-closely-align/ https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in...
- njarboe 9y ago
  From the link: "G Suite’s Gmail is already not used as input for ads personalization, and Google has decided to follow suit later this year in our free consumer Gmail service." They are definitely still reading your gmail. How else would the spam and other filters work? They can also use it under this policy for anything but "ads personalization". Machine learning, Google product integration, other recommendation not deemed to be ads, refining your google profile, etc. A very narrow scope of exclusion.
  - md_ 9y ago
    Well, one might reasonably ask whether "reading your mail" (as in, running an algorithm on it to try to classify phishing vs non) is a security cost or benefit. Spearphishing is a huge source of compromise at the moment; antiphishing filters might, in that view, be considered a security feature rather than a security fault. On the other hand, I have, frankly, never understood these privacy arguments. Is it a privacy violation if someone checks a checksum of my incoming mail against a blacklist? What if they compute a hash of my mail to check the DKIM signature? And if those are OK, why is an ML model more of a problem?
    - fauigerzigerk 9y ago
      >Is it a privacy violation if someone checks a checksum of my incoming mail against a blacklist? No, the privacy concern is about the potential for abuse if there is a known place in the world where a very detailed account of all my online (and some offline) activities, contacts, communication and personal interests is stored. It obviously arouses the interest and desires of criminals, governments, employers, politicians, landlords, insurance companies, creditors, marketers, ex partners, extremists and bigots, journalists, potential mates, researchers, etc. Some of these groups are overlapping and some of the concerns might only arise in the distant future. Governments change. Ownership of companies changes. Personal circumstances and opinions change, but you can't take anything back once its out.
      - rtpg 9y ago
criddell 9y ago
Protonmail says they have no access to user data and so I guess that means they offer zero protection from spam and emailed threats. One could argue that Google's filtering of spam and potentially harmful mail is a point in favor of Google.
- efitz 9y ago
  SMTP has headers that are visible to the email provider while the email is in transit. The absence of logs, etc., goes far to mitigate this threat. As an added benefit, there is a lot of anti-spam functionality that can be used with only this metadata available, and only ephemerally. I don't think it's true that zero-knowledge at rest means inability to provide common email provider value adds like anti-spam.
  - KGIII 9y ago
    To add to the above post, the headers have to be unencrypted, else they'd have no method to actually send the email. If it were encrypted, they'd have no idea what the address was, or who to bounce it to if the address doesn't exist. Email headers contain a lot of information. It has the various email addresses, servers involved, ip addresses, time stamps, subject, priority, and things like that. The body of the email is the only part that gets encrypted when encryption is in use.
    - rowyourboat 9y ago
      You are conflating the SMTP envelope and the mail headers. The SMTP envelope is necessary for delivery, the mail headers are not (the addressee information is duplicated)
      - KGIII 9y ago
        Thanks for the correction. I had originally typed 'meta data' but thought headers were the same thing. Thanks!
- Fnoord 9y ago

oldengoldie 9y ago

If Protonmail servers are hacked, it's game over (that could be mitigated by having verified client code, but at this time there's the web client that is served dynamically, and the mobile clients are closed source...). That is where Protonmail are at a huge disadvantage unless they have a really really good security team. Server hacking is done a dime a dozen nowadays.

fauigerzigerk 9y ago
That's a threat that Gmail faces as well though.
- mentat 9y ago
  With a security budget several orders of more, yes.
  - fauigerzigerk 9y ago
    Google also has much more diverse security problems to solve so that's not a good argument either way.
  - ionised 9y ago
    It has to have a larger budget, it's operating on a larger scale.