14 ms·

ProtonMail Rewrites Your Emails

415 points by floren 3y ago

jmclnx 3y ago
doesn't proton mail encrypt by default ? But I guess they are trying to send signed email outside the protonmail environment. I guess this is a kind of "lite" vendor lockin if you want encrypted email for the masses.
- freeAgent 3y ago
  They only encrypt mail by default when it stays within Proton’s domain.
- protonmail 3y ago
  You can learn more about how Proton Mail encryption works here: https://proton.me/support/proton-mail-encryption-explained https://proton.me/support/proton-mail-encryption-explained. There is a also a functionality that allows you to send password-protected emails to non-Proton Mail recipients: https://proton.me/support/open-password-protected-emails https://proton.me/support/open-password-protected-emails.
willhackett 3y ago
I'm still surprised Apple hasn't had a stab at making the PGP process seamless. I always imagined they'd generate keys on the device, sync via iCloud and publish public keys. I was hoping their big song and dance over privacy would lead the likes of Gmail, Outlook, etc to adopt native PGP too. Wishful thinking. :')
- SquareWheel 3y ago
  They do offer client-side encryption for enterprise, but it uses S/MIME rather than PGP. https://support.google.com/a/answer/10741897 https://support.google.com/a/answer/10741897 https://security.googleblog.com/2023/06/gmail-client-side-encryption-deep-dive.html https://security.googleblog.com/2023/06/gmail-client-side-en...
  - willhackett 3y ago
    They have the opportunity to make PGP completely seamless.
  - teddyh 3y ago
    Except for the fact that if your e-mails are encrypted, you can’t search them in Apple Mail.
    - paulryanrogers 3y ago
      This seems more like a problem in Apple Mail than SMIME
      - reaperman 3y ago
        Indeed. The client could maintain a vector search table that contains "unencrypted" data from emails, but the table itself could be separately encrypted on-device to the same level of security as the rest of the iPhone/MacBook/etc (T2/TPM/HSM chip). Definitely a client problem.
      - teddyh 3y ago
        Oh, yes. I never claimed otherwise. But if you’re a user of Apple Mail and are looking for a solution for encrypted mails today, you should be aware of this.
- nashashmi 3y ago
  They would invent an entirely new mail protocol to make encrypted mail work. It would probably go like this: 1. User writes recipient address. 2. Server checks the address and asks mail host for encryption key. 3. Mail host sends encryption key 4. User continues writing email. Similar to how UDP https works.
  - crossroadsguy 3y ago
    5. Only works on M2 Apple hardware (ps. major functionalities only supported from M3 Pro devices)
    - autoexec 3y ago
      Also expect it to require using Apple's MUA to read your messages
      - dotnet00 3y ago
        Will still be cheered on as revolutionizing the world.
  - bunga-bunga 3y ago
    > an entirely new mail protocol I'd call it Wave
- AceJohnny2 3y ago
  There are many, many use-case problems with PGP and email, to the point that most serious security people just don't bother with PGP. It's relegated to niche and die-hard users. The problems are so many that it's better to use an alternative messaging platform that is built from the ground-up with encryption in mind, like Signal. For example... 1. what happens when you send an encrypted email, and the recipient forwards it? 2. What happens when the recipient replies? Will your original email be included encrypted, or decrypted? Most likely the latter, meaning the same cleartext is now present in two messages. 3. What happens when you email more than one person? What entity handles the encryption for each recipient? 3.a. what if only some of your recipients support encryption? What's the point of encrypting if you're sending some in the clear anyhow? 4. What happens when you email a mailing list, with unknown participants?... 5. What should be canonically encrypted? Just the message body? What about the subject, which is a header of the email? What about any other headers? 5.a. Oh you just want it signed? Again, what is canonically getting signed? How does that survive the many transformations the text receives in a conversation?
  - AceJohnny2 3y ago
    I'd say the problem of PGP and email is that it suffers from a "90% of features is good enough" mindset that is prevalent in open-source (which otherwise isn't a bad thing!) But when it comes to true security, 90%, or even 99%, is so far from "good enough" as to be pointless.
    - rovr138 3y ago
      Do you have examples? Not sure if you mean security or ergonomics.
  - colordrops 3y ago
    These big companies could have extended or replaced the current mail protocol to support these cases if they wished.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- woodruffw 3y ago
  Apple is actually somewhat serious about privacy and security; PGP is much closer to the “performative” end of the privacy and security spectrum than to the “serious” end.
- tptacek 3y ago
  I don't think anybody is ever going to do this, because encrypted email doesn't work. https://latacora.micro.blog/2020/02/19/stop-using-encrypted.html https://latacora.micro.blog/2020/02/19/stop-using-encrypted....
- upofadown 3y ago
  Apple is already in hot water over law enforcement access. Just imagine the political kerfuffle if they started supporting a messaging technology that even the NSA couldn't break[1]... [1] https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/inside-the-nsa-s-war-on-internet-security-a-1010361.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/inside-the-nsa-...
- andrewaylett 3y ago
  You're assuming that using PGP for all email is a good thing. I'm unconvinced that's the case. Email is already encrypted in transit in most cases, and modern TLS has benefits over PGP. A big one is forward secrecy -- if you leak a TLS key, you haven't leaked all your past messages. But if you leak a key for an encryption scheme that doesn't support forward secrecy, you leak everything, as WikiLeaks found to their cost[0]. Mitigating this issue -- especially in the context of email -- is hard. Also, PGP encrypts message data but not message metadata. Transport encryption still protects the per-message metadata, but adding PGP doesn't help. Lastly, for this note at least, adding PGP into email in a way that is seamless will almost inevitably still involve some level of trust in your email provider. I'm all in favour of end-to-end encryption, but not at any cost. New protocols can have new capabilities, but for email my judgement is that your personal security boundary should include your email server. TLS for encryption in transit, DKIM for attestation of authenticity, and trust that the person you're communicating with has similar levels of trust with their mail host[1]. [0] https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/leak-at-wikileaks-a-dispatch-disaster-in-six-acts-a-783778.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/leak-at-wikileaks... - not that they necessarily used PGP, but the problem is the same. [1] I recently sent emails with bank data in them to my solicitors, something that just seemed wrong on so many levels. But my mail server will[2] decline to send mail to their server without validated TLS, and however I give them the information it's going to end up in their O365 environment because that's how the company works. Submitting it over SMTP over TLS is no less secure than over HTTP over TLS. [2] Because I have an advantage over many people who want email security, in that I run my own mail server and can configure it to require TLS for domains that I know support it. I'm not quite at the point of changing the default and only supporting plain text transport for explicitly-allowed domains, I need trust on first use and better observability of failures before I dare risk that -- and I'd use TLSA except that DNSSEC is annoying and so no-one else uses it.
