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I dislike that a website with privacy in the name collides privacy and anonymity. Privacy does not protect you from the state. Privacy is good enough to protect

• betaby 2y ago
  > Privacy does not protect you from the state. Privacy is good enough to protect you from the public. Public doesn't care mostly. Governments on the other hand...
  • dheera 2y ago
    The public might care if you are rich, influential, or conventionally highly attractive, in which case privacy is a good thing to have.
  • littlestymaar 2y ago
    The “public” also means the private industrial sector, and nowadays they are by far the biggest threat for people living in the Western world.
  • habitue 2y ago
    The public includes online mobs who send you death threats. It definitely matters to protect your identity from the public
• dathinab 2y ago
  Privacy is also meant to protect you from the state, or more specifically state abuse. It's an essential aspect of privacy. Like privacy is also meant to e.g. not disclose topics you have communicated about so that it can't be abused against you. For example there is a long history of states persecuting people for idk. being gay, believing in a certain religion or being a journalist which was involved in a unpleasant disclosure. Still privacy and anonymity are two tightly related but different things. Mainly privacy of communication doesn't always imply anonymity, through sometimes does (and has too!). Anyway it is foolish and somewhat strange to believe that a legally operating email service will protect you against judge backed lawful orders (no matter if it should be lawful or not). Handing out metadata isn't even the worst which can happen, e.g. a judge might order them to make copies of unencrypted mails you receive or make copies of unencrypted mails you write or even undermine your encryption the next time you login. They can try to dispute it and that alone does reduce abuse potential (if they operate in a place which still can be called a state of law) in the end especially for mail there is just no true privacy and even less anonymity. Which doesn't mean their service is useless. Just if you worry about political prosecution by EU countries, or do crime it's not protecting you.
  • matheusmoreira 2y ago
    Some interesting facts about Proton Mail. It generates OpenPGP keys on their own servers, and if you want to use your own keys their instructions show users how to upload upload their entire OpenPGP secret keychain to Proton Mail. Not just encryption/signing subkeys, the master key also needs to be included. I've emailed them to ask that they fix this. I also created a post on their user voice thing about it. https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/284483-proton-mail/suggestions/48298640-import-own-openpgp-subkeys-only https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/284483-proton-mail/s... TLDR; Proton Mail tells users to do this: gpg --armor --export-secret-keys "${USER_ID}" | import-into-proton-mail They should support this instead: gpg --armor --export-secret-subkeys "${PROTON_ENCR_SUBKEY_ID}!" | import-into-proton-mail gpg --armor --export-secret-subkeys "${PROTON_SIGN_SUBKEY_ID}!" | import-into-proton-mail First one leaks the user's master key to them.
    • ta988 2y ago
      Of course they will not. If you look at everything they propose there is always that one thing that makes them control everything. Their IMAP bridge, key generation etc
      • trog 2y ago
        I don't know much about Proton Mail but presumably they want that so they can actually provide you with a more complete service, other than just being a mail gateway? I would assume that any technically sophisticated users who just want an SMTP/IMAP server would never let their keys leave their control, but there might be other users for whom a "middle layer" service which has their keys is good enough. (I guess this is especially evident in cryptoassets where people seem to cheerfully let third parties manage their tokens, so it's not really surprising to me that there are a bunch of people willing to do it with their PGP keys for email purposes.) I guess there's an argument about whether or not they're being responsible in providing such an option at all, which is fair enough.
      • matheusmoreira 2y ago
        It's how they make OpenPGP easy to use. Everyone who's ever tried it knows how hopelessly complicated it is. Their bridge's entire purpose is to present a standard email server to email clients so that all the OpenPGP stuff can be done automatically and transparently behind the scenes. Does that create trust issues? Absolutely. Still, OpenPGP sucks and I just can't fault them for trying to fix it. They're even participating in the standards bodies alongside other OpenPGP projects trying to modernize the whole thing. Somehow it resulted in gpg forking the standard and making everything even worse. It was hard to use before, now it's hard and fragmented. https://lwn.net/Articles/953797/ https://lwn.net/Articles/953797/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38554393 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38554393 I suppose they could have gpg or OpenPGP smartcard integration in the bridge, then it could use those keys to sign and encrypt. That's more secure but creates quite a bit of hassle. Suddenly the web and mobile apps become incapable of sending OpenPGP email unless you have the smartcard connected. I've got two NFC enabled YubiKeys and I can't even begin to imagine how to connect this stuff to a smartphone. Looks like there isn't enough support for it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40177539 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40177539
• kube-system 2y ago
  Privacy protects some things from the state, which is why the western world has the concepts of warrants and such. But the concept certainly doesn't mean that a business is going to help you cover your tracks in regards to data you've already shared. (in this case, the recovery email address) If you give out your personal information, commit a crime, and ask that person to help you hide, you're not asking for anonymity, you're asking for an accomplice.
