It's basically Chrome. It's not a real application, it's a website pretending to be one. It uses a metric fuckton of RAM and eats your battery faster than Prince Andrew a minor.
If Firefox could allow their engine to be packaged like this I'd use it. The problem I see here is chromium. Everything is a trade off and we need more ways to build maintainable cross platform applications.
Slack, for example, is Electron and it runs great. One of the best apps I've used. And it works better than the browser version...
The hate on Lemmy of electron is a bit of an overreaction if you ask me. Yeah it uses more ram than is necessary but again everything is a trade off. Not everything can be a hard to maintain rust app. Let's try to embrace cross platform solutions, though yes fuck chrome/google, so sure criticize that part of it.
There is Tauri which packages it with WebKit and uses Rust as backend.
I think tauri uses the OS web view, so it depends
I just checked, and it seems that it indeed only uses WebKitGTK on Linux
Let’s try to embrace cross platform solutions,
[JavaFX has entered the chat.]
I don't know what javafx is, but java is hell. For me. I'm glad it works for others
The hate on Lemmy of electron is a bit of an overreaction if you ask me
The issue is mainly developers using Electron when things like React Native and Flutter exist. I don't know a lot about Flutter, but React Native uses native UI widgets and feels a lot nicer than Electron.
Rust is infinitely easier to maintain than mountains of untyped js garbage libraries built upon left pad
🙄
Let me get this right... you're complaining about Chromium, but you use Slack? You do realize Chromium had better Linux support for things like HW-accelerated decoding than Firefox? Also, the Chromium sandbox is superior to Firefox.
I realize Firefox business practices aren't total garbage for humanity and that they are constantly working to improve it on like .1% budget of Google. And that they are the only real competition which keeps us in a situation where we actually have a choice in browsers. So yeah let's only care about the technical aspects, or something
And that they are the only real competition which keeps us in a situation where we actually have a choice in browsers.
That isn't true. You've got WebKit-based browsers, LadyBird/LibWeb/LibJs, Goanna, and others. Why choose Mozilla to lead the efforts, when another open source community/foundation may be better? You can also participate in the various new web specifications yourself too if you're not happy with the direction they're headed.
They said competition, not alternatives. As things are right now, and knowing people, not just trying to make a technical point, Firefox is the only competition.
What do you think alternatives are exactly? Firefox has what, 3‒5% usage across all platforms? What did Mozilla do to fix that other than exploring Pocket, a iOS only Password app, and now reselling a crippled VPN & email/phone relay? At some point, people will have to move on from anything Mozilla-owned. Want a better browser, then find a community you can donate to that is focusing on building a better browser. It's time to take off the rose-colored glasses.
Chromium had better Linux support for things like HW-accelerated decoding than Firefox?
Source? Experienced the exact opposite, especially on Wayland.
Android being based on Linux prob has something to do with Chromium's strong Linux support, but Mozilla has consistently prioritized Windows/Mac. Despite it still be challenging, building Chromium from source has always been a lot easier IMO than trying to create a custom build of Firefox.
Regardless, when it comes to privacy, Chromium itself is pretty stripped down and has policy-based integrations that put it on par with Firefox in terms of security. Even with Firefox, you'd have to modify quite a few policies to improve security. Tor/Mullvad Browser though do a better job in many ways and there is no equal to those privacy enhancements on Chromium that I know of, unless you're using something like GrapheneOS.
Point being, people like to complain about Chromium a lot & act like Apple fan bois for Firefox, when in reality privacy is nearly the same with both with some minor configurations.
What the heck are you talking about? Chromium is one of the hardest packages to build and it takes forever. Firefox has FAR fewer dependencies. Chromium's privacy enhancements are a joke.
You should go tell that to the maintainers of GrapheneOS, which is known as the most secure mobile OS... which uses a custom Chromium build, because of Chromium's superior sandboxing.
Chromium is not stripped down at all, just use googerteller and see. It contacts Google everywhere, on the password list, on the account list, in some settings pages, and just randomly sometimes.
It is very crazy. And also it is not fingerprint resistant at all.
I am using all flag settings, policies and GUI settings possibly existing and it still is like that. So no, it is not the same privacy-wise.
Oh really, what policies are you using? Cause my Firefox does all the same things you mention regarding calling Mozilla services for all sorts of things, including telemetry. Oh, and it isn't fingerprint resistant either... so please, share what you're doing.
For Firefox I am either using Librewolf or Arkenfox user.js
But as Librewolf has a good CI/CD system I think I will switch to that. Problem is they are not active at all, while the arkenfox guy is very active.
For Chromium I use the secureblue policies in /usr/etc/chromium/policies/managed
I bought 32gb of RAM cause I was tired and gave up to eléctron apps
I bought 64 gigs of ram and still refuse to use it.
Each electron App is actually a full independent chromium browser install running a website. It's easy to code for and works cross platform as a result, but it's essentially just a website, although they can run offline depending on what's been built in to the local app.
Each electron app running on your system is a separate full chromium app running, with no sharing of resources between each instance. So they take up a lot of space each and duplicate all the resource usage, and potentially the security flaws.
oh yikes. that sucks.
It's just the webapp. If we want the webapp we use a browser.
Slack desktop app is built with electron and works much better than the web app in my experience. So no it's not actually always that simple.
It could be that simple. They just hinder their own website to get you to download the app.
You really believe that? It would be easier for them to maintain only the website, so this really doesn't make sense to me.
Both are Chromium apps.
First running on Chromium, second running on modified Chromium.
Dev here.
Yeah that's how it works.
I'm a web developer. I think there's a misunderstanding here. The person I responded to said that slack purposely made the web version worse than the desktop app, which I'm doubting.
Yes, how are you doubting that? Is your company not big enough to want to pull users to a specific platform so you have to cripple the others?
Because I have used both versions of slack and they're almost exactly the same. The desktop version only works better imo because of small factors such as having its own window so it does not get buried in tabs, and the notification options are (or at least were) more robust. Have you not used the two versions?
I don't really understand your comments. Are you implying that there would be an advantage for slack to "cripple" the web version, when they are essentially running probably 99% of the same code in the electron version? They're never going to get rid of the web version, and if you've used slack for ~9 years like I have, you can easily observe they're actually one of the few app makers out there to make mostly positive changes to their app. They aren't suddenly going to make the web app shitty.
Also, obviously yeah when it makes sense to, app makers in general make the web app version shitty on purpose. Reddit mobile for example. But just because that's a thing in the world doesn't mean it is what slack is doing..not sure why you seem to be implying it's a universal practice.
You just admitted the desktop version works better and that there is a 1% code difference
And?
Slack is one of those apps which lags in a week on any hardware, it might be better than web version but it still sucks ass compared to fucking ICQ clients. Source: using it in the company I work for, for about 7 years already.
I don't often have trouble with slack being slow, or buggy. Been using it like 9 years myself. Interesting you're comparing slack to icq. Are you referring to a current version of icq, or the one that existed in the early 2000s?
I am not sure I understand comparing an app designed to do video/audio chat seamlessly, threaded conversations, channels, filesharing, plus has dozens of subtle nice features that make for a rich experience and a... Chat app, that worked fine for sending plaintext messages but didn't really do anything else.
I compare it to qip or similar with voice calling support about 10 years ago. But still, Slack loses to pretty much anything on the market regarding performance, be that Element, Telegram, Skype or even Discord. It literally battles with biggest IDEs lol
Not my experience. Not sure what qip is either
Now that Chromium has persistent File System Access permission support, what benefit does Electron have over a PWA other than "Native-looking" menu bars?
Yeah, I was dissapointed, but at least it is a controlled browser and not reliant on your normal browser which could change or have malicious extensions
This. Its webapp with more persistent storage maybe. If the Browsers could integrate this, it would be a gamechanger.
I am also very sure that Chrome preloads google. com to make it seem to "load faster". Its all just preloading or persistent storage
It's what you deploy to your users if you want to work around ad blockers and browser extensions. It's a great tool to get operating system level access to exfiltrate information about your users and identify them uniquely, even if they would prefer that not to happen.
All that with the help of Google's telemetry engine aka Chrome, which further helps Alphabet to manifest their interpretation of web standards in the world.
We worked to move things onto the web. Now people bring the web back to your desktop with every application bringing it's own browser shell. We have come full circle and we're now using 10x the resources.
Electron is the prime example of everything that is wrong in IT.
Wow. That sounds horrible. Do you have a source about the system level access statement? I would like to see people's thoughts on it, if it's as bad as it sounds, I'm surprised I haven't heard about it before
What source do you need? It's almost literally the mission statement of Electron.
I've never gone to the webpage of electron
Do you have a source about the system level access statement?
Electron apps are native apps with the Chromium browser embedded in their windows, so they can do anything a native app can. It supports Node.js modules for things like filesystem access, and can interop with C++ code by writing an add on (https://nodejs.org/api/addons.html)
Electron runs a core Chromium Browser + NodeJS + a bit more.
Unlike Chromium itself it is not backwards compatible and removes a ton of things like its sandboxing capabilities.
