9 ms·

Proton Technologies awarded €2M from the EU

187 points by dotcoma 8y ago

amrrs 8y ago
Along with this and the previous GDPR, Does it mean that EU is more concerned about the Privacy of its citizens than any other Nation ? Because everywhere else we see a pattern of Privacy invasion but EU has always been the front runner in setting up benchmark of how PII data should be handld.
- napolux 8y ago
  > Along with this and the previous GDPR, Does it mean that EU is more concerned about the Privacy of its citizens than any other Nation? Well, yes.
- jaabe 8y ago
  Yes and no, the EU is more concerned with intrusion into citizen privacy from the private sector than any other large player. As far as the public sector goes, however, the GDPR is mainly meant to increase security surrounding citizen privacy. You can’t demand to have your criminal record deleted for instance, and there is a range of privacy data like that which serves a purpose within the public sector. The EU is fine with that, and possibly more so than the US, but the EU does want to keep it safer than has previously been the case. Mostly because the European public sector didn’t meet really take these security requirements seriously enough on its own. The GDPR didn’t really change the rules for the public sector, it rather increased the penalty for not following them. There is an old saying that in the US people trust their corporations and not their governments. It’s the opposite in Europe.
  - omeid2 8y ago
    It is interesting though, because even at least in theory, you vote for your government but not the corporations.
    - TomMarius 8y ago
      You vote with your money
      - omeid2 8y ago
        Yes, in capitalism theory, where individuals are rational entities that can comprehend, afford, and consider the consequences of their choices without being swayed by advertisement or their economic situation. In practice, people buy the best value thing for now without giving much thought or as a general rule being able to comprehend the long term impact of it on their own, let alone the society as whole. This is why we you need and have anti-trust, consumer protection, and various other laws and systems to protect consumers.
        ttoinou 8y ago
        without being swayed by advertisement or their economic situation Are you implying that the political world is not advertising and lying all the time, and that our political choices not influenced by our economic situation ? In practice, people buy the best value thing for now without giving much thought or as a general rule being able to comprehend the long term impact of it on their own, let alone the society as whole The same for politics
        omeid2 8y ago
        Except governments don't move to tax heavens or other countries when things tank. It is in the interest of governments to maintain a viable economy and society, not so for private sector. That difference alone is enough to not do this silly "if you don't trust corporations then your government is the same" bs rhetoric. We don't even need to talk about due process and duty of care.
        TomMarius 8y ago
        If there wasn't a government (other problems of that aside), the corporation wouldn't have to move. Simply put, it's a clash of two worlds - as we all know. BTW what is the corporation supposed to do? Take the bullet? Why the hell would they do that? Would you personally do that? Economic migration is absolutely normal, especially today. Are you angry that people are moving away because things tank? I suppose not. Guess what? A corporation is made up of people.
  - franky47 8y ago
    I wouldn't go as far as to say we "trust" our governments. But having privacy tools to ensure both corporations and governments stay off the path to mass data collection on their users/citizens can only be a good thing. It's a double-sided argument however, on one hand the EU shows some interest in privacy, but member states still allow anti-privacy laws to be introduced in the name of "security" [1]. [1] https://www.laquadrature.net/censureterro/ https://www.laquadrature.net/censureterro/ (French)
- omeid2 8y ago
  I think it is more than just Privacy. Privacy concerns are just a byproduct of policies that puts individuals over corporations, people over cars, and so forth.
- ttoinou 8y ago
  They could be more concerned, doesn't mean what they'll do will be beneficial to our privacy. In this example the money they gave to Proton was taken from others that can't invest it themselves. Nation Oh boy
- ballooney 8y ago
  The EU is not a nation.
  - rad_gruchalski 8y ago
    There are plenty of people in the EU who actually consider themselves a "EU citizen". Like me, born in Poland, lived in the UK, Belgium and now Germany.
chappi42 8y ago
Good! And now the EU should invest €50M into Jolla...
- supermatt 8y ago
  have jolla approached the EU for funding?
  - chappi42 8y ago
    Don't know. Rostelecom has invested. Seems wise to try to better protect government employees from leaking data from their phones. E.g. not so nice when my Bundeskanzlers (Merkel) phone get spied upon by friends.
    - gdy 8y ago
      Friends don't spy on friends
- chappi42 8y ago