xyproto 3y ago
> you’ll upload your private key to our servers and you’ll like it! What's the point of PGP if the e-mail company has the private key? Just security as the e-mail is being sent over the network + signature verification? Sharing the private key is an odd way to keep secrets.
- Throwthrowbob 3y ago
  A friend of mine wanted me to send them encrypted .gpg files due to being remote but not having the files on their person. They found that downloading some of these files from failed to download. After testing and submitting a bug report, they were told that ProtonMail assumes attachments are encrypted with the user's address keys, and tries to decrypt them (the .gpg extension is stripped when recovering/recreating the original file name). The biggest surprise was ProtonMail had suggested for my friend to import their private key corresponding to the public key for the attachments as a workaround. My friend did not agree to do this.
- twiss 3y ago
  Proton doesn't have the private key material, we store private keys encrypted with the user's password (which we also don't know).
  - xyproto 3y ago
    So the security is reduced from one of the pretty good PGP algorithms to just the user's password?
    - twleo 3y ago
      That is one of my questions too. Use a low entropy things (I guess user's password would be not larger than 20 characters nowadays even using password managers) to encrypt a high entropy strings (PGP key). Looks pretty weird to me.
      - twiss 3y ago
        We derive a (key-encryption-)key from the password using a password hashing function / key derivation function (bcrypt, although we're planning to switch to Argon2) before using it to encrypt the PGP key. This is fairly standard practice, it's what password hashing / key derivation functions are designed for. The crypto refresh of the OpenPGP standard also has Argon2 built-in, exactly for this purpose, so that you don't have to do it manually. (RFC4880 also has "string-to-key" functions built-in but they are fairly weak so we don't rely solely on them.) All of that being said, it's still important to choose a strong password or passphrase, of course; if you choose "123" then it's gonna be guessed instantly no matter how strong the hashing function is (well, unless it's so strong that even logging in becomes too expensive...) The main goal of password hashing functions is to tip the balance towards making it too expensive for an attacker to guess your password (as long as it has let's say "medium entropy") while still making it cheap to log in.
lilyball 3y ago
If you are looking for a new host, I'm pretty happy with Fastmail.
- CharlesW 3y ago
  I'll throw my hat in the ring for iCloud+, which I migrated to from Google Workspace (using imapsync) and may be a good choice if you use iCloud anyway. Apple's been hosting email for a few decades now, and they've been a reliable, no-muss/no-fuss email host for me. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212514 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212514
  - codetrotter 3y ago
    One of my favourite features with iCloud mail is generating new email addresses for each service, in a very integrated straight forward manner Before iCould I used to to this manually with my own mail In the first iteration I had a catch all address, so I could invent any new email address and it would arrive to me. This was plagued by spam because any conceivable user @ my domain would be delivered to me. In the second iteration I manually created aliases in the config file for my mail server when signing up for new things. This was additional overhead and annoying. iCloud thanks to the integration into Safari and apps is so smooth with this. I just click the “hide my email” button and it generates a new unique email for the place I am filling in an email address. I love it!
    - zwily 3y ago
      This isn’t a feature of iCloud mail - Apple will do this no matter who your provider is. They create an address and then just forward emails for it to your real address.
      - withinboredom 3y ago
        Fastmail + 1password also has this feature.
puffyengineer 3y ago
Why does it matter so much? Just use their automatic PGP email signing.
- rovr138 3y ago
  Signing isn't encryption. If someone else has the key, it's not safe encryption. It's only as safe as the entities holding the keys. Do we know that they won't sell? Be forced? What happens if they get hacked? Now it's not your security you have to monitor, but theirs. And you can't control theirs.
  - jabart 3y ago
    Isn't that the same argument for the receiver of a PGP email? How do you know they won't sell your email, be forced to, or have memory stealing malware on their machine reading all emails?
    - nicce 3y ago
      The receiver is first party, the rest are third-party. Intentions and roles are different. Anyway, your argument could be extended to any E2EE protocol... And why we still use encryption? Because we usually trust the receiver and also the receiver can suffer from the leak of the message.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
Just like if I see a company or individual talking about “unbreakable” one time pads, my inclination is to either see them as selling snake oil or else really not have an understanding of modern encryption best practices, every time I see companies or individuals talking about PGP, I get the same feeling. PGP may have been pretty good in the 1990s, but it should be considered bad practice to use it now. It is very easy to misuse and likely has vulnerabilities in practice at least in the way people use it.
- aftbit 3y ago
  What do you mean? Is the concept that even if the one time pads are "information theoretically secure", they are not unbreakable, because of issues with keeping secrets in practice? For example, it doesn't matter how good your encryption standard is, if the enemy has root on your keyboard controller.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  Okay, I'll bite; what's the problem with one time pads? You have to exchange pads, but otherwise I was rather under the impression that they are unbreakable.
  - msla 3y ago
    One-time pads are completely unbreakable if you use them correctly. Using them correctly is impractically difficult for most people. Your key has to be as long as the sum total length of all of the messages you send along that communications channel, and it has to be completely random. Reusing any key material, or having a less-than-random key, breaks the security. Losing your place in the gigantic key you're using doesn't break security, but it makes the result impossible to decrypt unless you try every possible offset within the key to see which one gives a reasonable decryption. Therefore, someone selling a "one-time pad" security system isn't really selling a one-time pad system at all, because people wouldn't buy an email encryption solution which required them to generate, distribute, and keep their place in an impractically large key. It's possible to come up with scenarios where a one-time pad is a good solution. Spies have used them in the past and are likely using them now. But they're impractical and they're used as a buzzword by scammers.
cryptodan 3y ago
This has never happened to me on android.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Eumenes 3y ago
How come self hosting email is such a pain in the ass? I use Proton, its okay, I feel better about it vs Gmail/Gsuite, but its no where as good, feature wise. If I could self-host email, I'd feel good about my tool stack, but I simply don't know enough about the protocols, web/mobile clients, managing network and in/outbound issues, I give up before seriously considering.
- floren 3y ago
  I'm also self-hosting on a different domain. The actual software stack is easy. It's dealing with the blacklists that's hard -- I submitted a ticket to spamhaus, but of course there's been no response after weeks. I guess I have to figure out how to tuck a $50 bill into an email if I really want to get off that list...