I am not sure how it is less secure, but it may use more RAM (also not always but generally yes of course), doesnt allow hardening (unlike android WebView apps) and breaks LD_PRELOAD-ing another memory allocator.
This is only a big problem in special cases, in general it makes apps strictly dependend on GNU glibc and others, no idea how it works on Alpine or others (that actually try to make a secure system).
If somebody knows more about security concerns about Electron, please add.
Ugh, I was looking forward to replacing Thunderbird/Bridge, but never mind.
No way.
Bridge
I am actually sort of worried that now that they put this out they will retire bridge. We will have to wait and see. Is having a browser tab open really that bad... ?? I suppose but I still like programs over web pages.
Yeah, Proton is awesome, that's for sure. Now, being a "security and privacy" company, it blows my mind that they put so much effort on making apps for Windows and Mac first, leaving Linux behind, and when they finally get to it, they just dump in a glorified PWA.
This world is really weird 🤣🤣
And that they decided to go with RPM and DEB instead of just doing a Flatpak
Are you kidding me? Doesn't bother me that much, as I use Thunderbird with Protonmail bridge. I'm still waiting on Proton Drive for linux. Well, I'm gonna end up self hosting at this point. :(
Tbh it should have simply been a flatpak
I prefer rpm over flatpak. at least I know any os dependency updates are happening regularly, flatpak may not get weekly dependency updates from proton
Its kinda annoying for anyone not on debian or fedora (and derivatives) though.
I'm on OpenSuse which will take a Fedora RPM, and most will take deb, if they don't you can uae the alien tool to convert it for your OS...extra steps which sucks
OpenSUSE does not have Fedoras ABI or package names. The RPMs aren’t compatible.
This one might work as its just Electron.
I installed it and it works. i have also installed other Fedora RPMs. RPM can contain repo links to dependecies needed. or just contain all the libraries needed. OpenSUSE will install it and just treat them as Orphaned Packages (in the later case)
it blows my mind that they put so much effort on making apps for Windows and Mac first, leaving Linux behind
Because most people use Windows and Mac, including their clients. It's not the world that is weird, it's people who don't understand such basic things. You don't focus on 5% of your users.
Capitalism is weird? Ok, but this is what we have.
I had no idea the whole world was capitalist, but I guess I don't know everything. And there's the fact that I mentioned the world, not a form of political economy. But yeah, capitalism is weird.
It's a native app on Windows and Mac?
I don't use either OS, but the apps are .DMG (Mac) and .exe (Windows), so I believe they are, yes.
PWAs can be packed in .dmg and .exe.
I had no idea. That's good information to have. And my wife doesn't get why I spend so much time in Lemmy. I learn more here than with all the online courses I take regularly put together. I love this community.
“Finally” really is the key word, waiting for Proton to add features or apps is painful at times.
Glad they’ve finally made progress with this.
Waiting for Proton to acknowledge and fix critical bugs that can cause data loss was way more painful.. took them years with the solution being "just wait for the bridge rewrite it will be (most likely) fixed there".
Its just a webview app..
Yep. Installed it, started it, saw it is basically the website in an embedded browser, uninstalled it.
Like, come on, you have a web version. Why should I use an extra application to view a website. This seems like a cheap excuse for a desktop app.
Does it support offline access?
It does not. Which is the reason I wanted the app...
How to completely fail on a mail client. Holy hell.
Are you sure?
This was in the linked article:
Caching for offline use
Caching is not the same as actual offline functionality.
What the hell constitutes “actual offline use” for an email client
downloading emails and storing them locally for offline reading, categorizing, searching and drafting. "Caching" usually just means if you opened the app with connection, it won't go bonkers and will probably let you finish your immediate task + some basic functionality if you lose it. Can't close the app though.
I turned my WiFi off and opened the app it was just a white screen. I suppose its beta still. But my dream is to keep a local copy of all my mail just got a cache.
The only benefit i can see of web app is it is in a controlled browser environment...could be helpful with security?
To save myself the hassle of having to rebuild the electron app every once in a while? I'd rather not open my browser, go to their website and log in with 2fa every time I want to read an email.
The main benefit is since it is locally installed, it is harder for proton's server to access your encrypted data by serving you malicious JS. A malicious desktop app/update could be served too, but that may be trickier.
Speaking of mail apps, has anyone used Thunderbird recently? I had used it for a year or two up until . . . a year or two ago (probably two or three, actually) and then switched to kmail to satisfy my masochism. Thunderbird just hadn't been doing it for me with meh functionality and slightly more meh looks.
Fast forward to yesterday when I'm updating my steamdeck desktop to use nix stuff instead of rwfus+pacman and I couldn't get kmail from nix to behave right so I thought I'd give thunderbird another look. I'm several hours into tinkering with it and holy hell has it changed pretty much completely from a few years ago. Looks fantastic and works pretty much exactly how I want/expect it to. Good job mozilla!
Thunderbird is fine.
Tbh I have no idea what they are doing though, they have more funding than GNOME but after Supernova I didnt see any updates.
There is an unofficial Thunderbird nightly Flatpak, that will likely reveal what the hell they are doing.
So Supernova is kinda nice, mainly a big overhaul of the underlying stuff, making it easier to maintain.
It lacks a ton of things like Threads (the addon TB Conversation works though). Also their "spaces" bar is useless, as it just opens tabs, so it is redundant. Good idea, but only if it could replace tabs.
Their search and filter stuff is still the same, really bad. Either displaced in the message list column, as the global search still opens a new tab which is kinda bad UI.
Some addons broke too, not a big deal though.
I have the feeling they removed nested filters, which is extremely bad, but filters still work.
Thunderbird works well.
I believe I read somewhere they're focusing heavily on the mobile app at the moment (or rather turning K-9 into their mobile app). Once they get that out, we'll see where the desktop goes.
That too but afaik thats a separate Android dev
I've never found Thunderbird search bad compared to alternatives, as long as I'm not looking to find content inside attachments. Really fast and responsive and being a desktop client without paginated results makes moving and deleting in bulk so much easier. Would love it to be as powerful as Voidtools Everything to get a bit more granular sometimes but otherwise pretty happy with it.
I mean, I think their global search is not that useful, while their inline mail list search is. So I have a cluttered UI with 2 search bars, to supplement the incomplete inline search.
Yes Thunderbird is getting really nice nowadays.
Just started using Thunderbird again a couple of months ago. Like it! I never really stopped liking it, just stopped using it because all the webmail interfaces and "appification".
Was just trying to get K-9 Mail working on my phone again (after years of using umpteen different apps) and it's not as smooth as I remember.
I think they're talking Kmail from the KDE app suite. I thought they meant K-9 mail.
Btw If I remember correctly K-9 mail is or is becoming Thunderbird.
It's taking them quite a while, but that usually means that the end result will be worth it.
If K-9 isn't working well for you, try FairEmail. It's one of my favourite email clients.
K-9 has gotten a LOT better over the past few months though.
Yeah I installed it recently on my widows and it is super sleek.
It’s still under the Mozilla foundation though, which is what people who are talking about Mozilla usually mean (they’re the ones collecting donations and the parent organization).
Proton Drive though 😭. The Windows app is so nice, wish we could get that for Linux.
I've set up an Rclone for the time being, not great but it works well enough for basic bisynchronisation.
Oh... I thought they meant Drive is finally out. That sucks. :(
Ugh, they took too darn long. I'm probably going to switch to Nextcloud.
You should do it. Easy to setup using either their official AIO image or the community-driven micro service one. I am using the latter and it's been amazing. It's completely replaced Google Drive, Calendar, and Contacts for me and with the DAVx5 Android App it feels like a drop-in replacement. I am also using the auto upload feature to back up my photos to it.
Working on that right now. Wish me luck. :)
I would too, but after like a week I get bored of maintaining it myself when all the expenses summed together aren't much cheaper than Proton or likewise. This is what I was doing before submitting my independence to Proton.
Furthermore Nextcloud is just too damn sluggish. The web interface makes it seem like my server's idea of a CPU is a kid with a calculator and WebDAV isn't designed for cloud storage. I'll take new features being slow over my whole experience being even slower any day of the week.
I feel that. However, Proton's a non-starter for me as I'm using Linux, so no Proton drive client. Really scratching my head since Linux attracts the security conscious.
Celeste works fine on Linux, or you can use rclone directly.
That's what I've done, using rclone bisync and my crontab. Like I said it works well enough, but far from perfect. Using a beta backend with an experimental operation, according to the rclone website, puts me slightly on-edge.
I did try Celeste, but stopped using it for two reasons:
I use Budgie, so Libadwaita apps look incredibly out-of-place. Inconsistency like that makes me physically uncomfortable.
Didn't really work, just too slow.
"After years of pushing their proprietary and closed solutions to privacy minded people Proton decided that it was in their best interest to further bury said users into their service as a form of vendor lock-in. To achieve this they made more non-standard desktop clients for their groupware features (contacts and calendars) and the bridge will be discontinued soon."
Only if there wasn't CardDAV, CalDAV, IMAP, SMTP and dozens of other highly standardized protocols to handle e-mailing and groupware.