  I mentioned Jolla here b/c I thought while email/datadrive security is important, the phone ecosystem is much more so. Jolla (and Librem, anything else?) are an alternative to the Android/iPhone duopoly and should be actively supported.
nitrohorse 8y ago
> This funding will without a doubt accelerate our ProtonDrive efforts... Looks like there’s a somewhat working site to learn more: http://protondrive.com http://protondrive.com
- adsadadsad 8y ago
  Comical. No-https
  - ChrisGranger 8y ago
    The site is incomplete. I wouldn't worry about the lack of HTTPS yet...
    - ummonk 8y ago
      So someone could phish it and pretend it's complete to get people's data...
    - mnbvkhgvmj 8y ago
      It takes very little effort to provide a cert these days. Even a landing page should have a cert. Especially from a company with a reputation for security and privacy like protonmail's.
skrebbel 8y ago
Wow, as an EU citizen I can't figure out whether I think it's good or bad that we're now funding foreign companies. Sure, Switzerland is very much European, but they're not in the EU. Romanian taxpayers are now contributing more to ProtonMail than Swiss taxpayers are. This would be very much like the US government subsidizing a Canadian software company, on the grounds that 40% of their users are American plus some of their developers live in Vermont and Kentucky. But, well, at least it goes to the good guys! So yay ProtonMail, I guess! EDIT: I stand corrected, please do read some of the very insightful replies people posted. Thanks everyone!
- secfirstmd 8y ago
  I think the distinction is artificial. I'm glad the EU is starting to fund more privacy related initiatives. For too long the only people putting funding behind tools like Signal, Tor and (our own) Umbrella App were organisations like the Open Tech Fund and other (largely US based) non-profit funders. It's important that this pool of resources has become diversified.
- Torwald 8y ago
  > Romanian taxpayers are now contributing more to ProtonMail than Swiss taxpayers are. Yeah, but Romanian taxpayers can profit from it by (for example) using ProtonMail. This is only possible IF the project survives. I find the nation state important, but to "put it back" into the Internet is a huge mistake!
  - protonmail 8y ago
    It is also an untrue statement. Romania is a net recipient of EU funds, while Switzerland gives more money into the EU than it receives. So actually, the opposite is true. Swiss taxpayers are contributing to Romania ;-)
    - pergadad 8y ago
      Better not spread such nonsense. The numbers shared in other places in this thread just don't show the whole picture. Switzerland benefits in many both financial and other ways from the partnership with the EU countries (from more tourism to a seat at the table to access to many opportunities in research and more that would otherwise be closed).
ajvs 8y ago
Why is the EU investing in closed-source software? The server, mobile apps and ProtonMail Bridge are all proprietary. It's not as bad as investing in Microsoft Office but this decision doesn't make sense when they could just as easily fund fully open-source email solutions like Mail-in-a-box, iRedMail, Mailcow etc. I don't think they researched ProtonMail as thoroughly as they did the other open-source software they've invested in like 7-Zip, Apache Tomcat, Drupal, Filezilla, VLC, KeePass, Notepad++.
- Boulth 8y ago
  Although I don't know the details, I agree grants should be for open source software. For the record OpenPGP.js is largely developed by ProtonMail. Their frontend is also open source.
- fxfan 8y ago
  Microsoft office is far and ahead the best document system- you probably use open source and standards compliant gdocs? Bringing it up in comparison for no reason and just general being hostile to MS is the reason MS doesn't listen to non-enterprise feedback. They have their faults but people like you are the ones who don't let them improve. For you, it's not about technology- its about your personal grudges.
  - ajvs 8y ago
    No, I use LibreOffice which is an open-source solution that has most of the same feature set. I simply don't believe nations should have to use proprietary solutions for something as simple as documents and taxpayers be forced to fund it when there are viable alternatives. That being said Outlook would have probably been a better comparison and the statement would have lost no impact, Microsoft is just the easiest proprietary software giant to point at.
  - DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
    I've been using libreoffice since +10 years exclusively. Despite using protonmail myself if you look at it critically through a FOSS (libre) perspective it's one of the worst email platforms around which mainly benefits from the (incorrect) assumption that hosting in Switzerland is somehow safer than hosting anywhere else. They will happily comply with any court order even (or especially) from the US. And it's not that the founders chose a Swiss structure because they were themselves Swiss. Even the product were hypothetically bug-free and fully FOSS ... the marketing (with its mountains in the background and "Secure Email Based in Switzerland" tagline) plays to the sentiment that a Swiss jurisdiction makes Protonmail a safer bet than other location is itself "snakeoil" ... if I think about this for too long I might even wonder about their much more relevant claims regarding security & actual code implementation.