  - okanat 3y ago
    If they start taking those bills, they will want to get them often. Self hosting is a lost cause for e-mail unfortunately. You either get overrun by the amount of creatively formatted spam, or all of your e-mails are dropped despite having perfect SPF+DKIM+DMARC records and long-time owned domains. Especially Microsoft has a horrible record of dropping e-mails everyone but big enough companies. Guess which software is the most popular choice in business e-mails: Microsoft Exhange. So no job applications, no communication with the various government offices, no business enquiries but loads and loads of spam that uses all possible codepoints in UTF.
    - autoexec 3y ago
      In one sense, I could kind of understand it. If they can eliminate 99% of all spam by only accepting mail from a handful of domains, and if those few domains happen to be what 99% of their users get (wanted) email from, it's hard to justify the expense and hassle of accepting mail from anyone else. That said, considering how much spam is sent from gmail and other large mail providers it seems like the actual numbers probably aren't as supportive. I don't agree with it, but I could understand it. Because of the spam/blackist problem, every ISP I've worked for has ultimately either stopped providing email service or outsourced it.
version_five 3y ago
> I especially dislike their smarmy we-know-better attitude when people complain about it. I'm happy to see this called out. Don't explain to me that I'm holding it wrong. At minimum admit that a shortcoming on your end prevents me doing what I want and think about if or how it's possible to change that.
- hughw 3y ago
  I've learned to avoid software tools that proclaim they are "opinionated" which usually means it's their way or the highway.
  - themodelplumber 3y ago
    Shouldn't it be like: Non-opinionated ... Opinionated ... My Way or the Highway
  - willcipriano 3y ago
    People who proclaim themselves opinioned also seem to have bad opinions.
    - brookst 3y ago
      That’s just, like, your opinion, man.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - aerio 3y ago
    >they are "opinionated" which usually means it's their way or the highway. That's what opinionated means, yes.
    - eviks 3y ago
      Not really, that's just one of the opinions, another could be to have opinionated defaults with an option to change anything, so highway isn't the only alternative
floren 3y ago
(the irony of realizing I submitted the http: link, not https:, on a post complaining about security...)
- vhcr 3y ago
  Even worse, jfloren.net is not on the HSTS preload list.
- 2h 3y ago
  its a blog post that allows anonymous access. so who cares what protocol you use?
  - floren 3y ago
    Ah, but somebody could man-in-the-middle your request and change it around so it looks like I said some really dumb stuff (dumber than what I actually said, I mean)
    - perryizgr8 3y ago
      Ok, and then? Would that be so bad? It would be found out pretty fast if it had any real world consequences. You could just comment on HN saying that your words have been maliciously modified and that would be the end of it. Or you could tweet about it. Or use any number of ways to voice your point of view.
      - FireInsight 3y ago
        I don’t think the community would view "somebody altered my words on my blog" as a valid response to criticism.
pixelgeek 3y ago
I suspect that this isn't a big issue for them considering how small the userbase is that will be going through the steps you did to sign using your own keys.
- floren 3y ago
  My setup is a little unusual with the shenanigans to allow multiple clients to access a single Bridge instance, but "run Bridge on your Windows desktop and point Thunderbird at it" is a pretty well-advertised use-case in their own docs/advertisement... and Thunderbird has PGP built-in, to the point where it's actually got its own key management stuff and everything.
  - twiss 3y ago
    > Thunderbird has PGP built-in, to the point where it's actually got its own key management stuff and everything This postdates Proton Bridge, btw. But yes, probably we could do more to play nicely with it. But, when Bridge was created, using both Thunderbird and Proton to manage your keys was indeed not an expected or intended use case.
kazinator 3y ago
> My solution was to set up the Proton Bridge in a VM on my NAS, then used rinetd to forward incoming connections on the IMAP and SMTP ports to the bridge (which only listens on 127.0.0.1). I then set up tailscale on that box and on my phone; with that, I could connect any Android email client (I like FairEmail) to my Proton account. I was also accessing it from Linux using Claws. That sounds like a big fraction of the complexity of a self-hosted setup.
- macintux 3y ago
  Every time email is discussed here, people familiar with self-hosting point out that it’s nearly impossible to get Gmail to not flag your mail as spam. (I have no idea, but it’s a recurring theme.)
  - kazinator 3y ago
    They're probably talking about True Scotsman's Self-Hosting whereby your MTA is not configured to go through someone else's SMTP forwarding host, but is slugging it out on its own, sending mails directly to target mail domains, and is sitting on an IP address that doesn't have reputation for sending mail. Self-hosting like it's 1992. The wise man accepts that using a reputable forwarding host for sending is still valid self-hosting.
    - TobyTheDog123 3y ago
      I'm in the process of doing this now, using Postmark's SMTP relay. Hopefully one day I'll meet their requirements for not retaining logs: 1. Account must be Approved and in good standing for at least 6 months 2. Account must be on a paid monthly plan for 6 consecutive months (or have purchase credits) 3. Account must have a lifetime sending volume of over 10,000 messages https://postmarkapp.com/smtp-service https://postmarkapp.com/smtp-service https://postmarkapp.com/support/article/1139-can-i-hide-or-disable-saving-of-message-content-in-my-activity-page https://postmarkapp.com/support/article/1139-can-i-hide-or-d...
      - deleted 3y ago
rbc 3y ago
This kind of thing is why I run my own mail server...
- NotYourLawyer 3y ago
  How do you deal with being flagged as spam?
  - rbc 3y ago
    I configured SPF/DMARC records for those domains, sign outbound email with DKIM and run the outbound server side in cloud data centers. That helps. Seeing the server logs also helps identify failures and diagnose why mail doesn't get accepted.
twleo 3y ago
There is also a 2-year old issues: https://github.com/ProtonMail/proton-bridge/issues/180 https://github.com/ProtonMail/proton-bridge/issues/180 Proton makes it hard for open-source software developer to send patches and they don't care. https://git-send-email.io/#step-2 https://git-send-email.io/#step-2 Some quote from it. > Be advised that Protonmail is generally known to be a pretty bad email host. They will munge up your outgoing emails and your patches may fail to apply when received by the other end. Not to mention their mistreatment of open source and false promises of security! You should consider a different mail provider. Glad that I jumped out the ship only after one week so I can get full refund lol
ravenstine 3y ago
Before anyone jumps ship on ProtonMail because they didn't read past the headline, by "Rewrites Your Emails, the author means that ProtonMail doesn't support user-applied PGP signatures because of the way they've decided to architect their automatic signing and encryption system. ProtonMail isn't rewriting outbound emails in the sense that the average person is probably thinking. If you're part of the 99.9% who doesn't sign their emails or verify signatures, this issue is unlikely to actually matter to you. That said, Proton's response to this issue is joke. https://github.com/ProtonMail/proton-bridge/issues/26 https://github.com/ProtonMail/proton-bridge/issues/26