Is the bridge actually being discontinued? People have been saying that a lot recently but I've not seen any evidence for it, and not in the linked article.
I'm annoyed that they don't support SMTP, but realistically they actually can't unless they have the ability to read your email, which they don't.
Is the bridge actually being discontinued?
No, but what from their moves it is very clear it won't live long.
they don’t support SMTP, but realistically they actually can’t unless they have the ability to read your emai
Technically they do use SMTP... and it's possible for a provider and provide submission and generic SMTP do clients without having to read the email content.
There are lots of ways to do e2e encryption on e-mail (no server access to the contents) over SMTP (OpenPGP, S/MIME etc.). There are also header minimization options to prevent metadata leakage. And Proton decided NOT to use any of those proven solutions (in a standard and open way at least) and go for some obscure implementation instead because it fits their business better and makes development faster.
Because with proven concepts the swiss intelligence services would be locked out.
And now people have to trust their claims of "swiss privacy laws" (who are shit - the worst in Central Europe. Switzerland had multiple scandals, from a system that had intelligence files on a large percentage of their "unreliable" citizens as part of the "Fichenskandal" to them recently admitting that most internet traffic within and all traffic leaving and entering Switzerland is monitored by the swiss intelligence services - without so much as a judges permit).
Yeah, I know, they are audited....But since Snowden we all know how much that is worth.
The minute they discontinue Proton Bridge is the minute I cancel my subscription with them and change mail providers. No one is prying my beloved Thunderbird from me
"Anyone can download the app, but free users will be given a 14-day trial to test drive it.'
So it's only for premium users ?
Hey it takes effort to make a WebView for mail.proton.com
They need to see how to package the dedicated browser for all the different distros and operating systems, make a nice icon and so ok. It takes hours
They should sell this masterpiece for much more
Baby steps that take Proton from a great service to a toy for the masses in the effort to increase revenue. AI features are next
Sooo... What exactly changed about the service?
Yup
I never really understood the need for such apps when mail clients such as Thunderbird exist.
Proton forces you to pay for a bridge to use Thunderbird.
Tutanota doesn't even provide that.
These "privacy respecting" email services don't respect the user enough to let them use third party email clients easily if the user chooses to.
They cannot decrypt your data while sitting, so IMAP cannot work.
Go ahead and explain what you mean. I don't believe you & think you're just parroting their corpo speak.
It's actually fairly simple: if the server never has access to the keys or the plaintext of messages (or calendar events, etc.), then you need a client tool to handle decryption and encryption operations.
They use PGP, and they have implemented this feature in a way that it's completely transparent to the user to make it mainstream. So they chose building dedicated tools (bridge, web client), rather than letting users use their own tools, because the PGP tooling sucks hard and it's extremely inaccessible for the general population.
This means that you need a fat client, whatever you do, or otherwise the server will have access to the data and there is no e2ee. Instead of using enigmail or other PGP plugins/tools, they built the bridge.
if the server never has access to the keys or the plaintext of messages (or calendar events, etc.), then you need a client tool to handle decryption and encryption operations.
Proton stores your keys, and you have the decryption password. How do you think they handle password-based logins? Only the user should ever generate and store the private key. All they need now is your decryption password & they can read your messages. This is reason #1 not to trust Proton.
They use PGP, and they have implemented this feature in a way that it’s completely transparent to the user to make it mainstream.
It isn't transparent, because most users aren't running their own frontend locally and tracking all the source code changes. They've already violated the first rule of PGP privacy by having your private key. Now you're merely trusting them to not send you a custom JS payload to have your decryption password sent to the server. How many users are actually utilizing their hidden API to ensure that decryption/encryption is only done client-side? If they have your private key, how many users do you think are using long enough passwords to make cracking their password more challenging? This is reason #2 to not trust Proton.
PGP tooling sucks hard and it’s extremely inaccessible for the general population.
This is just entirely inaccurate and you've failed to provide any "proof' for your generalizations here.
This means that you need a fat client, whatever you do, or otherwise the server will have access to the data and there is no e2ee.
If you actually understood PGP you'd know you can generate and use local-only keys with IMAPS and have support to use any IMAP client. Furthermore, the other apps by Proton like Proton Pass, Calendar, etc... all use undocumented APIs that they have yet to implement in their bridge using standard protocols like CalDav/CardDav/JSON or whatever else in order to be able to integrate with local tools. There is no security benefit in their implementation other than to lock you into a walled garden and give you a false sense of security.
Proton stores your keys
Proton stores an encrypted blob.
All they need now is your decryption password & they can read your messages
"All they need now is your private key". It's literally a secret, they use bcrypt and then encrypt it. Also, "they" are not generally in the threat model. "They" can serve you JS that simply exfiltrates your email, because the emails are displayed in their web-app, they have no need to steal your password to decrypt your key and read your email...
It isn’t transparent, because most users aren’t running their own frontend locally and tracking all the source code changes.
Probably we misunderstand what "transparent" means in this context. What I mean is that the average user will not do any PGP operation, in general. Encryption happens transparently for them, which is the whole thing about Proton: make encryption easy and default.
Now you’re merely trusting them to not send you a custom JS payload to have your decryption password sent to the server.
Again, as I said before, they control the JS, they can get the decrypted data without getting the password...?
You always trust your client tooling. There is always a point where I trust someone, be it the "enigmail" maintainers, Thunderbird maintainers (it has access to messages post-decryption!), the CLI tool of choice etc.
How many users are actually utilizing their hidden API to ensure that decryption/encryption is only done client-side?
I mean, their clients are open-source and have also been audited?
If they have your private key, how many users do you think are using long enough passwords to make cracking their password more challenging?
I don't know. But here we are talking about a different risk: someone compromising Proton, getting your encrypted private key, and starting bruteforcing bcrypt-hashed-and-salted passwords. I find that risk acceptable.
This is just entirely inaccurate and you’ve failed to provide any "proof’ for your generalizations here.
See other post.
If you actually understood PGP you’d know you can generate and use local-only keys with IMAPS and have support to use any IMAP client.
Care to share any practical example/link, and how exactly this means not having a fat client that does the encryption/decryption for you?
There is no security benefit in their implementation other than to lock you into a walled garden and give you a false sense of security.
Right, because *DAV protocol are so secure. They all support e2ee, right...?
There is a security benefit, and the benefit is trusting the client software more than a server, especially if shared.
You can export data and migrate when you want easily, so it's really a matter of preference.
You are awesome!
Proton stores an encrypted blob.
It doesn't matter that your private key is stored on their servers encrypted/hased or whatever. If you were simply storing it there, that would not be an issue. The problem is that you're also logging in and relying on whatever JS is sent to you to only happen client-side.
Probably we misunderstand what “transparent” means in this context. What I mean is that the average user will not do any PGP operation, in general. Encryption happens transparently for them, which is the whole thing about Proton: make encryption easy and default.
Most users aren't sending emails from their Proton to other Proton users either. Furthermore, the users that want encryption seek it out. They don't need to use Proton for encryption, especially when it would be easy for them to get an unknowing users decryption password.
Again, as I said before, they control the JS, they can get the decrypted data without getting the password…? You always trust your client tooling. There is always a point where I trust someone, be it the “enigmail” maintainers, Thunderbird maintainers (it has access to messages post-decryption!), the CLI tool of choice etc.
Yes, you have to trust source code somewhere, but with Thunderbird or other mail clients that is open source and their apps are signed or you can reproducibily build from source. However, once that is built it doesn't change. With Proton, everytime you visit their site you don't know for sure that it hasn't changed unless you're monitoring the traffic. A government is much more likely to convince Proton to send a single user a custom JS payload, than to modify the source code of Thunderbird in a way that would create an exploit that bypasses firewalls, system sandboxing, etc.
I mean, their clients are open-source and have also been audited?
You mean their PWA/WebView clients that can still send custom JS at anytime, or their bridge?
Care to share any practical example/link, and how exactly this means not having a fat client that does the encryption/decryption for you?
First, explain what you mean by a fat client? GnuPG is not a fat client.
Right, because *DAV protocol are so secure. They all support e2ee, right…? There is a security benefit, and the benefit is trusting the client software more than a server, especially if shared. You can export data and migrate when you want easily, so it’s really a matter of preference.
Being able to export things is a lot different than being able to use Thunderbird for Calendars, or a different Contacts app on your phone. DAV is as secure as the server you run it on and the certificate you use for transport.
It doesn’t matter that your private key is stored on their servers encrypted/hased or whatever. If you were simply storing it there, that would not be an issue. The problem is that you’re also logging in and relying on whatever JS is sent to you to only happen client-side.
I feel like I covered this point? They make the client tool you are using, there is 0 need for them to steal your password to decrypt your key. Of course you are trusting them, you are seeing your unencrypted email in their webpage, where they can run arbitrary code. They do have their clients opensourced, but this doesn't mean much. You are always exposed to a supply-chain risk for your client software.
Most users aren’t sending emails from their Proton to other Proton users either.
So...? The point is, if they do, encryption happen without them having to do anything, hence transparently. That was the point of my argument: my mom can make a proton account and send me an email and benefit from PGP without even knowing what PGP is.