morrbo 8y ago
ProtonMail is fantastic. I'd recommend (and do myself) using it for a small start up. Hopefully this funding will allow development of some of the features which make it effectively impossible to use for an enterprise (or group > 20 people IMO). It's currently missing things such as: Enforcing 2FA on anyone inside your organization. Setting company-wide signatures. Using HTML as your signature. Setting company-wide/user details (ie. Allowing appending "Regards, %%Position%% %%LandLine%%" on an outgoing email). Mail-flow rules (though admittedly, this is basically the same as the previous point). Tagging of external emails ("This email was received outside of the organization at the start/end/subject of an email). These are a few QOL suggestions i can think of off the top of my head. However, the enforcing 2FA on users, and being able to tag external emails are outright security issues which should genuinely be implemented as ProtonMail is both security and privacy focused. I did raise a ticket with all of this in a few months ago, but hope this gives the devs some visibility so they can use that sweet EU funding to improve on these. These basic features would make a world of difference to all users. The use of HTML as your signature (last time I checked anyway) is silly, as this actually works absolutely fine. We ended up manually pasting the HTML into the page using right click -> inspect element, and hitting save... this works fine if anyone else is having the same problem. TL;DR: Highly recommend ProtonMail but only for small orgs at this point.
- badpun 8y ago
  Protonmail Bridge, required for IMAP, is so buggy as to be unusable. This means you’re effectively left with the bare bones web client. This may be ok for lots of people/businesses, but not for others.
  - desktop-app 8y ago
    Not necessarily barebones https://github.com/vladimiry/email-securely-app https://github.com/vladimiry/email-securely-app
  - gvand 8y ago
    Serious question, unusable on which platform? Yes, sometime it crashes, but is good enough from my point of view, used to be way worse.
conradk 8y ago
As soon as Proton paid a Bitcoin ransom [0] to try and avoid a DDoS attack, I lost all hope for this company. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/nov/05/protonmail-service-held-ransom-by-hackers https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/nov/05/protonmai...
- krn 8y ago
  Well, as if that wasn't enough: Vid shows how to easily hack 'anti-spy' webmail (sorry, ProtonMail) (2014) https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/07/protonmail_fail_javascript/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/07/protonmail_fail_jav... Email Provider ProtonMail Says It Hacked Back, Then Walks Claim Back (2017) https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qvvke7/email-provider-protonmail-says-it-hacked-back-then-walks-claim-back https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qvvke7/email-prov... And it turns out, that Mozilla had never been to the office where ProtonVPN was actually being developed, before agreeing to integrate it into Firefox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18612296 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18612296
  - protonmail 8y ago
    This seems a bit disingenuous. The first article is concerning an XSS flaw that was discovered in a pre-release beta version of ProtonMail 5 years ago, prior to public launch. As for the second one, everybody can agree that criminals are bad, and we do work with law enforcement to bring them to justice, for example here: https://protonmail.com/blog/apophis-squad-arrest/ https://protonmail.com/blog/apophis-squad-arrest/ The third allegation has also been proven false time and time again. Mozilla checked ProtonVPN by meeting with the team in Geneva. The EU also checked Proton Technologies extensively before granting 2 million euros. The state of Geneva also checked before granting tax breaks. On the other hand, there is ample evidence that there are shady VPN companies engaged in a large scale disinformation campaign against ProtonVPN. Just have a look at the 500 Twitter bots used to spread false info: https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1036353291662360577 https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1036353291662360577 Who is more likely to be telling the truth? 500 anonymous bots on Twitter, or Mozilla, the EU, and the state of Geneva who have all verified the company?
Proven 8y ago
1) What did they promise in return? In general when I see a project that takes government funding I become suspicious of it. In some cases my suspicions turned out to be founded (the Tor Project). 2) Who the hell authorizes those EU morons to spend taxpayer money like that?
dummyload 8y ago
