Given Proton Mail’s fashiness coming out of the woodwork, lots of folks are looking at switching away — but they have a reasonable concern: Aren’t Proton Mail’s privacy features special, different from a normal mail provider?

Paul Cantrell

@PublicWolf
Pobox, since the late 90s (!), which was bought by Fastmail in 2015 and has remained excellent since then.

Paul Cantrell

@tehstu
AIUI, Proton still kind of sort of hangs on to the secret key to provide services like webmail. Check that security paper. They may have improved things since 2021, but as you say, it’s a rickety proposition.

? Offline

@[email protected] I think you're almost completely correct on everything. My only nit is this point:

" They can still surveil anything you compose in your email client (e.g. Mail app on your phone)."

Proton does not work with the standard mail app in ios. You can only use their app because that's the only way to (de|en)crypt your emails. On desktop, there's a "bridge" that does that job before your client sees the email. It's like a local IMAP/SMTP server that your client talks to, and sends encrypted email up to their servers.

Wolf 2.0

@inthehands Thank you! Very kind of you to reply.

I'd been trying to choose between Tuta and Proton, but just yesterday was told of Fastmail.

Thank you again!

Paul Cantrell

@Willow
Ah, I didn't know about the local IMAP/SMTP on desktop. So •some• non-Proton clients can still preserve encryption.

Paul Cantrell

@PublicWolf
To be clear: using Fastmail is basically just saying, “feh, email isn’t designed for E2E encryption, I just have to trust my provider.” Which I think is the correct answer, but…just to be clear.

Tuta attempts to solve the same problem as Proton Mail, but is much much more explicit about where the E2E encryption boundary lives. That makes it more annoying, but probably also more secure in practice (because you’re very clear about what is and isn’t encrypted).

August

@inthehands You’re correct that mail ingress / egress is exposed to the email provider, but with E2EE the provider must be intentionally and covertly wiretapping you the whole time. Most companies who receive court subpeonas are able to hand over your entire archive of data at any time, but the scope of what’s available to E2EE providers may be significantly less since your archive is stored with keys they don’t have.

Paul Cantrell

@august
Per the security paper above, it’s not clear to me that the secret key really •is• secret from the provider at all times.

Regardless, I would expect that the ingress problem means that a very large portion of traffic is available for subpoena in practice.

Arp Laszlo • Comics • AuDHD

@inthehands I switched to Proton because I didn’t want Google knowing everything about me, and because DIY mail servers are a pita wrt email delivery. But I’d consider an alternative if a good one existed. I’ve heard of Tuta but I dunno much about them.

August

@inthehands Oh that’s a good point, I misunderstood that you were looking at this specific feature, rather than the overall benefit of using an E2EE provider when 99.9% of emails one sends / receives is not E2EE.

idk how their passphrase-locked mail is technically different than something like https://wormhole.app

ROMMIX

@inthehands kinda hard to have a valid opinion about something if you don't use it.

Paul Cantrell

@rommix0
Through the magic of reading

Paul Cantrell

@august
Yeah. I think the difference is that Proton does a lot of work to make the encryption a bit more invisible. I'm not sure that’s a good thing: in a context where lots/most of the traffic isn’t encrypted, creating a more porous boundary between what •is• and what isn't doesn’t seem great.

August

@inthehands I completely agree that it’s a weird and niche product category, because there aren’t many people who would pay significantly more for an objectively worse email client experience, under the promise that subverting this ONE confidentiality trust point would result in the complete collapse of their product and that they are full of employees who would whistleblow at the first whiff of it. That trust is a fragile and political thing and Proton’s founder really tarnished it

Paul Cantrell

@august
Exactly. It’s really trust, not technology, that they are selling. That was the core product. And now….

Paul Cantrell

A very good point from @august here:
https://macaw.social/@august/113839019107602863

Proton Mail’s core product isn’t really technology; it’s •trust•.

And with a few rash words, their CEO has severely damaged that core product.

Yes, it was only a few words — but what else do we have to go on? If they’re doing something shady behind closed doors, we won't know about it until it’s far, far too late. The best we can do is just assume that where there’s smoke there’s fire.

Shawn Wilsher

@inthehands I didn't think this is quite correct. They don't have an SMTP server that they host. You can run a bridge locally that let's you use a standard client, but they do not host an SMTP (or IMAP) server.

scrottie (he/him/they)

@inthehands Pardon the footnote, and in no way to meant to defend ProtonMail (I did a "fuck ProtonMail" post the other day), but LTS/SSL is great for protecting you from random baddies but not powerful state actors. We believe the NSA has the power to crack the popular recommended ECDSA curves used, and VeriSign has just signed certs for the FBI, which is a massive backdoor. I don't know if GPG/PGP's encryption has held up, but that was what we were using (and some people still do) for E2E email

Paul Cantrell

@sdwilsh
Ah, that is useful, thank you! My understanding had been that the local bridge was optional, but indeed, looks like you •have• to use their mobile app.

scrottie (he/him/they)

@inthehands That doesn't give you privacy on who you are talking to (and also doesn't guard against disclosure after recipients have decrypted email from you) and the whole identity thing is bad as much as some people like key singing parties. But it isn't a black box, and doesn't attempt to do dodgy key escrow like stuff that ProtonMail does. So maybe I'll go put my public key in my profile or something again. "Move discussion elsewhere" is a good idea but it's also often observed that...