- twleo 3y ago
  It hurts the trust mostly. If they cannot handle basic things like PGP correctly, how should I trust other part of their software. Especially they are a "Privacy-first" company. "Privacy" becomes a marketing term nowadays.
  - brookst 3y ago
    Privacy was always a marketing term, just like performance, affordable, future-proof, etc. It’s a user benefit. By definition that means it’s a marketing term. That is not mutually exclusive with being a general concept.
    - pavs 3y ago
      Also. "Unlimited" doesnt actually mean unlimited.
      - bboygravity 3y ago
        I learned that when I was like 10: download free full mp3 album now (no download just spam, not free, not mp3, not the album you wanted and not now)
        mszcz 3y ago
thoughtstheseus 3y ago
;
stonekyx 3y ago
> This appears to be related to a behaviour that ProtonMail has of dropping all plaintext email if any mime-encoded parts exist. https://github.com/ProtonMail/proton-bridge/issues/26#issuecomment-663910347 https://github.com/ProtonMail/proton-bridge/issues/26#issuec... I'm actually more shocked knowing that they drop plain text if there is a mime-encoded part (e.g. HTML). Just verified that all mails imported from GMail and all newer mails I received in PM only have the HTML part now, while GMail shows both HTML and plain text parts in message source. Great, now if I want to use a text-only client to read those mails in the future, I won't be able to. Now I honestly wonder, how did they think this is something okay to mess up? Is there just no usable email hosting service for someone that want their mails not touched and also stored securely? Like, this is not even going to save storage space for PM - I'm paying for my storage.
- dreamcompiler 3y ago
  > how did they think this is something okay to mess up? I'm speculating but this has the smell of enshittification. Somehow this is saving them money while making the product worse, and they're hoping not enough customers notice to matter.
- scandox 3y ago
  Office365 does the exact same thing. I think to the majors once email crosses into their systems it becomes an object of their own that is no longer an email as such. They may partially reconstruct it for you as a courtesy...for now.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
snickerbockers 3y ago
> It’s been mostly acceptable, but a few months ago the Android client started mangling emails – if I hit “send” too soon, it would send out only part of what I’d typed; I had to wait 10 seconds or so after I finished typing before hitting send to be sure it sent. Oh my God, i thought it was just me! I've had multiple emails to doctors and financial advisors get cut off this way when i clearly remember typing the whole thing out and i was honestly wondering if all the medications I'm on (for cancer) were causing me to have brief hallucinations while sending emails or something like that.
- just-tom 3y ago
  That's a bit scary to me, that we count on technology so much that we doubt our mental health when the tech goes sideways.
  - sangriafria 3y ago
    I remember I had one of the early Android phones and there was a bug where if the phone had been sleeping for too long (i.e. with the screen off) the alarm either wouldn't sound or would come on late. Try explaining to people that you were late because your alarm was faulty, they will just think you're making excuses.
    - scns 3y ago
      It affects newer Android phones too. Built a meditation timer app. Alarm sound way played too late, when i switched it on. The power saving mechanisms that came later seem overly aggressive.
- Laaas 3y ago
  It's saddening that they haven't fixed this yet. An email service that doesn't send emails properly, what is the point? I've had this bug hit me at times that matter. What if my recipient ignored my empty mail instead of notifying me?
- Dokterdok 3y ago
  Hey, mail product lead here : we're aware of this specific issue which affects a few users and are actively working on a fix. In fact, we've been rewriting the whole Android app which should make it more reliable and easier to use: it should come out later this year. Until then, if you experience repeated sendings issue in the Android Proton Mail app, you can always use the web app (https://mail.proton.me https://mail.proton.me) from any device.
rsolva 3y ago
I have been a paying customer for many years, but have told myself that I would eventually move to a self-hosted server. Maybe it's time. Luckily I have been using my own domain name!
corn13read 3y ago
Migadu is great!
mrjin 3y ago
Wow, was planing to subscribe, then heard other news so walked away. This is beyond what I heard.
jimnotgym 3y ago
It pains me to say it, but I'm leaving ProtonMail as soon as I can get round to it. I think I'll go to Fasthosts. Never mind this pgp stuff that 1% of people find concerning, the current Android app is terrible at the basics. Half way through drafting a reply it closes your message and drops you in the inbox. Half the time it doesn't send, just boots your email into drafts where it sits forever, until you go and resend it. It also prematurely sends. The search is a random email finder now. It is hopeless.
jokoon 3y ago
Does protonmail has a canary page? I know it's swiss etc, but the honeypot tactic is not new. Protonmail could totally be infiltrated or controlled by an intelligence agency under the guise of "we offer you privacy". I don't like conspiracy theories, but when it comes to escaping government electronic surveillance, Snowden made me realize that tinfoil hats are not so ridiculous.
bogwog 3y ago
Any good recommendations for an alternative email service provider for those of us who don’t want to host their own mail server?
- e12e 3y ago
  Fastmail?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
cowpig 3y ago
God, Protonmail is the worst. Every time one of these threads come up I like to share my experience attempting to use protonmail for my business: Protonmail charged us for every email account, whether or not they were active. When an employee left the company, we would disable their email address but we wanted to keep records of their email history. Of course, exporting email from protonmail is difficult to the point where you need an engineer to do it. So I emailed protonmail saying "hey, do you think you could add a feature where email addresses can, say, be permanently disabled and then we don't pay for them any more?" They replied with a typical protonmail brush-off. I was already frustrated with the service because their search is worse than a simple substring search and after a few years of using an email provider for professional use you sometimes have to find old conversations. So I canceled the account and closed the privacy.com card. A year later I noticed that the (luckily closed) card was still being charged monthly, so I tried to log into the old account to see if there was a problem and the password (stored in a password manager) didn't work. I emailed them to let them know there was likely a bug and their support agent argued back and forth with me about it before finally demanding my credit card information (which I didn't have, the card was closed a year ago) to stop billing me. I just stopped responding at that point. In my mind the fact that they are so hostile to their users is a big red flag. I think it's bad practice to trust people who indignantly dismiss reasonable questions from paying customers with private information.
- nickelcitymario 3y ago
  I understand your frustration, but it sounds to me like your business case isn’t what Proton was created for. IMHO, Proton is meant to keep conversations completely private between recipients. I’m more surprised that you can still access a former employee’s email at all.
  - Technetium 3y ago
    They paid for the account in the name of their company, for company uses, with company money. If that's not account ownership then please define what is.
    - 3y ago