Probably some politician is getting under table deal which grants X shares in Proton to some anonymous company based in Cook Island in return of investment coming from tax payer money. Unless ofc Proton is ready to disclose their financial statements and ownership structure, there is no reason to not believe in this corruption. Unless ofc I can also purchase same number of shares in Proton using same amount of money, there is no reason to believe in anything other than corruption tale. Why would EU invest in a private company with properitery technology? It will never become Gmail, maybe it will become another FastMail.
cmjx 8y ago
I find it highly inappropriate that EU money goes to a company that openly uses the "diversity" shtick to increase the hiring pool, thus driving down wages: https://protonmail.com/blog/diversity-in-tech-why-it-matters/ https://protonmail.com/blog/diversity-in-tech-why-it-matters... Also, no one has ever explained to me why one should trust protonmail. The Swiss location is not it (c.f. Crypto AG).
lukeqsee 8y ago
I really want to like ProtonMail. I do like them, in fact. Unfortunately, their business email offering only has one advantage: the encryption. Every other feature that's important for running a business (IMAP, shared inboxes, automatic forwarding capability, etc.) is severely lacking. My company just switched because we simply couldn't deliver quality customer support inside the confines of Proton's system. After switching, I realized how much I was missing from "normal" email systems. A polished business email offering really does make a major difference. That being said, I really like their stance on privacy and their determination to make secure email a default, so I'm considering moving my personal email to them (ironically from the same company we just switched the business to). I hope they can use some of this €2m to address shortcomings in their email platform so we can eventually switch back.
- laurentl 8y ago
  What provider did you switch for?
  - lukeqsee 8y ago
    We transitioned to Fastmail. I don't like the recent development of Australian privacy (i.e., lack of) laws, but I'm willing to give Fastmail a chance to address the issues—and switching is easy enough to allow us to transition to another provider if that becomes an issue.
- arosier 8y ago
  Protonmail employee here. Appreciate the feedback, would you be willing to have a call to discuss? Business feature development is high priority for us and we’d love to hear your problems first hand to ensure they are all addressed in the coming releases.
  - lukeqsee 8y ago
    Absolutely! Feel free to email me directly at my work email: luke@stadiamaps.com.
bb100 8y ago
The censors that previously flagged an outsourcing comment in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18612296 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18612296 are active again.
- protonmail 8y ago
  Because it has been proven false time and time again. Mozilla checked ProtonVPN by meeting with the team in Geneva. The EU also checked Proton Technologies extensively before granting 2 million euros. Proton Technologies does not outsource. It has offices outside of Switzerland in Czechia, Macedonia, and Lithuania, but the bulk of the staff is in Switzerland. There are team photos online (https://www.instagram.com/p/BuWTJlaHPOf/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BuWTJlaHPOf/), and if you visit the address on the website, you will see it is indeed that building. On the other hand, there is ample evidence that there are shady VPN companies engaged in a large scale disinformation campaign against ProtonVPN. Just have a look at the 500 Twitter bots used to spread the rumors: https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1036353291662360577 https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1036353291662360577 So who do you want to believe? 500 bots on Twitter, or Mozilla, the EU, and the state of Geneva who have all come out and verified the company?
  - ak180 8y ago
    Then the EU probably overlooked this: https://protonmail.com/blog/diversity-in-tech-why-it-matters/ https://protonmail.com/blog/diversity-in-tech-why-it-matters... If ProtonMail had grown like a typical Swiss company, only hiring candidates from Switzerland, we never would have been able to find enough talent to drive our growth. By hiring globally, and disregarding which country a candidate is from, we increased our potential hiring pool from 8 million to 7 billion. A diverse workplace also helps to attract applicants. More applicants means we can hire more candidates, while simultaneously being more selective. But I'm glad that EU money is spent for hiring globally.
pergadad 8y ago
It's disappointing they don't specify which funding call this was. This would give us an insight into what really is behind this. Having been deeply involved in EU funding I am 95% certain they are overstating the "checks". Yes you have to provide financials, but it's not like the EU staff are auditing the company, they do a few basic checks based on the documents provided by the company to check that they are not in debt or going bankrupt soon. Horizon 2020 has various angles but principally is about research so they must have requested funds for that, not directly for product development. Even with closed source, still a nice thing to see this kind of company supported.
- ghego1 8y ago
  I can confirm it's from the call SME instruments Phase II

