- cross-posted to:
- privacyguides@lemmy.one
- cross-posted to:
- privacyguides@lemmy.one
Proton: “We’re consolidating our social media presence due to limited resources and no longer posting on Mastodon. Follow us on Reddit for the latest updates”
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“We hate that our CEO keeps getting called out and slammed by our followers so we’re gonna stick our fingers in our ears”
Also good time to remind everyone Tuta exists :) https://tuta.com/
I’ve been using Tuta Mail for a few years now. No complaints. Most of the features you would expect. Lack of IMAP support is kinda disappointing but survivable. Their email security is very strong though — they encrypt every part of your email, including subject (some providers only encrypt the body). They’re also rolling out post-quantum encryption of email data at rest, which tickles my crypto nerd side.
They’ve still a loong way to go to match Proton’s product suite though, as they only offer Email, Contacts and Calendar for now. They’re working on Drive storage next, which is the main reason I currently use Proton.
Tuta is great, I will start from that. But they encrypt the subject line, in addition to the body afaik. It is technically impossible to encrypt “every part of the email” because that would break delivery (e.g., metadata such as recipient or timestamps).
This also has the cost of a nonstandard protocol (not plain PGP), with all that implies in terms of compatibility, maintenance needs etc.
That’s a fair point about the portability of their protocol. And yeah, you’re right that they don’t encrypt everything. I’d meant to say “they encrypt everything you can encrypt without making the email undeliverable” but my fingers decided to type something else.
They’ve still a loong way to go to match Proton’s product suite though, as they only offer Email, Contacts and Calendar for now
honestly that’s a plus for me, I’d rather they focus on a small set of products and do really well with them. before I left Proton I was wary of their scope creep, and then the crypto wallet shit
Funny that the crypto wallet also upset people in the space who like crypto. Because crypto, IF USED CORRECTLY, can be a privacy tool (because it is the main way to pay online that can be utilized without KYC). However, such people got upset not just with Proton broadening their product scope for no reason, but also the fact that Monero was not even considered, despite it having built-in privacy protections unlike Bitcoin, and overall being agreed on as today’s “digital cash”.
How does this factor in to all this? https://archive.ph/xoleo
Would’ve switched in a heartbeat with IMAP support but that’s not in the cards. Stuck with Proton for now.
Wait… neither Proton supports IMAP! (unless you install their local bridge)
A better way to put it is that email clients don’t support Proton. And I doubt any are going to make an effort to, unless the way Proton works becomes the norm. You would have to completely redesign the email client.
It’s far easier for everyone to write an app that can then be used by any email client.
This is the first time hearing about Tuta, Thank you
Tuta is fantastic.
Fuck Proton.
If Proton does not refer to the Steam’s Windows adapter layer for Linux, I don’t care.
Well, read comments under their latest posts on Mastodon. Solid shitstorm of 9 Beaufort since more than a month.
Proton can now officially go fuck themselves.
First, their CEO supports Trump. Then this, ditching Mastodon in favour of nazi-Twitter. Proton is not safe anymore and people need to migrate away ASAP.
Was it ever? I ditched them years ago when they tried to gaslight people that e2ee in javascript in browser is secure.
Security is hardly a binary property.
Given you mention the specific technical setup, I would say yes - that is secure against most risks relevant for most people.
At least, it’s totally fine according to my own threat model, where I looked specifically at broswer-based encryption vs “manual” encryption (I.e. using PGP tools locally).
It is nuanced, but having the ability to selectively serve malicious javascript stealing keys to specific people only on one access is considerable issue in practice, compared to distributing binary where you would generally have the same binary for everyone and you are able to archive and analyse it. Especially if you use third party distributions, like github releases or flatpaks.
Well, yes-ish.
An organization with resources to coerce or compromise Proton or similar wouldn’t have trouble identifying individual users “well enough” (trivially, IP address). At that point there is absolutely nothing stopping a package distributor to serve different content by IP. Not even signatures help in this context, as the signature still comes from the same party coerced or compromised.
Also most people won’t (or are unable to) analyze every code change after every update, which means in practice detection is even more unlikely for OS packages than it is for web pages (much easier to debug code and see network flows). The OS attack surface is also much broader.
In general anyway, this is such a sophisticated attack (especially the targeted nature of it) that it’s not relevant for the vast, vast majority of people. If you deal with super sensitive data you can build your proton client directly, or simply use the bridge (which ultimately is exactly like other client-side tooling), so for those very rare corner cases where this threat is relevant, a solution exists. Actually, in those cases you probably don’t want to use mail in general. So my question is, who is the threat actor you are concerned about?
All in all I think that labeling “insecure” the setup for this I think is not accurate and can paint a wrong picture to people less technically competent.
Bridge did not exist back then.
As for it being sophisticated attack, I think it is relative.
Regardless, if Proton said it did not matter to most people, I would respectfully disagree and move on. They did not. They claimed it is not at all less secure than a native app, which is BS.
I can see a threat model already from 2014.
Anyway, I think it’s a tradeoff that it’s hard to assess quantitatively, as risk is always subjective. From where I stand, the average person using native clients and managing their own keys has a much higher chance to be compromised (by far simpler vectors), for example. On the other hand, someone using a clean OS, storing the key on a yubikey and manually vetting the client tool can resist to sophisticated attacks better compared to using web clients.
