8 ms·

Great timing /s. I switched to PM on Friday. I love the combination of features though. I pay for pro so I get catch-all email on custom domains. Really helps

Great timing /s. I switched to PM on Friday. I love the combination of features though. I pay for pro so I get catch-all email on custom domains. Really helps to see who sells your info and secure storage and no advertising with good web-mail client are obviously major selling points too. I wish them luck resolving the situation.

quasirandom 6y ago
I've used proton for several years now. The only headache I've ever had is being unable to subscribe to the openbsd mailing list. And that's only because openbsd added proton servers to a spam list... a decision I wish they would revisit. Edit: I initially said freebsd mailing list. It was the openbsd mailing list.
- dathinab 6y ago
  > proton servers to a spam list Wait, what? Which serious organization adds a proper mail service on the spam list?
  - pmlnr 6y ago
    All of them, sadly. Outlook is probably the craziest of all, adding the a /16 of Hetzner, because 1 IP sent spam.
    - vlpwx 6y ago
      So MSFT continues its attempts to extinguish the smaller providers while ostensibly being in favor of "diversity" and open source. How about blocking MSFT in Germany for anti-competitive practices?
    - icefo 6y ago
      I seriously doubt that only one IP of Hetzner sent spam but unfortunately it seems to be pretty common for email providers to soft ban VPS IPs. I don't know how much spam come from cheap hosting services but between the hacked servers and servers rented by spammers it's probably a lot.
    - dathinab 6y ago
      Wait but if microsoft completely blocks a cloud provider wrt. any mail sending this is a form of illegal hindering of competition as far as I can tell.
      - pmlnr 6y ago
        Yeah. And nobody can do anything other than wait until their period has passed. I had to mail Hetzner multiple times because of this.
- sammorrowdrums 6y ago
  That is an unusual decision. I guess some spammer(s) must have done something to deserve it at some point?
  - quasirandom 6y ago
    Super unusual. I've never encountered the issue before or since.
    - codetrotter 6y ago
      Found this thread http://openbsd-archive.7691.n7.nabble.com/OT-protonmail-mail-body-td322547.html http://openbsd-archive.7691.n7.nabble.com/OT-protonmail-mail... Someone was complaining that mail sent from ProtonMail was unreadable to them. Turned out to be because of base64 encoding. Which is an RFC standard. However, several people in the thread insist that this is a problem. Theo de Raadt, the founder and leader of OpenBSD says in the thread: > Maybe it should be blocked. Then the users there can tell them to fix it. > Would have no downside for me. I guess this may be what happened? Really weird IMO. But at the same time I kind of see their point. They have a setup that works for them. And if they want to keep that system the way that it is, it is up to them. Still sad for people that use ProtonMail that they are blocked from even reading the list though if I understood the GP here correctly.
      - upofadown 6y ago
        Wait, Protonmail sends regular email as base64? Why would they do such a weird thing? It seems that that mailing list is "Plain text, 72 characters per line" by policy.
kylehotchkiss 6y ago
I've been with Protonmail a long time and never encountered anything like this. They'll get it figured out and prevent it from happening again. Once this is over, I'm confident the other parts of your experience with them will be good. Protip: if you're on a Mac, the ProtonMail bridge is a nice utility to use ProtonMail with Mail.app.
- millirem 6y ago
  Same - I've been using them for more than a year and have never had any problems before and am a happy customer so far.
Shacklz 6y ago
I'm a customer for more than a year and never had any noticeable outages-issues so far. A few times, I encountered issues in their UI, but I'm also using the beta-version so that's to be expected. FYI, there's also an awesome unofficial open-source Electron client for ProtonMail, ElectronMail: https://github.com/vladimiry/ElectronMail https://github.com/vladimiry/ElectronMail I prefer a standalone client but still like their GUI over thunderbird et al; ElectronMail fills this gap perfectly
sleavey 6y ago
Catch-all is nice but I came from the self-hosting world where I could also customise the from address when I reply to a catch-all email. Protonmail only lets you reply from a non-catch-all address, so you end up leaking your "private" address if you ever reply. That's my only real complaint about Protonmail. I requested this feature but I doubt it's high up their priority list.
- valvar 6y ago
  That's really the feature that I miss most of all. If you have a catch-all, you should be able to customize the from address when composing a message.
- sammorrowdrums 6y ago
  That makes sense although I still have an info@ email that collects my catch-all that is not my main, so while I agree it would be preferable to customise from address, at least I still retain a signal that it isn't personal email.
- news5780 6y ago
  this is the one reason i use fastmail which lets you reply with any address you like as long as you added the domain. would love an alternative.
- r2b2 6y ago
  There is an additional problem with catch-all emails on a custom domain, the domain itself is a uniquely identifiable substring (easy for data-gobblers and advertisers to trade or sell). Why not use a relay service like [https://relay.firefox.com https://relay.firefox.com] or [https://owlmail.io https://owlmail.io]? Since most senders aren't using PGP/E2EE your effective security risk is equivalent. Plus you can still discover address misuse/sale/leakage, disable addresses at will, and your privacy increases.