187 points by dotcoma 8y ago

Along with this and the previous GDPR, Does it mean that EU is more concerned about the Privacy of its citizens than any other Nation ? Because everywhere else we see a pattern of Privacy invasion but EU has always been the front runner in setting up benchmark of how PII data should be handld.

napolux 8y ago
> Along with this and the previous GDPR, Does it mean that EU is more concerned about the Privacy of its citizens than any other Nation? Well, yes.
jaabe 8y ago
Yes and no, the EU is more concerned with intrusion into citizen privacy from the private sector than any other large player. As far as the public sector goes, however, the GDPR is mainly meant to increase security surrounding citizen privacy. You can’t demand to have your criminal record deleted for instance, and there is a range of privacy data like that which serves a purpose within the public sector. The EU is fine with that, and possibly more so than the US, but the EU does want to keep it safer than has previously been the case. Mostly because the European public sector didn’t meet really take these security requirements seriously enough on its own. The GDPR didn’t really change the rules for the public sector, it rather increased the penalty for not following them. There is an old saying that in the US people trust their corporations and not their governments. It’s the opposite in Europe.
- omeid2 8y ago
  It is interesting though, because even at least in theory, you vote for your government but not the corporations.
  - TomMarius 8y ago
    You vote with your money
    - omeid2 8y ago
      Yes, in capitalism theory, where individuals are rational entities that can comprehend, afford, and consider the consequences of their choices without being swayed by advertisement or their economic situation. In practice, people buy the best value thing for now without giving much thought or as a general rule being able to comprehend the long term impact of it on their own, let alone the society as whole. This is why we you need and have anti-trust, consumer protection, and various other laws and systems to protect consumers.
      - ttoinou 8y ago
        without being swayed by advertisement or their economic situation Are you implying that the political world is not advertising and lying all the time, and that our political choices not influenced by our economic situation ? In practice, people buy the best value thing for now without giving much thought or as a general rule being able to comprehend the long term impact of it on their own, let alone the society as whole The same for politics
        omeid2 8y ago
        Except governments don't move to tax heavens or other countries when things tank. It is in the interest of governments to maintain a viable economy and society, not so for private sector. That difference alone is enough to not do this silly "if you don't trust corporations then your government is the same" bs rhetoric. We don't even need to talk about due process and duty of care.
        TomMarius 8y ago
        If there wasn't a government (other problems of that aside), the corporation wouldn't have to move. Simply put, it's a clash of two worlds - as we all know. BTW what is the corporation supposed to do? Take the bullet? Why the hell would they do that? Would you personally do that? Economic migration is absolutely normal, especially today. Are you angry that people are moving away because things tank? I suppose not. Guess what? A corporation is made up of people.
- franky47 8y ago
  I wouldn't go as far as to say we "trust" our governments. But having privacy tools to ensure both corporations and governments stay off the path to mass data collection on their users/citizens can only be a good thing. It's a double-sided argument however, on one hand the EU shows some interest in privacy, but member states still allow anti-privacy laws to be introduced in the name of "security" [1]. [1] https://www.laquadrature.net/censureterro/ https://www.laquadrature.net/censureterro/ (French)
omeid2 8y ago
I think it is more than just Privacy. Privacy concerns are just a byproduct of policies that puts individuals over corporations, people over cars, and so forth.
ttoinou 8y ago
They could be more concerned, doesn't mean what they'll do will be beneficial to our privacy. In this example the money they gave to Proton was taken from others that can't invest it themselves. Nation Oh boy
ballooney 8y ago
The EU is not a nation.
- rad_gruchalski 8y ago
  There are plenty of people in the EU who actually consider themselves a "EU citizen". Like me, born in Poland, lived in the UK, Belgium and now Germany.

chappi42 8y ago

Good! And now the EU should invest €50M into Jolla...

supermatt 8y ago
have jolla approached the EU for funding?
- chappi42 8y ago
  Don't know. Rostelecom has invested. Seems wise to try to better protect government employees from leaking data from their phones. E.g. not so nice when my Bundeskanzlers (Merkel) phone get spied upon by friends.
  - gdy 8y ago
    Friends don't spy on friends
chappi42 8y ago
I mentioned Jolla here b/c I thought while email/datadrive security is important, the phone ecosystem is much more so. Jolla (and Librem, anything else?) are an alternative to the Android/iPhone duopoly and should be actively supported.