415 points by floren 3y ago

doesn't proton mail encrypt by default ? But I guess they are trying to send signed email outside the protonmail environment. I guess this is a kind of "lite" vendor lockin if you want encrypted email for the masses.

freeAgent 3y ago
They only encrypt mail by default when it stays within Proton’s domain.
protonmail 3y ago
You can learn more about how Proton Mail encryption works here: https://proton.me/support/proton-mail-encryption-explained https://proton.me/support/proton-mail-encryption-explained. There is a also a functionality that allows you to send password-protected emails to non-Proton Mail recipients: https://proton.me/support/open-password-protected-emails https://proton.me/support/open-password-protected-emails.

willhackett 3y ago

I'm still surprised Apple hasn't had a stab at making the PGP process seamless. I always imagined they'd generate keys on the device, sync via iCloud and publish public keys. I was hoping their big song and dance over privacy would lead the likes of Gmail, Outlook, etc to adopt native PGP too. Wishful thinking. :')

SquareWheel 3y ago
They do offer client-side encryption for enterprise, but it uses S/MIME rather than PGP. https://support.google.com/a/answer/10741897 https://support.google.com/a/answer/10741897 https://security.googleblog.com/2023/06/gmail-client-side-encryption-deep-dive.html https://security.googleblog.com/2023/06/gmail-client-side-en...
- willhackett 3y ago
  They have the opportunity to make PGP completely seamless.
- teddyh 3y ago
  Except for the fact that if your e-mails are encrypted, you can’t search them in Apple Mail.
  - paulryanrogers 3y ago
    This seems more like a problem in Apple Mail than SMIME
    - reaperman 3y ago
      Indeed. The client could maintain a vector search table that contains "unencrypted" data from emails, but the table itself could be separately encrypted on-device to the same level of security as the rest of the iPhone/MacBook/etc (T2/TPM/HSM chip). Definitely a client problem.
    - teddyh 3y ago
      Oh, yes. I never claimed otherwise. But if you’re a user of Apple Mail and are looking for a solution for encrypted mails today, you should be aware of this.
nashashmi 3y ago
They would invent an entirely new mail protocol to make encrypted mail work. It would probably go like this: 1. User writes recipient address. 2. Server checks the address and asks mail host for encryption key. 3. Mail host sends encryption key 4. User continues writing email. Similar to how UDP https works.
- crossroadsguy 3y ago
  5. Only works on M2 Apple hardware (ps. major functionalities only supported from M3 Pro devices)
  - autoexec 3y ago
    Also expect it to require using Apple's MUA to read your messages
    - dotnet00 3y ago
      Will still be cheered on as revolutionizing the world.
- bunga-bunga 3y ago
  > an entirely new mail protocol I'd call it Wave
AceJohnny2 3y ago
There are many, many use-case problems with PGP and email, to the point that most serious security people just don't bother with PGP. It's relegated to niche and die-hard users. The problems are so many that it's better to use an alternative messaging platform that is built from the ground-up with encryption in mind, like Signal. For example... 1. what happens when you send an encrypted email, and the recipient forwards it? 2. What happens when the recipient replies? Will your original email be included encrypted, or decrypted? Most likely the latter, meaning the same cleartext is now present in two messages. 3. What happens when you email more than one person? What entity handles the encryption for each recipient? 3.a. what if only some of your recipients support encryption? What's the point of encrypting if you're sending some in the clear anyhow? 4. What happens when you email a mailing list, with unknown participants?... 5. What should be canonically encrypted? Just the message body? What about the subject, which is a header of the email? What about any other headers? 5.a. Oh you just want it signed? Again, what is canonically getting signed? How does that survive the many transformations the text receives in a conversation?
- AceJohnny2 3y ago
  I'd say the problem of PGP and email is that it suffers from a "90% of features is good enough" mindset that is prevalent in open-source (which otherwise isn't a bad thing!) But when it comes to true security, 90%, or even 99%, is so far from "good enough" as to be pointless.
  - rovr138 3y ago
    Do you have examples? Not sure if you mean security or ergonomics.
- colordrops 3y ago
  These big companies could have extended or replaced the current mail protocol to support these cases if they wished.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
woodruffw 3y ago
Apple is actually somewhat serious about privacy and security; PGP is much closer to the “performative” end of the privacy and security spectrum than to the “serious” end.
tptacek 3y ago
I don't think anybody is ever going to do this, because encrypted email doesn't work. https://latacora.micro.blog/2020/02/19/stop-using-encrypted.html https://latacora.micro.blog/2020/02/19/stop-using-encrypted....
upofadown 3y ago
Apple is already in hot water over law enforcement access. Just imagine the political kerfuffle if they started supporting a messaging technology that even the NSA couldn't break[1]... [1] https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/inside-the-nsa-s-war-on-internet-security-a-1010361.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/inside-the-nsa-...
andrewaylett 3y ago
You're assuming that using PGP for all email is a good thing. I'm unconvinced that's the case. Email is already encrypted in transit in most cases, and modern TLS has benefits over PGP. A big one is forward secrecy -- if you leak a TLS key, you haven't leaked all your past messages. But if you leak a key for an encryption scheme that doesn't support forward secrecy, you leak everything, as WikiLeaks found to their cost[0]. Mitigating this issue -- especially in the context of email -- is hard. Also, PGP encrypts message data but not message metadata. Transport encryption still protects the per-message metadata, but adding PGP doesn't help. Lastly, for this note at least, adding PGP into email in a way that is seamless will almost inevitably still involve some level of trust in your email provider. I'm all in favour of end-to-end encryption, but not at any cost. New protocols can have new capabilities, but for email my judgement is that your personal security boundary should include your email server. TLS for encryption in transit, DKIM for attestation of authenticity, and trust that the person you're communicating with has similar levels of trust with their mail host[1]. [0] https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/leak-at-wikileaks-a-dispatch-disaster-in-six-acts-a-783778.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/leak-at-wikileaks... - not that they necessarily used PGP, but the problem is the same. [1] I recently sent emails with bank data in them to my solicitors, something that just seemed wrong on so many levels. But my mail server will[2] decline to send mail to their server without validated TLS, and however I give them the information it's going to end up in their O365 environment because that's how the company works. Submitting it over SMTP over TLS is no less secure than over HTTP over TLS. [2] Because I have an advantage over many people who want email security, in that I run my own mail server and can configure it to require TLS for domains that I know support it. I'm not quite at the point of changing the default and only supporting plain text transport for explicitly-allowed domains, I need trust on first use and better observability of failures before I dare risk that -- and I'd use TLSA except that DNSSEC is annoying and so no-one else uses it.

xyproto 3y ago

> you’ll upload your private key to our servers and you’ll like it! What's the point of PGP if the e-mail company has the private key? Just security as the e-mail is being sent over the network + signature verification? Sharing the private key is an odd way to keep secrets.