  • _heimdall 2y ago
    I think that is the GP's point. Privacy means the data is reasonably hidden, though it still exists somewhere in a readable state. Anonymity means the information of who did what really doesn't exist anywhere. In the case of governments, private data is only hidden until the government decides that it needs to look for it (or ask for it). Anonymity means the data isn't there, regardless of whether the government decides it needs to, and has legal justification to, demand access to the data. Anyone providing anonymity is only an accomplice if they know your intent. Simply not collecting data doesn't make you an accomplice, not collecting data with the intent of hiding someone else's illegal behavior does.
    • kube-system 2y ago
      It is, I am agreeing. The bottom line is that if you told someone who you are, you're not anonymous.
    • agile-gift0262 2y ago
      I slightly disagree with your distinction. Privacy is about minimising the amount of data collected that's visible to anyone but you. Your data stays with you and/or only you can see your data, therefore, private. Anonymity isn't about the amount of data collected, but that the data collected or accessible by others can't be linked to you.
      • _heimdall 2y ago
        I could have been more clear there. I was specifically thinking about data that can identify you, not just data in general. If I'm the only one in possession with data I don't really consider it data collection at all, at least in the context of privacy and anonymity. Other than that I agree with your clarifications here though.
• newscracker 2y ago
  You seem to be confusing privacy with practicality. In practice, nothing is ever secure, nothing is ever private and nothing is ever safe. What matters here is what Proton promises and advertises to users/potential users vs. what it can actually deliver. I don’t know if Proton is more open about this, but hopefully this isn’t just buried in some long Terms of Service that almost nobody reads.
  • behringer 2y ago
    > Proton is incorporated and headquartered in Switzerland, meaning your data is protected by some of the world's strictest privacy laws. This is the main statement from Proton about their privacy protection. They say they obey Swiss privacy laws. So if one has a problem with Protonmail complying with Swiss law, maybe one should complain to Switzerland.
  • DEADMINCE 2y ago
    > In practice, nothing is ever secure, Well that's clearly not true.
    • alexey-salmin 2y ago
      Ever heard of thermorectal cryptanalysis? As long as your secure world is not fully isolated but has any interactions with the physical world at all (e.g a human being somewhere receiving and reading your message with his eyes), then it's only a matter of resources allocated to trace you. You can pile up layers of "hops" through uncooperative jurisdictions -- this certainly helps to raise the bar but doesn't give you a mathematical proof of security.
      • DEADMINCE 2y ago
        That's technically and theoretically true but also largely practically irrelevant. Consider a building or a server. You can absolutely make them secure. Sure, eventually, everything can be broken/bypassed/hacked/cracked whatever, but if there is no chance of that happening for the duration that the security has to persist, then it is secure.
• VelesDude 2y ago
  > Privacy does not protect you from the state. Privacy is good enough to protect you from the public. While I get what you are saying, that is a little too black and white for the entire field. Privacy can be used to shield whistle blowers from the state.
• lancebeet 2y ago
  You state this distinction as if it's established, but it's not a definition I've personally heard explicitly stated before. If I read the introduction of the Wikipedia article on "privacy", I find the following: >The right not to be subjected to unsanctioned invasions of privacy by the government, corporations, or individuals is part of many countries' privacy laws, and in some cases, constitutions. So according to Wikipedia, at least in some cases, privacy is protection against the state. Where does your definition come from?
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • Kbelicius 2y ago
    > unsanctioned invasions of privacy GPs definition might as well come from wikipedia.
  • Klonoar 2y ago
    Their breakdown is what’s parroted up and down comment chains on this site when it comes to privacy/anonymity, so I’m frankly not sure how you’ve missed it over the years.
    • 0xEF 2y ago
      That, and the terms themselves tend to invoke clues about the meaning. Privacy implies there is an identity, but it is kept hidden. Anonymity implies there is no identity established so there is nothing to hide. We don't see much of the latter since most web services require an email to sign up, at minimum, which still leaves discoverable bread crumbs. The web services that require you to give up nothing to use them are far less popular, so I guess I can see why people might conflate the two.
      • toolz 2y ago
        I'm not sure where you're drawing your implications from, but that is not implied, to me. I frequently see the concept of privacy applied to situations where an entity isn't required to ID themselves for the sake of privacy. The common description when contrasting anonymity vs privacy is that anonymity allows one to do things publicly without being ID'd while privacy allows one to do things without the public having knowledge. There is no implication or requirement that the private party has been ID'd by another other entity.
• baby 2y ago
  Thank you for making up a definition
• carlosjobim 2y ago
  Your take is just about the opposite of what anybody I know would mean by privacy, which is to protect your information from government actors primarily, for obvious reasons since the government is an actor that seeks out to harm the public.
• deadbabe 2y ago
  If you are a true enemy of the state, why communicate by digital means at all? You could pass written notes or swap USB sticks around.
• mogiddy55 2y ago
  Buying used phones and laptops with cash at a bazaar whilst wearing a wig, one at a time. You got a few days of Tor on each device; then they need to burn. I really don't know what more you can do beyond making your own chat client. Internet is not a place for revolution.
  • blacklion 2y ago
    With all "security" cameras and face recognition software and big data mining, which links many sources together, real world in developed world is not a place for revolution too. Welcome do dystopia and hope that governments in developed world will not become too nasty (CCP-level nasty) too soon due to inertia.