nitrohorse 8y ago

> This funding will without a doubt accelerate our ProtonDrive efforts... Looks like there’s a somewhat working site to learn more: http://protondrive.com http://protondrive.com

adsadadsad 8y ago
Comical. No-https
- ChrisGranger 8y ago
  The site is incomplete. I wouldn't worry about the lack of HTTPS yet...
  - ummonk 8y ago
    So someone could phish it and pretend it's complete to get people's data...
  - mnbvkhgvmj 8y ago
    It takes very little effort to provide a cert these days. Even a landing page should have a cert. Especially from a company with a reputation for security and privacy like protonmail's.

skrebbel 8y ago

Wow, as an EU citizen I can't figure out whether I think it's good or bad that we're now funding foreign companies. Sure, Switzerland is very much European, but they're not in the EU. Romanian taxpayers are now contributing more to ProtonMail than Swiss taxpayers are. This would be very much like the US government subsidizing a Canadian software company, on the grounds that 40% of their users are American plus some of their developers live in Vermont and Kentucky. But, well, at least it goes to the good guys! So yay ProtonMail, I guess! EDIT: I stand corrected, please do read some of the very insightful replies people posted. Thanks everyone!

secfirstmd 8y ago
I think the distinction is artificial. I'm glad the EU is starting to fund more privacy related initiatives. For too long the only people putting funding behind tools like Signal, Tor and (our own) Umbrella App were organisations like the Open Tech Fund and other (largely US based) non-profit funders. It's important that this pool of resources has become diversified.
Torwald 8y ago
> Romanian taxpayers are now contributing more to ProtonMail than Swiss taxpayers are. Yeah, but Romanian taxpayers can profit from it by (for example) using ProtonMail. This is only possible IF the project survives. I find the nation state important, but to "put it back" into the Internet is a huge mistake!
- protonmail 8y ago
  It is also an untrue statement. Romania is a net recipient of EU funds, while Switzerland gives more money into the EU than it receives. So actually, the opposite is true. Swiss taxpayers are contributing to Romania ;-)
  - pergadad 8y ago
    Better not spread such nonsense. The numbers shared in other places in this thread just don't show the whole picture. Switzerland benefits in many both financial and other ways from the partnership with the EU countries (from more tourism to a seat at the table to access to many opportunities in research and more that would otherwise be closed).

ajvs 8y ago

Why is the EU investing in closed-source software? The server, mobile apps and ProtonMail Bridge are all proprietary. It's not as bad as investing in Microsoft Office but this decision doesn't make sense when they could just as easily fund fully open-source email solutions like Mail-in-a-box, iRedMail, Mailcow etc. I don't think they researched ProtonMail as thoroughly as they did the other open-source software they've invested in like 7-Zip, Apache Tomcat, Drupal, Filezilla, VLC, KeePass, Notepad++.

Boulth 8y ago
Although I don't know the details, I agree grants should be for open source software. For the record OpenPGP.js is largely developed by ProtonMail. Their frontend is also open source.
fxfan 8y ago
Microsoft office is far and ahead the best document system- you probably use open source and standards compliant gdocs? Bringing it up in comparison for no reason and just general being hostile to MS is the reason MS doesn't listen to non-enterprise feedback. They have their faults but people like you are the ones who don't let them improve. For you, it's not about technology- its about your personal grudges.
- ajvs 8y ago
  No, I use LibreOffice which is an open-source solution that has most of the same feature set. I simply don't believe nations should have to use proprietary solutions for something as simple as documents and taxpayers be forced to fund it when there are viable alternatives. That being said Outlook would have probably been a better comparison and the statement would have lost no impact, Microsoft is just the easiest proprietary software giant to point at.
- DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
  I've been using libreoffice since +10 years exclusively. Despite using protonmail myself if you look at it critically through a FOSS (libre) perspective it's one of the worst email platforms around which mainly benefits from the (incorrect) assumption that hosting in Switzerland is somehow safer than hosting anywhere else. They will happily comply with any court order even (or especially) from the US. And it's not that the founders chose a Swiss structure because they were themselves Swiss. Even the product were hypothetically bug-free and fully FOSS ... the marketing (with its mountains in the background and "Secure Email Based in Switzerland" tagline) plays to the sentiment that a Swiss jurisdiction makes Protonmail a safer bet than other location is itself "snakeoil" ... if I think about this for too long I might even wonder about their much more relevant claims regarding security & actual code implementation.