Throwthrowbob 3y ago
A friend of mine wanted me to send them encrypted .gpg files due to being remote but not having the files on their person. They found that downloading some of these files from failed to download. After testing and submitting a bug report, they were told that ProtonMail assumes attachments are encrypted with the user's address keys, and tries to decrypt them (the .gpg extension is stripped when recovering/recreating the original file name). The biggest surprise was ProtonMail had suggested for my friend to import their private key corresponding to the public key for the attachments as a workaround. My friend did not agree to do this.
twiss 3y ago
Proton doesn't have the private key material, we store private keys encrypted with the user's password (which we also don't know).
- xyproto 3y ago
  So the security is reduced from one of the pretty good PGP algorithms to just the user's password?
  - twleo 3y ago
    That is one of my questions too. Use a low entropy things (I guess user's password would be not larger than 20 characters nowadays even using password managers) to encrypt a high entropy strings (PGP key). Looks pretty weird to me.
    - twiss 3y ago
      We derive a (key-encryption-)key from the password using a password hashing function / key derivation function (bcrypt, although we're planning to switch to Argon2) before using it to encrypt the PGP key. This is fairly standard practice, it's what password hashing / key derivation functions are designed for. The crypto refresh of the OpenPGP standard also has Argon2 built-in, exactly for this purpose, so that you don't have to do it manually. (RFC4880 also has "string-to-key" functions built-in but they are fairly weak so we don't rely solely on them.) All of that being said, it's still important to choose a strong password or passphrase, of course; if you choose "123" then it's gonna be guessed instantly no matter how strong the hashing function is (well, unless it's so strong that even logging in becomes too expensive...) The main goal of password hashing functions is to tip the balance towards making it too expensive for an attacker to guess your password (as long as it has let's say "medium entropy") while still making it cheap to log in.

lilyball 3y ago

If you are looking for a new host, I'm pretty happy with Fastmail.

CharlesW 3y ago
I'll throw my hat in the ring for iCloud+, which I migrated to from Google Workspace (using imapsync) and may be a good choice if you use iCloud anyway. Apple's been hosting email for a few decades now, and they've been a reliable, no-muss/no-fuss email host for me. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212514 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212514
- codetrotter 3y ago
  One of my favourite features with iCloud mail is generating new email addresses for each service, in a very integrated straight forward manner Before iCould I used to to this manually with my own mail In the first iteration I had a catch all address, so I could invent any new email address and it would arrive to me. This was plagued by spam because any conceivable user @ my domain would be delivered to me. In the second iteration I manually created aliases in the config file for my mail server when signing up for new things. This was additional overhead and annoying. iCloud thanks to the integration into Safari and apps is so smooth with this. I just click the “hide my email” button and it generates a new unique email for the place I am filling in an email address. I love it!
  - zwily 3y ago
    This isn’t a feature of iCloud mail - Apple will do this no matter who your provider is. They create an address and then just forward emails for it to your real address.
    - withinboredom 3y ago
      Fastmail + 1password also has this feature.

puffyengineer 3y ago

Why does it matter so much? Just use their automatic PGP email signing.

rovr138 3y ago
Signing isn't encryption. If someone else has the key, it's not safe encryption. It's only as safe as the entities holding the keys. Do we know that they won't sell? Be forced? What happens if they get hacked? Now it's not your security you have to monitor, but theirs. And you can't control theirs.
- jabart 3y ago
  Isn't that the same argument for the receiver of a PGP email? How do you know they won't sell your email, be forced to, or have memory stealing malware on their machine reading all emails?
  - nicce 3y ago
    The receiver is first party, the rest are third-party. Intentions and roles are different. Anyway, your argument could be extended to any E2EE protocol... And why we still use encryption? Because we usually trust the receiver and also the receiver can suffer from the leak of the message.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago

Just like if I see a company or individual talking about “unbreakable” one time pads, my inclination is to either see them as selling snake oil or else really not have an understanding of modern encryption best practices, every time I see companies or individuals talking about PGP, I get the same feeling. PGP may have been pretty good in the 1990s, but it should be considered bad practice to use it now. It is very easy to misuse and likely has vulnerabilities in practice at least in the way people use it.

aftbit 3y ago
What do you mean? Is the concept that even if the one time pads are "information theoretically secure", they are not unbreakable, because of issues with keeping secrets in practice? For example, it doesn't matter how good your encryption standard is, if the enemy has root on your keyboard controller.
yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
Okay, I'll bite; what's the problem with one time pads? You have to exchange pads, but otherwise I was rather under the impression that they are unbreakable.
- msla 3y ago
  One-time pads are completely unbreakable if you use them correctly. Using them correctly is impractically difficult for most people. Your key has to be as long as the sum total length of all of the messages you send along that communications channel, and it has to be completely random. Reusing any key material, or having a less-than-random key, breaks the security. Losing your place in the gigantic key you're using doesn't break security, but it makes the result impossible to decrypt unless you try every possible offset within the key to see which one gives a reasonable decryption. Therefore, someone selling a "one-time pad" security system isn't really selling a one-time pad system at all, because people wouldn't buy an email encryption solution which required them to generate, distribute, and keep their place in an impractically large key. It's possible to come up with scenarios where a one-time pad is a good solution. Spies have used them in the past and are likely using them now. But they're impractical and they're used as a buzzword by scammers.

cryptodan 3y ago

This has never happened to me on android.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Eumenes 3y ago

How come self hosting email is such a pain in the ass? I use Proton, its okay, I feel better about it vs Gmail/Gsuite, but its no where as good, feature wise. If I could self-host email, I'd feel good about my tool stack, but I simply don't know enough about the protocols, web/mobile clients, managing network and in/outbound issues, I give up before seriously considering.