Furthermore, the users that want encryption seek it out.
And that's the whole point of the conversation: these users are techies and a super tiny minority. This way, they made a product that allow mainstream users to have encryption.
Thunderbird or other mail clients that is open source and their apps are signed or you can reproducibily build from source.
And this control is worth zilch if they get compromised. This is a control against a MiTM who intercepts your download, it's not a control if "the maker of Thunderbird" decides to screw you over in the same way that Proton would do by serving malicious JS code.
If the threat actor you are considering is a malicious software supplier, you have exactly the same issue. There can be pressures from government agencies, the vendor might decide to go bananas or might get compromised.
However, once that is built it doesn’t change. With Proton, everytime you visit their site you don’t know for sure that it hasn’t changed unless you’re monitoring the traffic.
Yes, this is true and it's the real only difference.
I consider it a corner case and something that only affects the time needed to compromise your emails, not the feasibility, but it's true. I am counting on the other hand on a company who has business interests in not letting that happen and a security team to support that work.
A government is much more likely to convince Proton to send a single user a custom JS payload, than to modify the source code of Thunderbird in a way that would create an exploit that bypasses firewalls, system sandboxing, etc.
Maybe...? If government actors are in your threat model, you shouldn't use email in the first place. Metadata are unencrypted and cannot be encrypted, and there are better tools. That said, government agencies have the resources to target the supply chain for individuals and simply "encourage" software distributors to distribute patched versions of the software. This is also a much better strategy because it's likely they can just get access to the whole endpoint and maintain easy persistence (while with JS you are in the browser sandbox and potentially system sandbox), potentially allowing to compromise even other tools (say, Signal). So yeah, the likelihood might be higher with JS-based software, but the impact is smaller. Everyone has their own risk appetite and can decide what they are comfortable with, but again, if you are considering the NSA (or equivalent) as your adversaries, don't use emails.
You mean their PWA/WebView clients that can still send custom JS at anytime, or their bridge?
Yes.
First, explain what you mean by a fat client? GnuPG is not a fat client.
In computer networking, a rich client (also called heavy, fat or thick client) is a computer (a "client" in client–server network architecture) that typically provides rich functionality independent of the central server.
What I mean is this: a client that implements quite some functionality besides what the server would require to work. In this case, the client handles key management, encryption, decryption, signature verification etc. all functionalities that the server doesn't even know they exist.
This is normal, because the encryption is done on top of regular email protocols, so they require a lot of logic in the client side.
Being able to export things is a lot different than being able to use Thunderbird for Calendars, or a different Contacts app on your phone.
For sure it's different, I didn't say it's the same thing. I am saying that you can migrate away easily if your needs change and you'd rather have interoperability.
DAV is as secure as the server you run it on and the certificate you use for transport.
Exactly. Which is why in the very comment you quoted I said:
There is a security benefit, and the benefit is trusting the client software more than a server, especially if shared.
Are you trusting your Nextcloud instance (yours of hosted by someone else) not getting pwned/the server being seized/accessed physically/etc. more than you trust Proton not to get pwnd? Then *Dav tools might be for you.
All good points. It seems like we mostly agree on the same concepts. I don't disagree that people using Proton may have better privacy overall than other services, but I do disagree on the way they implemented it and find their design decisions and approach to be questionable. It screams that they are profit-hungry and admire Apple's walled garden.
some people want to be swindled.
Proton mail has some extra (security?) feature, or they just lack smtp support, and you cannot directly use it on thunderbird. They offer a "bridge" app which allows you to do it, I just use that.
You have to be a paying customer to use that app IIRC.
And a paying customer to use the desktop app too. Well, besides a 14 day free trial.
Proton's whole thing is it's meant to be secure, private, encrypted, etc. To achieve that, it requires the Proton app or website as an endpoint, so your email never leaves Proton's environment. As long as your reading your email in the Proton app/site, they can guarantee its privacy and security.
Once it sends your emails to Thunderbird or another client, it's leaving the Proton environment, and they can no longer control it. You're sacrificing the inherent privacy/security of Proton when you use Thunderbird (they claim).
All of that being said, it's an absolutely bullshit excuse. Tutanota does this same shit, only they don't even provide the bridge like Proton does.
It's true it's technically more secure for those emails to stay in the Proton environment, but they're still your god damn emails, and they should operate like every other email service by giving the user the option to export those emails in whatever way they damn well please, for free.
It's just more platform lock-in garbage. Your emails are trapped on their server, so they'll be no moving away to a different provider easily.
It’s more that they claim they cannot decrypt your data, so how do they send it to Thunderbird? The bridge does the decryption. Theoretically Thunderbird could add support for it.
Corps have used that BS excuse for ages. The whole "your phone is more secure when we control it" is a garbage BS line. Make it open source, give developers the tools & they'll make any app more secure than some bureaucracy that is constantly influenced by the national security agencies.
None of those actually document their API nor provide source for the backend server code. Other than building hydroxide from PRs for CalDav, are there even any other open source implementations of CardDav/CalDav for Proton? I can't find a single implementation of Proton Pass that allows you to sync your passwords locally and be used in a different app. There is no shortage of people complaining about this:
Why would anyone be interested in efforts on a platform with a closed-source backend and that is not developer focused? Not to mention, entirely unnecessary why you should have to use a bridge gateway in the first place with IMAPS & PGP/GPG, CalDav & CardDav. Like I said, Proton is engaged in some questionable practices.
Why would anyone be interested in efforts on a platform with a closed-source backend and that is not developer focused?
Because most people don't care about those particular things. Almost all the world uses completely proprietary tools (Gmail) that also violate your privacy.
Not to mention, entirely unnecessary why you should have to use a bridge gateway in the first place with IMAPS & PGP/GPG, CalDav & CardDav. Like I said, Proton is engaged in some questionable practices.
It's not unnecessary, it's the result of a technical choice. A winning technical choice actually. PGP has a negligible user-base, while Proton has already 100 million accounts. I would be surprised if there were 10 million people actually using PGP. They sacrificed the flexibility and composability of tools (which results almost always in complexity) and made an opinionated solution that works well enough for the mainstream population, who has no interest in picking their tools and simply expects a Gmail-like experience.
And if you really have stringent requirements, they anyway provided the bridge, so that you can have that flexibility if it's really important for you.
IMAPS & PGP/GPG, CalDav & CardDav
IMAPs is just IMAP on TLS, so it does not have anything to do with e2ee in this context.
PGP/GPG is what they use. They just made a tool that is opinionated and just works, rather than one which is more flexible but also more complex. Good choice? Bad choice? It's a choice.
*DAV clients expect cleartext data on the server. If you encrypt the data, you need to build all this logic into the clients, and you are not following the standard anymore, which means you will anyway be bound to your client only (and those which implement compatibility). Proton decided that they want to implement e2ee calendar, and they decided to roll their own thing. It's up to everyone to decide whether e2ee is a more important feature than interoperability with other tools. I don't care about interoperability, for example, and I'd take e2ee over that.
IMAPs is just IMAP on TLS, so it does not have anything to do with e2ee in this context.
If you use GnuPG or one of the GUI implementations it does.
You do realize e2ee merely means that two users share public keys when they communicate in order to decrypt the messages they receive, right?
*DAV clients expect cleartext data on the server. If you encrypt the data, you need to build all this logic into the clients, and you are not following the standard anymore, which means you will anyway be bound to your client only (and those which implement compatibility).
You're talking about people paying for cloud services that manage everything for them. Nothing to stop you from hosting your own on an encrypted drive. EteSync does E2E already, and there is already a plethora of apps supporting PGP on Android and Desktop to encrypt/decrypt messages.
If you use GnuPG or one of the GUI implementations it does.
No, because it's the server that terminates the TLS connection, not the recipient's client. TLS is purely a security control to protect the transport between you and the server you are talking to. It doesn't have anything to do with e2ee. It's still important, of course, but not for e2ee.
You do realize e2ee merely means that two users share public keys when they communicate in order to decrypt the messages they receive, right?
And how does TLS between you and your mail server help with this? Does it give you any guarantee that the public key was not tampered when it reached your server? Or instead you use the fingerprint, generally transmitted through another medium to verify that?
Nothing to stop you from hosting your own on an encrypted drive.
An encrypted drive is useful only when the server is off against physical attacks. While the server is powered on (which is when it gets breached - not considering physical attacks) the data is still in clear.
EteSync does E2E already
And...it requires a specialized client anyway. In fact, they built a DAV bridge (https://github.com/etesync/etesync-dav). Now tell me, if you use this on -say- your phone, can you use other DAV tools without using such bridge? No, because it does something very similar to what Proton does. If proton bridge will get calendar/contacts functionality too (if, because I have no idea how popular of a FR it is), you are in the exact same situation.
The ProtonBridge used to be garbage so people have wanted a dedicated app for awhile now. Over the past year or two, the Bridge finally works fairly reliably so ...a little too late.
So the bridge now syncs your calendars, contacts, files & passwords? 😛 Their bridge still sucks like it always has.