morrbo 8y ago

ProtonMail is fantastic. I'd recommend (and do myself) using it for a small start up. Hopefully this funding will allow development of some of the features which make it effectively impossible to use for an enterprise (or group > 20 people IMO). It's currently missing things such as: Enforcing 2FA on anyone inside your organization. Setting company-wide signatures. Using HTML as your signature. Setting company-wide/user details (ie. Allowing appending "Regards, %%Position%% %%LandLine%%" on an outgoing email). Mail-flow rules (though admittedly, this is basically the same as the previous point). Tagging of external emails ("This email was received outside of the organization at the start/end/subject of an email). These are a few QOL suggestions i can think of off the top of my head. However, the enforcing 2FA on users, and being able to tag external emails are outright security issues which should genuinely be implemented as ProtonMail is both security and privacy focused. I did raise a ticket with all of this in a few months ago, but hope this gives the devs some visibility so they can use that sweet EU funding to improve on these. These basic features would make a world of difference to all users. The use of HTML as your signature (last time I checked anyway) is silly, as this actually works absolutely fine. We ended up manually pasting the HTML into the page using right click -> inspect element, and hitting save... this works fine if anyone else is having the same problem. TL;DR: Highly recommend ProtonMail but only for small orgs at this point.

badpun 8y ago
Protonmail Bridge, required for IMAP, is so buggy as to be unusable. This means you’re effectively left with the bare bones web client. This may be ok for lots of people/businesses, but not for others.
- desktop-app 8y ago
  Not necessarily barebones https://github.com/vladimiry/email-securely-app https://github.com/vladimiry/email-securely-app
- gvand 8y ago
  Serious question, unusable on which platform? Yes, sometime it crashes, but is good enough from my point of view, used to be way worse.

conradk 8y ago

As soon as Proton paid a Bitcoin ransom [0] to try and avoid a DDoS attack, I lost all hope for this company. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/nov/05/protonmail-service-held-ransom-by-hackers https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/nov/05/protonmai...

krn 8y ago
Well, as if that wasn't enough: Vid shows how to easily hack 'anti-spy' webmail (sorry, ProtonMail) (2014) https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/07/protonmail_fail_javascript/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/07/protonmail_fail_jav... Email Provider ProtonMail Says It Hacked Back, Then Walks Claim Back (2017) https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qvvke7/email-provider-protonmail-says-it-hacked-back-then-walks-claim-back https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qvvke7/email-prov... And it turns out, that Mozilla had never been to the office where ProtonVPN was actually being developed, before agreeing to integrate it into Firefox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18612296 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18612296
- protonmail 8y ago
  This seems a bit disingenuous. The first article is concerning an XSS flaw that was discovered in a pre-release beta version of ProtonMail 5 years ago, prior to public launch. As for the second one, everybody can agree that criminals are bad, and we do work with law enforcement to bring them to justice, for example here: https://protonmail.com/blog/apophis-squad-arrest/ https://protonmail.com/blog/apophis-squad-arrest/ The third allegation has also been proven false time and time again. Mozilla checked ProtonVPN by meeting with the team in Geneva. The EU also checked Proton Technologies extensively before granting 2 million euros. The state of Geneva also checked before granting tax breaks. On the other hand, there is ample evidence that there are shady VPN companies engaged in a large scale disinformation campaign against ProtonVPN. Just have a look at the 500 Twitter bots used to spread false info: https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1036353291662360577 https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1036353291662360577 Who is more likely to be telling the truth? 500 anonymous bots on Twitter, or Mozilla, the EU, and the state of Geneva who have all verified the company?