floren 3y ago
I'm also self-hosting on a different domain. The actual software stack is easy. It's dealing with the blacklists that's hard -- I submitted a ticket to spamhaus, but of course there's been no response after weeks. I guess I have to figure out how to tuck a $50 bill into an email if I really want to get off that list...
- okanat 3y ago
  If they start taking those bills, they will want to get them often. Self hosting is a lost cause for e-mail unfortunately. You either get overrun by the amount of creatively formatted spam, or all of your e-mails are dropped despite having perfect SPF+DKIM+DMARC records and long-time owned domains. Especially Microsoft has a horrible record of dropping e-mails everyone but big enough companies. Guess which software is the most popular choice in business e-mails: Microsoft Exhange. So no job applications, no communication with the various government offices, no business enquiries but loads and loads of spam that uses all possible codepoints in UTF.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    In one sense, I could kind of understand it. If they can eliminate 99% of all spam by only accepting mail from a handful of domains, and if those few domains happen to be what 99% of their users get (wanted) email from, it's hard to justify the expense and hassle of accepting mail from anyone else. That said, considering how much spam is sent from gmail and other large mail providers it seems like the actual numbers probably aren't as supportive. I don't agree with it, but I could understand it. Because of the spam/blackist problem, every ISP I've worked for has ultimately either stopped providing email service or outsourced it.

version_five 3y ago

> I especially dislike their smarmy we-know-better attitude when people complain about it. I'm happy to see this called out. Don't explain to me that I'm holding it wrong. At minimum admit that a shortcoming on your end prevents me doing what I want and think about if or how it's possible to change that.

hughw 3y ago
I've learned to avoid software tools that proclaim they are "opinionated" which usually means it's their way or the highway.
- themodelplumber 3y ago
  Shouldn't it be like: Non-opinionated ... Opinionated ... My Way or the Highway
- willcipriano 3y ago
  People who proclaim themselves opinioned also seem to have bad opinions.
  - brookst 3y ago
    That’s just, like, your opinion, man.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- aerio 3y ago
  >they are "opinionated" which usually means it's their way or the highway. That's what opinionated means, yes.
  - eviks 3y ago
    Not really, that's just one of the opinions, another could be to have opinionated defaults with an option to change anything, so highway isn't the only alternative

floren 3y ago

(the irony of realizing I submitted the http: link, not https:, on a post complaining about security...)

vhcr 3y ago
Even worse, jfloren.net is not on the HSTS preload list.
2h 3y ago
its a blog post that allows anonymous access. so who cares what protocol you use?
- floren 3y ago
  Ah, but somebody could man-in-the-middle your request and change it around so it looks like I said some really dumb stuff (dumber than what I actually said, I mean)
  - perryizgr8 3y ago
    Ok, and then? Would that be so bad? It would be found out pretty fast if it had any real world consequences. You could just comment on HN saying that your words have been maliciously modified and that would be the end of it. Or you could tweet about it. Or use any number of ways to voice your point of view.
    - FireInsight 3y ago
      I don’t think the community would view "somebody altered my words on my blog" as a valid response to criticism.

pixelgeek 3y ago

I suspect that this isn't a big issue for them considering how small the userbase is that will be going through the steps you did to sign using your own keys.

floren 3y ago
My setup is a little unusual with the shenanigans to allow multiple clients to access a single Bridge instance, but "run Bridge on your Windows desktop and point Thunderbird at it" is a pretty well-advertised use-case in their own docs/advertisement... and Thunderbird has PGP built-in, to the point where it's actually got its own key management stuff and everything.
- twiss 3y ago
  > Thunderbird has PGP built-in, to the point where it's actually got its own key management stuff and everything This postdates Proton Bridge, btw. But yes, probably we could do more to play nicely with it. But, when Bridge was created, using both Thunderbird and Proton to manage your keys was indeed not an expected or intended use case.

kazinator 3y ago

> My solution was to set up the Proton Bridge in a VM on my NAS, then used rinetd to forward incoming connections on the IMAP and SMTP ports to the bridge (which only listens on 127.0.0.1). I then set up tailscale on that box and on my phone; with that, I could connect any Android email client (I like FairEmail) to my Proton account. I was also accessing it from Linux using Claws. That sounds like a big fraction of the complexity of a self-hosted setup.

macintux 3y ago
Every time email is discussed here, people familiar with self-hosting point out that it’s nearly impossible to get Gmail to not flag your mail as spam. (I have no idea, but it’s a recurring theme.)
- kazinator 3y ago
  They're probably talking about True Scotsman's Self-Hosting whereby your MTA is not configured to go through someone else's SMTP forwarding host, but is slugging it out on its own, sending mails directly to target mail domains, and is sitting on an IP address that doesn't have reputation for sending mail. Self-hosting like it's 1992. The wise man accepts that using a reputable forwarding host for sending is still valid self-hosting.
  - TobyTheDog123 3y ago
    I'm in the process of doing this now, using Postmark's SMTP relay. Hopefully one day I'll meet their requirements for not retaining logs: 1. Account must be Approved and in good standing for at least 6 months 2. Account must be on a paid monthly plan for 6 consecutive months (or have purchase credits) 3. Account must have a lifetime sending volume of over 10,000 messages https://postmarkapp.com/smtp-service https://postmarkapp.com/smtp-service https://postmarkapp.com/support/article/1139-can-i-hide-or-disable-saving-of-message-content-in-my-activity-page https://postmarkapp.com/support/article/1139-can-i-hide-or-d...
    - deleted 3y ago

rbc 3y ago

This kind of thing is why I run my own mail server...

NotYourLawyer 3y ago
How do you deal with being flagged as spam?
- rbc 3y ago
  I configured SPF/DMARC records for those domains, sign outbound email with DKIM and run the outbound server side in cloud data centers. That helps. Seeing the server logs also helps identify failures and diagnose why mail doesn't get accepted.

twleo 3y ago

There is also a 2-year old issues: https://github.com/ProtonMail/proton-bridge/issues/180 https://github.com/ProtonMail/proton-bridge/issues/180 Proton makes it hard for open-source software developer to send patches and they don't care. https://git-send-email.io/#step-2 https://git-send-email.io/#step-2 Some quote from it. > Be advised that Protonmail is generally known to be a pretty bad email host. They will munge up your outgoing emails and your patches may fail to apply when received by the other end. Not to mention their mistreatment of open source and false promises of security! You should consider a different mail provider. Glad that I jumped out the ship only after one week so I can get full refund lol

ravenstine 3y ago

Before anyone jumps ship on ProtonMail because they didn't read past the headline, by "Rewrites Your Emails, the author means that ProtonMail doesn't support user-applied PGP signatures because of the way they've decided to architect their automatic signing and encryption system. ProtonMail isn't rewriting outbound emails in the sense that the average person is probably thinking. If you're part of the 99.9% who doesn't sign their emails or verify signatures, this issue is unlikely to actually matter to you. That said, Proton's response to this issue is joke. https://github.com/ProtonMail/proton-bridge/issues/26 https://github.com/ProtonMail/proton-bridge/issues/26