Idk, got thunderbird set up and feeling pretty happy with it.
The proton desktop app was pretty slow when i checked it. I might give thunderbird a go.
Have to use a student account, gmail and my main protonmail account. Tying everything up in one window is just nice.
(Webmail provider releases a bespoke desktop app)
(me, old fart, bumbles out from behind the cables and servers and muck)
You fools! Have any of you whippersnappers ever heard of IMAP? No? Thought so.
[I'm not that familiar with ProtonMail. Chances are they already support IMAP. In which case: ... ....why? Why this? Why in this day and age?]
It's worse than you thought.
The webmail provider released a dedicated browser that can only open the webmail and called it a "desktop" app.
Additionally, they don't support IMAP. There's an app to run on your computer that becomes a bridge. The proprietary protocol is translated to IMAP. You can't use your favorite client if your operating system can't run that bridge and you're not a premium user because for "reasons" only premium users can run that local bridge
they don't support IMAP
They don't support IMAP because they want emails to remain end-to-end encrypted, and IMAP doesn't have any way of doing that. The gateway decrypts the emails locally, then serves them as plain text.
We need something better than IMAP, that's designed for modern use cases. Something that's not stateful... Maybe a web service or something like that. JMAP seems promising but barely any providers have implemented it.
Still, if an user prefers the convenience of using any client instead of e2e, could enable it in a setting. Maybe the user subscribed because they liked the interface and the overall features of the plan, and not because of the encrypted email solution and just wants to add the account on the mobile client instead of a dedicated app
Being closed like this IMHO is just to increase user retention
If thex subscribed because of the interface (ehich is certainly plausible), what would they need IMAP support for? Also, if you really want IMAP, xou can have it, you just need their (open source) Proton Bridge for it (thats a sofrware) so that ut retains all features. But then I would need my own email client.
On mobile you're forced to use their "open source" app that is only available on the closed source app stores and not on fdroid because it uses Google push services
Not true, it's been available on Fdroid for quite some time now. And it doesn't need play services for the notifications to work either.
It's available on an unofficial repository that can be optionally added to fdroid, it's not available on fdroid
Even so, your statement that it is only available on closed-source app stores is wrong. And it doesn't even matter that it's not provided by "My First F-Droid Repo Demo" (yes, that'd the name of the official repo). Many open source apps are on IzzyOnDroid, including Jerboa, what do you use to write on Lemmy?
Either way, your original comment is completely wrong and it doesnt help that it's "only" available in the most popular extra repo.
E2E is their flagship feature and pretty much only selling point. I'm really not surprised they don't allow to just disable it.
I don't think think Proton shows bad will on this one. The only alternative I can think of (as a non expert) would be IMAP + GPG encrypted emails but very few desktop clients support GPG, which would make them less accessible 🤷♂️ Having their own protocol also probably makes it much much easier for them to iterate on it, opening up usually makes think much robust but also slower.
The bridge Is "open" but somehow it works only for premium users.
Looks like it, it's available as a zip in the releases along with the compiled app, but isn't yet uploaded fully on GitHub.
I sure hope they make a Flatpak like they did for VPN (although it's not working properly at all rn). I don't get why they are still troubling themselves to support two other formats already during beta, when this is probably just an Electron app.
The cli is working fine. They changed a few things for free subscribers but idk if it affects the cli.
no AppImage, no Flatpak, no PPA, and no COPR
AUR FTW!
If that's the case, then I might have to use distrobox for once.
Protonmail still does not have an official app in F-Droid. Just because of this reason I ended my paid subscription and moved to Tutanota.
Not going away from Proton myself, but yes this is damned infuriating. Although I'd deal with a reliable Android app. The Beta Android looks good, but why Proton has struggled so much with Android is beyond my current digging.
Tutanota doesn't have a good way to export emails in bulk. Their feature set is getting richer, but once invested, the exit cost is quite high, speaking from experience.
On a related note?
When my friend on proton send me (regular imap, openpgp) and several others (gmail, outlook) an email with all of us as recipients, it seems that proton cheats? I get to decrypt the message, where's the others just read plain ø, unincrypted text.
At first i thought this smart. But now i kind of realize how much of a nightmare this seems to be.
On the other hand, i am not really sure how they do it? Is it to different mails, with fake headers? Or is it more like: if no encryption is available, show thisb (dentical) text instead?
So, what is general concesus about Proton, is it safe or not? I dont use it because you need to pay for Bridge to use it in Thunderbird. Maybe I would use if it has a dedicated app.
It depends on what you want.
If you want a solution that makes sure your provider won't be able to read your data?
It is sure safe for that.
Generally I would distrust any company claiming that our swiss privacy laws are worth a dime - in fact they are shit and among the worst in Europe.
Swiss intelligence laws actually force companies to cooperate in a much broader sense than even the national security laws in the US do.
And of course there is no judge involved and they can basically share the collected data with whoever they want.
It's pretty great. Especially considering that you get a full ecosystem with Mail, Calendar, Drive, VPN and Pass.
I would also like to take this opportunity to shout out murena.io. They host open source cloud solutions. You get a Nextcloud with OnlyOffice and lots of other goodies and their pricing is pretty good
The people behind Murena are also the devs of /e/OS, a de-Googled Android OS that they also sell phones they pre-load it on. My one critique of it so far, owning one of the phones, is that I wish they would work on making it compatible with more well-known phone models available outside Europe. They sold this model I'm using, the Murena One (some Chinese OEM they slapped their name on), here in the US through their website, but I had to run around for two days trying to find a carrier whose service would work on it (or who would even try - eventually T-Mobile worked, the European-based carrier, what a surprise...) and I can't get anyone to do repairs on it because it's not one of the well-known brands. The case they gave me for it is essentially purely cosmetic, and only a week or so into owning it, I dropped it at a restaurant and it got a huge area of dead pixels at the bottom of the screen that nobody will fix because they can't get a new screen for it. If I could install /e/OS myself on more than just the Google Pixel (paying Google to not have to use Android, fun...) that would be great and solve my problems.
As the mod of !c/e_os, I am so happy you brought this up. I use /e/ on my Fairphone 4, it's great. The Easy Installer has come a long way, you should check it out https://doc.e.foundation/easy-installer
Edit: You can also check all the supported devices here
I've looked at the list. The only model that could give me what I'm looking for (5G, actually familiar to US-based carriers and repair shops) is the Pixel. I understand it's not all the fault of the /e/OS devs since there's factors like many bootloaders not being unlockable on US phones or other hardware complications, but I do get the feeling that the North American market does tend to be an afterthought. From what I can see, a majority of the list is either only available in Europe or will only work with very few carriers here, with lack of 5G capability being a big setback for carrier compatibility. That 5G requirement for many carriers really does hurt European based phone tech compatibility over here quite a bit.
So how would you sync your Proton Passwords with NextCloud, or with VaultWarden? Or actively sync them locally to be used with an open source app?
Oh, that's right.. you can't. Proton will say... "Just trust our payloads bro! There is no way we'd ever deliver a modified payload to get your password. Sorry you can't sync your calendar & contacts, just use our Windows apps."
I wouldn't? I suggested Murena as a Proton alternative. I don't know if they have a password manager right know but you can always throw a KeePass database into your Nextcloud.
My sincerest apologies. I misread the thread and thought you were advocating for Proton, which IMO is a questionable company. Thanks for the clarification.
I use both. Proton fits most of my needs, Murena does the rest. I'm not attached to any of them though, if I'm given good enough a reason, I'll drop Proton immediately
At least you're open to moving on. I think keeping an open attitude in any scenario is prob the best option. For most people, I'd recommend they keep using whatever works for them. If you're happy with Proton then switching may just cause frustration. However, if you're very much security focused and also care about things like being able to access your calendars/contacts in the apps you want, then I'd prob suggest just using SimpleLogin for email with their GPG feature, vaultwarden for passwords (you can still use the BitWarden phone apps), and Nextcloud for Calendar/Contacts which also supports DAVx for mobile.
I do use the SimpleLogin aliases, it's one of my favorite services they offer. Most of my web storage (which I barely use anyway) and calendar and stuff is all Nextcloud
It is about as safe as trusting Apple at their word to protect your privacy.
So whats more privacy friendly, using a browser to check email, og using the official Proton app?
Neither. The single app that Proton has done somewhat right with is their VPN and only because they haven't eliminated port forwarding. Everything else they've utilized non-standard protocols and failed to provide source code or API docs. They basically said that users are too stupid to protect themselves, and that you should just trust them to do it for you.
They failed to provide CalDav & CardDav syncing for things like calendars & contacts, IMAPS for mail, and prioritized things like their cloud-only password store. They had no valid reason not to use standardized protocols other than to prevent their users from actively syncing local copies of their data to integrate with privacy-friendly open source software. They act like Apple & a lot of their users prob. are Apple fan bois who will trust a company no questions asked. I have no reason to trust them whatsoever.
Is the search functionality improved in the desktop app?
It just opens the web app
What's wrong with IMAP and SMTP?
They generally require to have data visible on the server and/or handle independently encryption/decryption with related tools and key management (including key discovery).