Proven 8y ago

1) What did they promise in return? In general when I see a project that takes government funding I become suspicious of it. In some cases my suspicions turned out to be founded (the Tor Project). 2) Who the hell authorizes those EU morons to spend taxpayer money like that?

dummyload 8y ago

Probably some politician is getting under table deal which grants X shares in Proton to some anonymous company based in Cook Island in return of investment coming from tax payer money. Unless ofc Proton is ready to disclose their financial statements and ownership structure, there is no reason to not believe in this corruption. Unless ofc I can also purchase same number of shares in Proton using same amount of money, there is no reason to believe in anything other than corruption tale. Why would EU invest in a private company with properitery technology? It will never become Gmail, maybe it will become another FastMail.

cmjx 8y ago

I find it highly inappropriate that EU money goes to a company that openly uses the "diversity" shtick to increase the hiring pool, thus driving down wages: https://protonmail.com/blog/diversity-in-tech-why-it-matters/ https://protonmail.com/blog/diversity-in-tech-why-it-matters... Also, no one has ever explained to me why one should trust protonmail. The Swiss location is not it (c.f. Crypto AG).

lukeqsee 8y ago

I really want to like ProtonMail. I do like them, in fact. Unfortunately, their business email offering only has one advantage: the encryption. Every other feature that's important for running a business (IMAP, shared inboxes, automatic forwarding capability, etc.) is severely lacking. My company just switched because we simply couldn't deliver quality customer support inside the confines of Proton's system. After switching, I realized how much I was missing from "normal" email systems. A polished business email offering really does make a major difference. That being said, I really like their stance on privacy and their determination to make secure email a default, so I'm considering moving my personal email to them (ironically from the same company we just switched the business to). I hope they can use some of this €2m to address shortcomings in their email platform so we can eventually switch back.

laurentl 8y ago
What provider did you switch for?
- lukeqsee 8y ago
  We transitioned to Fastmail. I don't like the recent development of Australian privacy (i.e., lack of) laws, but I'm willing to give Fastmail a chance to address the issues—and switching is easy enough to allow us to transition to another provider if that becomes an issue.
arosier 8y ago
Protonmail employee here. Appreciate the feedback, would you be willing to have a call to discuss? Business feature development is high priority for us and we’d love to hear your problems first hand to ensure they are all addressed in the coming releases.
- lukeqsee 8y ago
  Absolutely! Feel free to email me directly at my work email: luke@stadiamaps.com.

bb100 8y ago

The censors that previously flagged an outsourcing comment in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18612296 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18612296 are active again.

protonmail 8y ago
Because it has been proven false time and time again. Mozilla checked ProtonVPN by meeting with the team in Geneva. The EU also checked Proton Technologies extensively before granting 2 million euros. Proton Technologies does not outsource. It has offices outside of Switzerland in Czechia, Macedonia, and Lithuania, but the bulk of the staff is in Switzerland. There are team photos online (https://www.instagram.com/p/BuWTJlaHPOf/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BuWTJlaHPOf/), and if you visit the address on the website, you will see it is indeed that building. On the other hand, there is ample evidence that there are shady VPN companies engaged in a large scale disinformation campaign against ProtonVPN. Just have a look at the 500 Twitter bots used to spread the rumors: https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1036353291662360577 https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1036353291662360577 So who do you want to believe? 500 bots on Twitter, or Mozilla, the EU, and the state of Geneva who have all come out and verified the company?
- ak180 8y ago
  Then the EU probably overlooked this: https://protonmail.com/blog/diversity-in-tech-why-it-matters/ https://protonmail.com/blog/diversity-in-tech-why-it-matters... If ProtonMail had grown like a typical Swiss company, only hiring candidates from Switzerland, we never would have been able to find enough talent to drive our growth. By hiring globally, and disregarding which country a candidate is from, we increased our potential hiring pool from 8 million to 7 billion. A diverse workplace also helps to attract applicants. More applicants means we can hire more candidates, while simultaneously being more selective. But I'm glad that EU money is spent for hiring globally.

pergadad 8y ago

It's disappointing they don't specify which funding call this was. This would give us an insight into what really is behind this. Having been deeply involved in EU funding I am 95% certain they are overstating the "checks". Yes you have to provide financials, but it's not like the EU staff are auditing the company, they do a few basic checks based on the documents provided by the company to check that they are not in debt or going bankrupt soon. Horizon 2020 has various angles but principally is about research so they must have requested funds for that, not directly for product development. Even with closed source, still a nice thing to see this kind of company supported.

ghego1 8y ago
I can confirm it's from the call SME instruments Phase II