twleo 3y ago
It hurts the trust mostly. If they cannot handle basic things like PGP correctly, how should I trust other part of their software. Especially they are a "Privacy-first" company. "Privacy" becomes a marketing term nowadays.
- brookst 3y ago
  Privacy was always a marketing term, just like performance, affordable, future-proof, etc. It’s a user benefit. By definition that means it’s a marketing term. That is not mutually exclusive with being a general concept.
  - pavs 3y ago
    Also. "Unlimited" doesnt actually mean unlimited.
    - bboygravity 3y ago
      I learned that when I was like 10: download free full mp3 album now (no download just spam, not free, not mp3, not the album you wanted and not now)
      - mszcz 3y ago

thoughtstheseus 3y ago

;

stonekyx 3y ago

> This appears to be related to a behaviour that ProtonMail has of dropping all plaintext email if any mime-encoded parts exist. https://github.com/ProtonMail/proton-bridge/issues/26#issuecomment-663910347 https://github.com/ProtonMail/proton-bridge/issues/26#issuec... I'm actually more shocked knowing that they drop plain text if there is a mime-encoded part (e.g. HTML). Just verified that all mails imported from GMail and all newer mails I received in PM only have the HTML part now, while GMail shows both HTML and plain text parts in message source. Great, now if I want to use a text-only client to read those mails in the future, I won't be able to. Now I honestly wonder, how did they think this is something okay to mess up? Is there just no usable email hosting service for someone that want their mails not touched and also stored securely? Like, this is not even going to save storage space for PM - I'm paying for my storage.

dreamcompiler 3y ago
> how did they think this is something okay to mess up? I'm speculating but this has the smell of enshittification. Somehow this is saving them money while making the product worse, and they're hoping not enough customers notice to matter.
scandox 3y ago
Office365 does the exact same thing. I think to the majors once email crosses into their systems it becomes an object of their own that is no longer an email as such. They may partially reconstruct it for you as a courtesy...for now.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

snickerbockers 3y ago

> It’s been mostly acceptable, but a few months ago the Android client started mangling emails – if I hit “send” too soon, it would send out only part of what I’d typed; I had to wait 10 seconds or so after I finished typing before hitting send to be sure it sent. Oh my God, i thought it was just me! I've had multiple emails to doctors and financial advisors get cut off this way when i clearly remember typing the whole thing out and i was honestly wondering if all the medications I'm on (for cancer) were causing me to have brief hallucinations while sending emails or something like that.

just-tom 3y ago
That's a bit scary to me, that we count on technology so much that we doubt our mental health when the tech goes sideways.
- sangriafria 3y ago
  I remember I had one of the early Android phones and there was a bug where if the phone had been sleeping for too long (i.e. with the screen off) the alarm either wouldn't sound or would come on late. Try explaining to people that you were late because your alarm was faulty, they will just think you're making excuses.
  - scns 3y ago
    It affects newer Android phones too. Built a meditation timer app. Alarm sound way played too late, when i switched it on. The power saving mechanisms that came later seem overly aggressive.
Laaas 3y ago
It's saddening that they haven't fixed this yet. An email service that doesn't send emails properly, what is the point? I've had this bug hit me at times that matter. What if my recipient ignored my empty mail instead of notifying me?
Dokterdok 3y ago
Hey, mail product lead here : we're aware of this specific issue which affects a few users and are actively working on a fix. In fact, we've been rewriting the whole Android app which should make it more reliable and easier to use: it should come out later this year. Until then, if you experience repeated sendings issue in the Android Proton Mail app, you can always use the web app (https://mail.proton.me https://mail.proton.me) from any device.

rsolva 3y ago

I have been a paying customer for many years, but have told myself that I would eventually move to a self-hosted server. Maybe it's time. Luckily I have been using my own domain name!

corn13read 3y ago

Migadu is great!

mrjin 3y ago

Wow, was planing to subscribe, then heard other news so walked away. This is beyond what I heard.

jimnotgym 3y ago

It pains me to say it, but I'm leaving ProtonMail as soon as I can get round to it. I think I'll go to Fasthosts. Never mind this pgp stuff that 1% of people find concerning, the current Android app is terrible at the basics. Half way through drafting a reply it closes your message and drops you in the inbox. Half the time it doesn't send, just boots your email into drafts where it sits forever, until you go and resend it. It also prematurely sends. The search is a random email finder now. It is hopeless.

jokoon 3y ago

Does protonmail has a canary page? I know it's swiss etc, but the honeypot tactic is not new. Protonmail could totally be infiltrated or controlled by an intelligence agency under the guise of "we offer you privacy". I don't like conspiracy theories, but when it comes to escaping government electronic surveillance, Snowden made me realize that tinfoil hats are not so ridiculous.

bogwog 3y ago

Any good recommendations for an alternative email service provider for those of us who don’t want to host their own mail server?

e12e 3y ago
Fastmail?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

cowpig 3y ago

God, Protonmail is the worst. Every time one of these threads come up I like to share my experience attempting to use protonmail for my business: Protonmail charged us for every email account, whether or not they were active. When an employee left the company, we would disable their email address but we wanted to keep records of their email history. Of course, exporting email from protonmail is difficult to the point where you need an engineer to do it. So I emailed protonmail saying "hey, do you think you could add a feature where email addresses can, say, be permanently disabled and then we don't pay for them any more?" They replied with a typical protonmail brush-off. I was already frustrated with the service because their search is worse than a simple substring search and after a few years of using an email provider for professional use you sometimes have to find old conversations. So I canceled the account and closed the privacy.com card. A year later I noticed that the (luckily closed) card was still being charged monthly, so I tried to log into the old account to see if there was a problem and the password (stored in a password manager) didn't work. I emailed them to let them know there was likely a bug and their support agent argued back and forth with me about it before finally demanding my credit card information (which I didn't have, the card was closed a year ago) to stop billing me. I just stopped responding at that point. In my mind the fact that they are so hostile to their users is a big red flag. I think it's bad practice to trust people who indignantly dismiss reasonable questions from paying customers with private information.

nickelcitymario 3y ago
I understand your frustration, but it sounds to me like your business case isn’t what Proton was created for. IMHO, Proton is meant to keep conversations completely private between recipients. I’m more surprised that you can still access a former employee’s email at all.
- Technetium 3y ago
  They paid for the account in the name of their company, for company uses, with company money. If that's not account ownership then please define what is.
  - 3y ago