For some, it might be worth, for 99% of the population who wouldn't be able to do this but also doesn't want their content availablento the provider, it's not.
What is the point of email clients? Why not just use the web browser?
More reliable notifications? That's my reason, at least.
My hope, for proton, would be improved search functionality. Currently search only works for email subject, not body. It's really lackluster.
FYI, you can enable a local index for message content searches:
Finally? Why does it need an app all of a sudden...
Making email secure and good is very hard and it involves either making it inconvenient or getting rid of interoperability with existing systems. As long as I've been tracking it your choices for client when using Proton were webmail or mobile apps. The news here is that a new option has opened up not that an old option is being taken away
This is just patently false. GPG is not inconvenient & there are a plethora of apps that has made it much more user friendly. The fact that Proton has decided to take away freedom & tell you it is more secure is just bologna. There is no reason to trust Proton at all.
GPG is a huge pain in the ass to manage. Everyone knows this, because it's the case. The web of trust also doesn't scale and has many problems, handling key securely is hard, making GPG work on all devices is something which is completely impossible for people without solid technical skills.
If you think otherwise, you are just in a bubble.
You're a serial killer. Everyone knows this, because it's the case.
Do you see how that works? You can say whatever you want, but unless you can provide some proof then you're just parroting whatever you've heard. If you want to learn how to use GPG then let me know and I'd be happy to show you several open source tools that make it very easy so you can stop parroting BS. Otherwise, you're entitled to your opinion and I'll continue to believe you're a serial killer.
The bubble you're referring to is your own ignorance.
There are certain things that are known facts, there is no need to prove them every time.
The simple fact that:
There is not a standard tool that is common
The amount of people who use PGP is ridiculously low, including within tech circles. Just to make one example, even a famous cryptographer such as Filippo Sottile mentions to receive maybe a couple of PGP encrypted emails a year. I work in security and I have never received one, nobody among my colleagues has a public key to use, and I have never seen anybody who was not a tech professional use PGP.
We can’t say this any better than Ted Unangst: "There was a PGP usability study conducted a few years ago where a group of technical people were placed in a room with a computer and asked to set up PGP. Two hours later, they were never seen or heard from again."
If you’d like empirical data of your own to back this up, here’s an experiment you can run: find an immigration lawyer and talk them through the process of getting Signal working on their phone. You probably don’t suddenly smell burning toast. Now try doing that with PGP.
Although OpenPGP is widely considered hard to use, overcomplicated, and the stuff of nerds, our prior experience working on another OpenPGP implementation suggested that the OpenPGP standard is actually pretty good, but the tooling needs improvement.
However, if you really believe I am wrong, and you disagree that PGP tooling is widely considered bad, complex and almost a meme in the security community, you are welcome to show where I am wrong. Show me a simple PGP setup that non-technical people use.
P.s.
I also found https://arxiv.org/pdf/1510.08555.pdf, an interesting paper which is a followup of another paper 10 years older about usability of PGP tools.
I also prefer gpg but it is not super beginner friendly. I generally recommend people away from proton and tuta unless they really want encrypted email and gpg isn't something they can figure out
GPG isn't beginner friendly if you're only using the CLI. However, even then there are tons of documentations and even Gemini/ChatGPT would prob be good at helping users create/manage their keys. However, I can provide a list of user-friendly GUI apps to create/manage/encrypt/etc. using GPG if you'd like that make it as easy. I mean, you can pay a company that says they'll protect your privacy but history has shown paying for privacy is unreliable.
@timewarp@Quill7513 The only real alternative IMHO is hosting your own mail server and *that* is no alternative at all, because big-tech will blacklist your server immediately… so Proton/Tuta are the lesser of all evils. If you have a true alternative I am listening.
You can use PGP with just about any email service. I personally just use SimpleLogin, where you can add your public key to have all your messages encrypted. But Thunderbird, KMail, Evolution, FairMail, etc all support email encryption too with IMAP.
@timewarp ok, PGP … remember EFAIL… and all kinds of usability issues which inevitably lead to security issues by ‘wrong use’ at some point. And another *centralized* ‘web of trust’ (benign as it may be) is also not something I look forward to. O well, some genius will emerge at some point and deliver us 🥳 may he/she/it/them be FOSS-minded
It's quite possible that privacy is too hard for you and trash talking open source makes you feel better about the money you're paying to someone else to say they'll do a better job for you.
@timewarp don’t know what you’re talking about, I love FOSS…
Okay, well it's just the vulnerabilities you mentioned were geared towards email client issues that among other things would automatically load HTML data upon decryption. Furthermore, primary vulnerable targets were 10 year old email clients at the time that hadn't received any security updates. The SE data packet issue had been documented even in the spec since at least 2007 about its security issues and recommended rapid mitigation techniques. All in all, the EFAIL documented issues with mail client failures, not with OpenPGP itself.
Second, OpenPGP web-of-trust, or whatever you want to call it (public keyservers) is entirely optional. In fact, Proton relies heavily on this in from what I can tell actually enforces it in a more insecure way, but opting users into their internal keyserver automatically.
Proton seems on the wrong side of the usability - privacy spectrum. Every last feature I'd want from an online provider is impossible or massively neutered by the overly strict security.
I wish there was a similar service in a trustworthy country with a more sane level of safety, like opt-in encryption for example.
mailbox.org has pretty good pgp key integration and will encrypted all emails that come in with a public key of your choosing.
Not only is this article three years old, it is also lacking in terms of sources. Additionally, the language and phrasing is quite inappropriate for the purpose of spreading the information. Lots of text is just mean and offensive without any actual purpose.
It also seems to be largely based on speculation rather than actual solid evidence.
I'm not against investigating the legitimacy of established and trusted privacy-first providers. However, this seems a bit lackluster.
Also: Email is inherently insecure, we all know that. Proton services are open source, independently audited and verifiably E2EE, except for Mail, which uses PGP for the emails themselves and E2EE to store them.
for what claim do you want a source that isn't provided?
All of the hyperbole and speculation? The SSL stuff with TOR for example. That's not proof, that's a hint at best
they say plainly what they don't know. what they don't know, you don't know. and if you don't know, you are trusting on faith, not evidence.
Aaaand it's electron garbage.
Out of the loop, what's wrong with electron?
It's basically Chrome. It's not a real application, it's a website pretending to be one. It uses a metric fuckton of RAM and eats your battery faster than Prince Andrew a minor.
If Firefox could allow their engine to be packaged like this I'd use it. The problem I see here is chromium. Everything is a trade off and we need more ways to build maintainable cross platform applications.
Slack, for example, is Electron and it runs great. One of the best apps I've used. And it works better than the browser version...
The hate on Lemmy of electron is a bit of an overreaction if you ask me. Yeah it uses more ram than is necessary but again everything is a trade off. Not everything can be a hard to maintain rust app. Let's try to embrace cross platform solutions, though yes fuck chrome/google, so sure criticize that part of it.
There is Tauri which packages it with WebKit and uses Rust as backend.
I think tauri uses the OS web view, so it depends
I just checked, and it seems that it indeed only uses WebKitGTK on Linux
[JavaFX has entered the chat.]
I don't know what javafx is, but java is hell. For me. I'm glad it works for others
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaFX
The issue is mainly developers using Electron when things like React Native and Flutter exist. I don't know a lot about Flutter, but React Native uses native UI widgets and feels a lot nicer than Electron.
Rust is infinitely easier to maintain than mountains of untyped js garbage libraries built upon left pad
🙄
Let me get this right... you're complaining about Chromium, but you use Slack? You do realize Chromium had better Linux support for things like HW-accelerated decoding than Firefox? Also, the Chromium sandbox is superior to Firefox.
I realize Firefox business practices aren't total garbage for humanity and that they are constantly working to improve it on like .1% budget of Google. And that they are the only real competition which keeps us in a situation where we actually have a choice in browsers. So yeah let's only care about the technical aspects, or something
That isn't true. You've got WebKit-based browsers, LadyBird/LibWeb/LibJs, Goanna, and others. Why choose Mozilla to lead the efforts, when another open source community/foundation may be better? You can also participate in the various new web specifications yourself too if you're not happy with the direction they're headed.
They said competition, not alternatives. As things are right now, and knowing people, not just trying to make a technical point, Firefox is the only competition.
What do you think alternatives are exactly? Firefox has what, 3‒5% usage across all platforms? What did Mozilla do to fix that other than exploring Pocket, a iOS only Password app, and now reselling a crippled VPN & email/phone relay? At some point, people will have to move on from anything Mozilla-owned. Want a better browser, then find a community you can donate to that is focusing on building a better browser. It's time to take off the rose-colored glasses.
Source? Experienced the exact opposite, especially on Wayland.
You can track the bug history here:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1751363
You can see here Chromium had support for this for several years prior:
https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/log/PKGBUILD?h=chromium-vaapi
Android being based on Linux prob has something to do with Chromium's strong Linux support, but Mozilla has consistently prioritized Windows/Mac. Despite it still be challenging, building Chromium from source has always been a lot easier IMO than trying to create a custom build of Firefox.
