If I use ProtonMail for better privacy, and I send a message to, say, a Gmail user, then is all the privacy lost to Google again, since my message reaches Google servers anyway ?
Thank you
Yes, Google will be able to see any (non-zero-access-encrypted) data that is stored on Google’s servers.
Yes, however if you send an email to other services supporting Web Key Discovery (such as Mailbox Mail) your emails can be end-to-end encrypted. Just keep in mind it isn’t the strongest form of encryption and email services can technically circumvent this method of encryption if they were malicious.
Technically, besides WKD there are 3 more ways to encrypt email to external recipient:
- The contact can send you their public key and you approve it manually
- You can add a public key in Contacts if it was published somewhere else
- You can send an email encrypted with a password
btw how is it different from sending Proton to Proton? I guess it’s the same encryption if the key can be found via WKD. Not that it’s the best — email encryption in general is far from ideal, but same as on proton2proton
Nothing fundamentally; it’s PGP in both cases. Proton just makes setting up/using PGP more automatic.
As @PaleCrow55 said it’s all using PGP so the underlying encryption is the same. The main difference is that you’re trusting additional parties (whichever email services are involved) to provide users with genuine encryption keys, which is less ideal than having to trust only 1 party such as emailing from Proton to Proton.
Huh, that’s weird. I thought most WKDs are just .well-known on the recipient’s own website, so it’s mostly the same as getting the key from the recipient themselves. Never thought there were notable WKD hosts besides Proton and, yes, keys.openpgp.org.
Anyway, if we’re talking about this kind of risk, I don’t see a big difference between one key provider and two. Theoretically, I wouldn’t trust even one; the user is supposed to compare fingerprints instead. (Obviously nobody does in the real world, but that’s a separate question about the theater around encryption)
Yeah but at least you don’t have a centralised database of all your emails being hosted by an advertising company
Are there any privacy benefits from using a premium subscription from Proton Mail?
Funding their pro-privacy efforts
Getting SimpleLogin included
off the top of my head, otherwise it’s the same service
Proton also hides a lot of typical usability features behind a paywall.
For many people, these features are the difference between being able to use proton as a secondary email to supplement their primary Gmail etc and being able to use Proton as their primary email so they can ditch Gmail completely.
Examples (not exclusive)
- IMAP support through Proton Bridge
- Multiple proton accounts in their mobile apps
- Multiple proton domains
- Custom domains
- More folders and labels
- More Calendars
- Calendar sharing
- Contact groups
- More storage
- Auto reply
- Catch-all
And yeah, if you pay for the unlimited bundle or proton pass premium standalone, you get unlimited Proton Pass/SimpleLogin aliases.
If we’re being precise, the statement of the poster says they will the lose all the privacy to Google again, which implies they wonder if the “use of Proton mail for better privacy” has any value to it.
Then my answer to the question, “is all the privacy lost to Google again” is mostly no, because Proton Mail does not spy on the user. This matters because patterns of usage data, app sensor data, app background telemetry is very problematic with Google. And only partially the answer is yes, because the messages that are sent to a recipient with Google Mail are scanned indeed for commercial data harvesting and potential invasive government data hoarding.
Agreed, the other point to add is just creating one alternate email address, whether it’s with Proton or any other product like ours, is not the silver bullet, you need multiple, email addresses are as transactional as the fleeting sign-ups that people perform on the internet these days, so treat them that way by using different addresses for each.
Recently , I was trying to implement some basic incoming email filters (BTW, one of the things I’d miss the most of GMail) only to find they are behind the paywall. But, probably Proton is worth the money spent, IMHO