quasirandom 6y ago

I've used proton for several years now. The only headache I've ever had is being unable to subscribe to the openbsd mailing list. And that's only because openbsd added proton servers to a spam list... a decision I wish they would revisit. Edit: I initially said freebsd mailing list. It was the openbsd mailing list.

dathinab 6y ago
> proton servers to a spam list Wait, what? Which serious organization adds a proper mail service on the spam list?
- pmlnr 6y ago
  All of them, sadly. Outlook is probably the craziest of all, adding the a /16 of Hetzner, because 1 IP sent spam.
  - vlpwx 6y ago
    So MSFT continues its attempts to extinguish the smaller providers while ostensibly being in favor of "diversity" and open source. How about blocking MSFT in Germany for anti-competitive practices?
  - icefo 6y ago
    I seriously doubt that only one IP of Hetzner sent spam but unfortunately it seems to be pretty common for email providers to soft ban VPS IPs. I don't know how much spam come from cheap hosting services but between the hacked servers and servers rented by spammers it's probably a lot.
  - dathinab 6y ago
    Wait but if microsoft completely blocks a cloud provider wrt. any mail sending this is a form of illegal hindering of competition as far as I can tell.
    - pmlnr 6y ago
      Yeah. And nobody can do anything other than wait until their period has passed. I had to mail Hetzner multiple times because of this.
sammorrowdrums 6y ago
That is an unusual decision. I guess some spammer(s) must have done something to deserve it at some point?
- quasirandom 6y ago
  Super unusual. I've never encountered the issue before or since.
  - codetrotter 6y ago
    Found this thread http://openbsd-archive.7691.n7.nabble.com/OT-protonmail-mail-body-td322547.html http://openbsd-archive.7691.n7.nabble.com/OT-protonmail-mail... Someone was complaining that mail sent from ProtonMail was unreadable to them. Turned out to be because of base64 encoding. Which is an RFC standard. However, several people in the thread insist that this is a problem. Theo de Raadt, the founder and leader of OpenBSD says in the thread: > Maybe it should be blocked. Then the users there can tell them to fix it. > Would have no downside for me. I guess this may be what happened? Really weird IMO. But at the same time I kind of see their point. They have a setup that works for them. And if they want to keep that system the way that it is, it is up to them. Still sad for people that use ProtonMail that they are blocked from even reading the list though if I understood the GP here correctly.
    - upofadown 6y ago
      Wait, Protonmail sends regular email as base64? Why would they do such a weird thing? It seems that that mailing list is "Plain text, 72 characters per line" by policy.

kylehotchkiss 6y ago

I've been with Protonmail a long time and never encountered anything like this. They'll get it figured out and prevent it from happening again. Once this is over, I'm confident the other parts of your experience with them will be good. Protip: if you're on a Mac, the ProtonMail bridge is a nice utility to use ProtonMail with Mail.app.

millirem 6y ago
Same - I've been using them for more than a year and have never had any problems before and am a happy customer so far.

Shacklz 6y ago

I'm a customer for more than a year and never had any noticeable outages-issues so far. A few times, I encountered issues in their UI, but I'm also using the beta-version so that's to be expected. FYI, there's also an awesome unofficial open-source Electron client for ProtonMail, ElectronMail: https://github.com/vladimiry/ElectronMail https://github.com/vladimiry/ElectronMail I prefer a standalone client but still like their GUI over thunderbird et al; ElectronMail fills this gap perfectly

sleavey 6y ago

Catch-all is nice but I came from the self-hosting world where I could also customise the from address when I reply to a catch-all email. Protonmail only lets you reply from a non-catch-all address, so you end up leaking your "private" address if you ever reply. That's my only real complaint about Protonmail. I requested this feature but I doubt it's high up their priority list.

valvar 6y ago
That's really the feature that I miss most of all. If you have a catch-all, you should be able to customize the from address when composing a message.
sammorrowdrums 6y ago
That makes sense although I still have an info@ email that collects my catch-all that is not my main, so while I agree it would be preferable to customise from address, at least I still retain a signal that it isn't personal email.
news5780 6y ago
this is the one reason i use fastmail which lets you reply with any address you like as long as you added the domain. would love an alternative.
r2b2 6y ago
There is an additional problem with catch-all emails on a custom domain, the domain itself is a uniquely identifiable substring (easy for data-gobblers and advertisers to trade or sell). Why not use a relay service like [https://relay.firefox.com https://relay.firefox.com] or [https://owlmail.io https://owlmail.io]? Since most senders aren't using PGP/E2EE your effective security risk is equivalent. Plus you can still discover address misuse/sale/leakage, disable addresses at will, and your privacy increases.