Regardless, when it comes to privacy, Chromium itself is pretty stripped down and has policy-based integrations that put it on par with Firefox in terms of security. Even with Firefox, you'd have to modify quite a few policies to improve security. Tor/Mullvad Browser though do a better job in many ways and there is no equal to those privacy enhancements on Chromium that I know of, unless you're using something like GrapheneOS.
Point being, people like to complain about Chromium a lot & act like Apple fan bois for Firefox, when in reality privacy is nearly the same with both with some minor configurations.
What the heck are you talking about? Chromium is one of the hardest packages to build and it takes forever. Firefox has FAR fewer dependencies. Chromium's privacy enhancements are a joke.
You should go tell that to the maintainers of GrapheneOS, which is known as the most secure mobile OS... which uses a custom Chromium build, because of Chromium's superior sandboxing.
Chromium is not stripped down at all, just use googerteller and see. It contacts Google everywhere, on the password list, on the account list, in some settings pages, and just randomly sometimes.
It is very crazy. And also it is not fingerprint resistant at all.
I am using all flag settings, policies and GUI settings possibly existing and it still is like that. So no, it is not the same privacy-wise.
Oh really, what policies are you using? Cause my Firefox does all the same things you mention regarding calling Mozilla services for all sorts of things, including telemetry. Oh, and it isn't fingerprint resistant either... so please, share what you're doing.
For Firefox I am either using Librewolf or Arkenfox user.js
But as Librewolf has a good CI/CD system I think I will switch to that. Problem is they are not active at all, while the arkenfox guy is very active.
For Chromium I use the secureblue policies in /usr/etc/chromium/policies/managed
I bought 32gb of RAM cause I was tired and gave up to eléctron apps
I bought 64 gigs of ram and still refuse to use it.
But does it sweat though ;-)
Each electron App is actually a full independent chromium browser install running a website. It's easy to code for and works cross platform as a result, but it's essentially just a website, although they can run offline depending on what's been built in to the local app.
Each electron app running on your system is a separate full chromium app running, with no sharing of resources between each instance. So they take up a lot of space each and duplicate all the resource usage, and potentially the security flaws.
oh yikes. that sucks.
It's just the webapp. If we want the webapp we use a browser.
Slack desktop app is built with electron and works much better than the web app in my experience. So no it's not actually always that simple.
It could be that simple. They just hinder their own website to get you to download the app.
You really believe that? It would be easier for them to maintain only the website, so this really doesn't make sense to me.
Both are Chromium apps.
First running on Chromium, second running on modified Chromium.
Dev here.
Yeah that's how it works.
I'm a web developer. I think there's a misunderstanding here. The person I responded to said that slack purposely made the web version worse than the desktop app, which I'm doubting.
Yes, how are you doubting that? Is your company not big enough to want to pull users to a specific platform so you have to cripple the others?
Because I have used both versions of slack and they're almost exactly the same. The desktop version only works better imo because of small factors such as having its own window so it does not get buried in tabs, and the notification options are (or at least were) more robust. Have you not used the two versions?
I don't really understand your comments. Are you implying that there would be an advantage for slack to "cripple" the web version, when they are essentially running probably 99% of the same code in the electron version? They're never going to get rid of the web version, and if you've used slack for ~9 years like I have, you can easily observe they're actually one of the few app makers out there to make mostly positive changes to their app. They aren't suddenly going to make the web app shitty.
Also, obviously yeah when it makes sense to, app makers in general make the web app version shitty on purpose. Reddit mobile for example. But just because that's a thing in the world doesn't mean it is what slack is doing..not sure why you seem to be implying it's a universal practice.
You just admitted the desktop version works better and that there is a 1% code difference
And?
Slack is one of those apps which lags in a week on any hardware, it might be better than web version but it still sucks ass compared to fucking ICQ clients. Source: using it in the company I work for, for about 7 years already.
I don't often have trouble with slack being slow, or buggy. Been using it like 9 years myself. Interesting you're comparing slack to icq. Are you referring to a current version of icq, or the one that existed in the early 2000s?
I am not sure I understand comparing an app designed to do video/audio chat seamlessly, threaded conversations, channels, filesharing, plus has dozens of subtle nice features that make for a rich experience and a... Chat app, that worked fine for sending plaintext messages but didn't really do anything else.
I compare it to qip or similar with voice calling support about 10 years ago. But still, Slack loses to pretty much anything on the market regarding performance, be that Element, Telegram, Skype or even Discord. It literally battles with biggest IDEs lol
Not my experience. Not sure what qip is either
Now that Chromium has persistent File System Access permission support, what benefit does Electron have over a PWA other than "Native-looking" menu bars?
Yeah, I was dissapointed, but at least it is a controlled browser and not reliant on your normal browser which could change or have malicious extensions
This. Its webapp with more persistent storage maybe. If the Browsers could integrate this, it would be a gamechanger.
I am also very sure that Chrome preloads google. com to make it seem to "load faster". Its all just preloading or persistent storage
It's what you deploy to your users if you want to work around ad blockers and browser extensions. It's a great tool to get operating system level access to exfiltrate information about your users and identify them uniquely, even if they would prefer that not to happen.
All that with the help of Google's telemetry engine aka Chrome, which further helps Alphabet to manifest their interpretation of web standards in the world.
We worked to move things onto the web. Now people bring the web back to your desktop with every application bringing it's own browser shell. We have come full circle and we're now using 10x the resources.
Electron is the prime example of everything that is wrong in IT.
Wow. That sounds horrible. Do you have a source about the system level access statement? I would like to see people's thoughts on it, if it's as bad as it sounds, I'm surprised I haven't heard about it before
What source do you need? It's almost literally the mission statement of Electron.
I've never gone to the webpage of electron
Electron apps are native apps with the Chromium browser embedded in their windows, so they can do anything a native app can. It supports Node.js modules for things like filesystem access, and can interop with C++ code by writing an add on (https://nodejs.org/api/addons.html)
Ah ok gotcha. Thanks.
Everything
Electron runs a core Chromium Browser + NodeJS + a bit more.
Unlike Chromium itself it is not backwards compatible and removes a ton of things like its sandboxing capabilities.
I am not sure how it is less secure, but it may use more RAM (also not always but generally yes of course), doesnt allow hardening (unlike android WebView apps) and breaks LD_PRELOAD-ing another memory allocator.
This is only a big problem in special cases, in general it makes apps strictly dependend on GNU glibc and others, no idea how it works on Alpine or others (that actually try to make a secure system).
If somebody knows more about security concerns about Electron, please add.
Ugh, I was looking forward to replacing Thunderbird/Bridge, but never mind.
No way.
I am actually sort of worried that now that they put this out they will retire bridge. We will have to wait and see. Is having a browser tab open really that bad... ?? I suppose but I still like programs over web pages.
I went here for this info. Thanks.
Yeah, Proton is awesome, that's for sure. Now, being a "security and privacy" company, it blows my mind that they put so much effort on making apps for Windows and Mac first, leaving Linux behind, and when they finally get to it, they just dump in a glorified PWA. This world is really weird 🤣🤣
And that they decided to go with RPM and DEB instead of just doing a Flatpak
Are you kidding me? Doesn't bother me that much, as I use Thunderbird with Protonmail bridge. I'm still waiting on Proton Drive for linux. Well, I'm gonna end up self hosting at this point. :(
Tbh it should have simply been a flatpak
I prefer rpm over flatpak. at least I know any os dependency updates are happening regularly, flatpak may not get weekly dependency updates from proton
Its kinda annoying for anyone not on debian or fedora (and derivatives) though.
I'm on OpenSuse which will take a Fedora RPM, and most will take deb, if they don't you can uae the alien tool to convert it for your OS...extra steps which sucks
OpenSUSE does not have Fedoras ABI or package names. The RPMs aren’t compatible.
This one might work as its just Electron.
I installed it and it works. i have also installed other Fedora RPMs. RPM can contain repo links to dependecies needed. or just contain all the libraries needed. OpenSUSE will install it and just treat them as Orphaned Packages (in the later case)
"Extra steps for thee, not for me!"
Because most people use Windows and Mac, including their clients. It's not the world that is weird, it's people who don't understand such basic things. You don't focus on 5% of your users.
Capitalism is weird? Ok, but this is what we have.
I had no idea the whole world was capitalist, but I guess I don't know everything. And there's the fact that I mentioned the world, not a form of political economy. But yeah, capitalism is weird.
It's a native app on Windows and Mac?
I don't use either OS, but the apps are .DMG (Mac) and .exe (Windows), so I believe they are, yes.
PWAs can be packed in .dmg and .exe.
I had no idea. That's good information to have. And my wife doesn't get why I spend so much time in Lemmy. I learn more here than with all the online courses I take regularly put together. I love this community.
“Finally” really is the key word, waiting for Proton to add features or apps is painful at times.
Glad they’ve finally made progress with this.
Waiting for Proton to acknowledge and fix critical bugs that can cause data loss was way more painful.. took them years with the solution being "just wait for the bridge rewrite it will be (most likely) fixed there".
Its just a webview app..
