4 ms·

> That’s because, PM servers receive plaintext data. Then, they encrypt it. But there is no proof that plaintext is not logged. Ah yes this is a good point. Th

> That’s because, PM servers receive plaintext data. Then, they encrypt it. But there is no proof that plaintext is not logged. Ah yes this is a good point. The only way to be sure is to client side end-to-end encrypt your data before you send it to any upstream mail service. E.g. using S/MIME or PGP. At this point you can then use any free mail service as you now “only” need to worry about leaked mail header meta-data.

b112 5y ago
We must be fair. Citing that plain text is readable before proton mail encryption is.... unfair. A bad actor could place a proxy upstream, the problem has nothing to do with protonmail. What protonmail tries to solve is your mail being encrypted at rest. It succeeds there. Statements about "but they can read it" or "they can capture everything before..." is a separate issue, one of trust and different methods of state interference.
- beermonster 5y ago
  > Citing that plain text is readable before proton mail encryption is.... unfair. Firstly it wasn’t me that made that observation but.. I don’t think fairness comes into it. If you’re concerned with that risk, use something else. All security comes with a set of trade offs and knowing which risks you’re protected from and which you are not, helps you make that choice. ProtonMail are also very good at publishing their threat model, architecture and technical implementation as well as large parts being open-source. > What protonmail tries to solve is your mail being encrypted at rest. Actually it does better than that. It uses message-level encryption using PGP keys to provide that encryption at rest. Which in theory gives them zero access. Lots of services which tout encryption at rest are actually encrypting the block storage which mitigates against fewer and less likely threats.

4 ms·

> That’s because, PM servers receive plaintext data. Then, they encrypt it. But there is no proof that plaintext is not logged. Ah yes this is a good point. Th

by beermonster 5y ago

b112 5y ago
We must be fair. Citing that plain text is readable before proton mail encryption is.... unfair. A bad actor could place a proxy upstream, the problem has nothing to do with protonmail. What protonmail tries to solve is your mail being encrypted at rest. It succeeds there. Statements about "but they can read it" or "they can capture everything before..." is a separate issue, one of trust and different methods of state interference.
- beermonster 5y ago
  > Citing that plain text is readable before proton mail encryption is.... unfair. Firstly it wasn’t me that made that observation but.. I don’t think fairness comes into it. If you’re concerned with that risk, use something else. All security comes with a set of trade offs and knowing which risks you’re protected from and which you are not, helps you make that choice. ProtonMail are also very good at publishing their threat model, architecture and technical implementation as well as large parts being open-source. > What protonmail tries to solve is your mail being encrypted at rest. Actually it does better than that. It uses message-level encryption using PGP keys to provide that encryption at rest. Which in theory gives them zero access. Lots of services which tout encryption at rest are actually encrypting the block storage which mitigates against fewer and less likely threats.