I just don’t see this as hill to die on either way. In fact, I also argue in my blog post that for the most part, this technical difference doesn’t impact the security sufficiently to make a difference for the average user.
I guess you disagree and that’s fine.
doesn’t impact the security sufficiently to make a difference for the average user.
I think it is borderline. I am not advocating for PGP, I like the Signal model where you trust signal for introductions but have the ability to verify, even in retrospect. Trust but verify. Even a few advanced users verifying Signal keys forces Signal to remain honest or risk getting caught.
I think the lack of meaningful verification for proton is a significant security weakness, though average user probably has bigger things to worry about.
“Privacy is important, so you can follow our latest updates exclusively on the platforms that don’t give a shit about privacy”
TBF, they push the same content via their email newsletter.
On a platform, that will ban you if you look at it wierd
Privacy isn’t particularly good in the fediverse. Any federated instance can track you as much as they want without you ever knowing or consenting.
Self hosting Lemmy is straightforward. Then subscribe to all communities and now you have a treasure trove of data to mine. If you modify the code a bit you can do more like keep deleted posts around or surveil user activities in real time.
That’s not what privacy means. Mastodon is incredibly transparent that everything you do publicly is public - the threat model is very clear here.
Also you can’t compare public tool used for tool interactions to a suite of private tools that is Proton or any other service.
Finally if all of the data is available public for anyone to access this means it’s not exclusive to bad actors like ad machines, government spies etc.
Exactly. The Fediverse is transparent to all the bad actors and they don’t even have to pay for access.
If you post something publicly on a clearly public platform and expect people not to collect or look at your explicitly published information then that’s really on you. No amount of privacy or protection can help you at this point.
I undress in my yard and my neighbors are able to look at my naked ass. How dare they!
Sure, but at least the fediverse doesn’t try to fill your browser of ads and tracking cookies
Only if you use privacy as the opposite of public. “Privacy”, though, generally refers to counter/non-surveillance. It’s not surveillance to be able to access data that you explicitly publish publicly.
Doubt mastodon instances are cookie tracking you across the web, or trying to capture open session on other windows. Mastodon phone apps doesn’t ssk for your location neither.
Damn, reddit, really? That sucks 🙁
Follow us on Reddit
That’s where you lost me. Not for now, for good.
Yeah damn that hurts. Just signed up for tuta. I will be leaving proton soon I guess. A shame, I had just finished moving all my communications there…
I still don’t know how to feel about Proton, even with an early (and continued) email presence there. Reddit? I see this post because of lemmy.world and fedia.
I liked electrons and neutrons better anyways…
Please no, no more shitty electron apps
Underrated comment, right here!!
The only thing Proton has going for it that Tuta does not is the
.onionsite and even that constantly leaks to clearweb so fuck’em.There are a few other things I miss from Proton:
- Proton Bridge
- nicer interface
- better search
Yet I’m a paying Tuta customer now instead of a paying Proton customer.
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Me too, but I just can’t stand Tuta UX (unless it got better recently).
If they aren’t getting much traction somewhere, but are spending outsized resources there, it makes sense to redirect the manhours elsewhere.
deleted by creator
Bittwarden or KeyPassXC are good self-hosteable alternatives.
deleted by creator
What do you mean by email aliases?
deleted by creator
Ah, I see the confusion. Originally you mentioned two Proton services, password manager and email provider. The person who replied to you suggested two alternative password managers (one commercial, the other one FOSS). You then replied saying without a specific email feature it would be pointless, which would be fair for an alternative email provider but doesn’t apply in this case.
deleted by creator
There are other options for email aliases. iCloud has a pretty robust system, and its ubiquity makes it less likely to be filtered.
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True, but that’s defense by concealment. If they notice the domain, they can block it without harming their business. My argument is that iCloud is too large for them to block.
I’ve been using neomailbox for almost 10 years for this, so maybe check them out
Tuta has a catch-all option that you could consider. Makes it so you can make any email address under your domain and it’ll get to your mailbox.
Bitwarden integrates directly with several email alias providers: https://bitwarden.com/blog/add-privacy-and-security-using-email-aliases-with-bitwarden/
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It is.
Im sure there are tools/scripts for migrating easily. Proton is a sinking ship, anyone who denies it is just lying to themselves at this point.
deleted by creator
Btw, their Mastodon account has more followers than their Bluesky and Threads accounts combined, both of which they are keeping. What a stupid decision.
It’s not stupidity; it’s censorship. They can control what gets posted on their own Reddit community. They can’t control what people are actually saying on the fediverse.
People need to realize that Proton has gone to the shitter; stop paying for them and migrate away as soon as possible.
Hmm good point. Honestly didn’t think about that. In that case I’m surprised they’re keeping the Bluesky account up, the replies are 90% negative there.
Checked both out of curiosity and seems like they are active on twitter but stopped posting weeks ago on bluesky after their feelings got hurt there from ceo backlash.
And reddit has been extra aggressive in allowing mods ban users more easier too, as of this month. Now some mods are “cahoots with admins”