Yep. Installed it, started it, saw it is basically the website in an embedded browser, uninstalled it.
Like, come on, you have a web version. Why should I use an extra application to view a website. This seems like a cheap excuse for a desktop app.
Does it support offline access?
It does not. Which is the reason I wanted the app...
How to completely fail on a mail client. Holy hell.
Are you sure?
This was in the linked article:
Caching is not the same as actual offline functionality.
What the hell constitutes “actual offline use” for an email client
downloading emails and storing them locally for offline reading, categorizing, searching and drafting. "Caching" usually just means if you opened the app with connection, it won't go bonkers and will probably let you finish your immediate task + some basic functionality if you lose it. Can't close the app though.
I turned my WiFi off and opened the app it was just a white screen. I suppose its beta still. But my dream is to keep a local copy of all my mail just got a cache.
The only benefit i can see of web app is it is in a controlled browser environment...could be helpful with security?
To save myself the hassle of having to rebuild the electron app every once in a while? I'd rather not open my browser, go to their website and log in with 2fa every time I want to read an email.
The main benefit is since it is locally installed, it is harder for proton's server to access your encrypted data by serving you malicious JS. A malicious desktop app/update could be served too, but that may be trickier.
Speaking of mail apps, has anyone used Thunderbird recently? I had used it for a year or two up until . . . a year or two ago (probably two or three, actually) and then switched to kmail to satisfy my masochism. Thunderbird just hadn't been doing it for me with meh functionality and slightly more meh looks.
Fast forward to yesterday when I'm updating my steamdeck desktop to use nix stuff instead of rwfus+pacman and I couldn't get kmail from nix to behave right so I thought I'd give thunderbird another look. I'm several hours into tinkering with it and holy hell has it changed pretty much completely from a few years ago. Looks fantastic and works pretty much exactly how I want/expect it to. Good job mozilla!
Thunderbird is fine.
Tbh I have no idea what they are doing though, they have more funding than GNOME but after Supernova I didnt see any updates.
See my list of flatpak repositories
There is an unofficial Thunderbird nightly Flatpak, that will likely reveal what the hell they are doing.
So Supernova is kinda nice, mainly a big overhaul of the underlying stuff, making it easier to maintain.
It lacks a ton of things like Threads (the addon TB Conversation works though). Also their "spaces" bar is useless, as it just opens tabs, so it is redundant. Good idea, but only if it could replace tabs.
Their search and filter stuff is still the same, really bad. Either displaced in the message list column, as the global search still opens a new tab which is kinda bad UI.
Some addons broke too, not a big deal though.
I have the feeling they removed nested filters, which is extremely bad, but filters still work.
Thunderbird works well.
I believe I read somewhere they're focusing heavily on the mobile app at the moment (or rather turning K-9 into their mobile app). Once they get that out, we'll see where the desktop goes.
That too but afaik thats a separate Android dev
I've never found Thunderbird search bad compared to alternatives, as long as I'm not looking to find content inside attachments. Really fast and responsive and being a desktop client without paginated results makes moving and deleting in bulk so much easier. Would love it to be as powerful as Voidtools Everything to get a bit more granular sometimes but otherwise pretty happy with it.
I mean, I think their global search is not that useful, while their inline mail list search is. So I have a cluttered UI with 2 search bars, to supplement the incomplete inline search.
Yes Thunderbird is getting really nice nowadays.
Just started using Thunderbird again a couple of months ago. Like it! I never really stopped liking it, just stopped using it because all the webmail interfaces and "appification".
Was just trying to get K-9 Mail working on my phone again (after years of using umpteen different apps) and it's not as smooth as I remember.
I think they're talking Kmail from the KDE app suite. I thought they meant K-9 mail.
Btw If I remember correctly K-9 mail is or is becoming Thunderbird.
It's taking them quite a while, but that usually means that the end result will be worth it.
If K-9 isn't working well for you, try FairEmail. It's one of my favourite email clients.
K-9 has gotten a LOT better over the past few months though.
Yeah I installed it recently on my widows and it is super sleek.
Mozilla don't work on Thunderbird any more. It's an independent project now. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-faq#w_who-makes-thunderbird
Yeah I've started using it again the past year. I use Proton Bridge with Thunderbird, and it works well. Much prefer it to webmail interfaces.
If you like Thunderbird, I recommend checking out Betterbird fork as well that adds more features.
It's not developed by mozilla anymore. they stopped updating it a couple years ago.
That’s not true, the latest release was two weeks ago.
Not from mozilla, they spun it off a couple years ago
"Thunderbird is completely independent of the Mozilla Corporation, the makers of Firefox."
Edit: from 2012 apparently. time flies https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/02/the-future-of-thunderbird-why-were-rebuilding-from-the-ground-up/
It’s still under the Mozilla foundation though, which is what people who are talking about Mozilla usually mean (they’re the ones collecting donations and the parent organization).
Proton Drive though 😭. The Windows app is so nice, wish we could get that for Linux.
I've set up an Rclone for the time being, not great but it works well enough for basic bisynchronisation.
Oh... I thought they meant Drive is finally out. That sucks. :(
Ugh, they took too darn long. I'm probably going to switch to Nextcloud.
You should do it. Easy to setup using either their official AIO image or the community-driven micro service one. I am using the latter and it's been amazing. It's completely replaced Google Drive, Calendar, and Contacts for me and with the DAVx5 Android App it feels like a drop-in replacement. I am also using the auto upload feature to back up my photos to it.
Working on that right now. Wish me luck. :)
I would too, but after like a week I get bored of maintaining it myself when all the expenses summed together aren't much cheaper than Proton or likewise. This is what I was doing before submitting my independence to Proton.
Furthermore Nextcloud is just too damn sluggish. The web interface makes it seem like my server's idea of a CPU is a kid with a calculator and WebDAV isn't designed for cloud storage. I'll take new features being slow over my whole experience being even slower any day of the week.
I feel that. However, Proton's a non-starter for me as I'm using Linux, so no Proton drive client. Really scratching my head since Linux attracts the security conscious.
Celeste works fine on Linux, or you can use rclone directly.
That's what I've done, using
rclone bisyncand my crontab. Like I said it works well enough, but far from perfect. Using a beta backend with an experimental operation, according to the rclone website, puts me slightly on-edge.I did try Celeste, but stopped using it for two reasons:
"After years of pushing their proprietary and closed solutions to privacy minded people Proton decided that it was in their best interest to further bury said users into their service as a form of vendor lock-in. To achieve this they made more non-standard desktop clients for their groupware features (contacts and calendars) and the bridge will be discontinued soon."
Only if there wasn't CardDAV, CalDAV, IMAP, SMTP and dozens of other highly standardized protocols to handle e-mailing and groupware.
Is the bridge actually being discontinued? People have been saying that a lot recently but I've not seen any evidence for it, and not in the linked article.
I'm annoyed that they don't support SMTP, but realistically they actually can't unless they have the ability to read your email, which they don't.
No, but what from their moves it is very clear it won't live long.
Technically they do use SMTP... and it's possible for a provider and provide submission and generic SMTP do clients without having to read the email content.
There are lots of ways to do e2e encryption on e-mail (no server access to the contents) over SMTP (OpenPGP, S/MIME etc.). There are also header minimization options to prevent metadata leakage. And Proton decided NOT to use any of those proven solutions (in a standard and open way at least) and go for some obscure implementation instead because it fits their business better and makes development faster.
Because with proven concepts the swiss intelligence services would be locked out. And now people have to trust their claims of "swiss privacy laws" (who are shit - the worst in Central Europe. Switzerland had multiple scandals, from a system that had intelligence files on a large percentage of their "unreliable" citizens as part of the "Fichenskandal" to them recently admitting that most internet traffic within and all traffic leaving and entering Switzerland is monitored by the swiss intelligence services - without so much as a judges permit). Yeah, I know, they are audited....But since Snowden we all know how much that is worth.
The minute they discontinue Proton Bridge is the minute I cancel my subscription with them and change mail providers. No one is prying my beloved Thunderbird from me
"Anyone can download the app, but free users will be given a 14-day trial to test drive it.'
So it's only for premium users ?
Hey it takes effort to make a WebView for mail.proton.com
They need to see how to package the dedicated browser for all the different distros and operating systems, make a nice icon and so ok. It takes hours
They should sell this masterpiece for much more
Baby steps that take Proton from a great service to a toy for the masses in the effort to increase revenue. AI features are next
Sooo... What exactly changed about the service?
Yup
I never really understood the need for such apps when mail clients such as Thunderbird exist.
Proton forces you to pay for a bridge to use Thunderbird.
Tutanota doesn't even provide that.
These "privacy respecting" email services don't respect the user enough to let them use third party email clients easily if the user chooses to.
They cannot decrypt your data while sitting, so IMAP cannot work.
Go ahead and explain what you mean. I don't believe you & think you're just parroting their corpo speak.
It's actually fairly simple: if the server never has access to the keys or the plaintext of messages (or calendar events, etc.), then you need a client tool to handle decryption and encryption operations.
They use PGP, and they have implemented this feature in a way that it's completely transparent to the user to make it mainstream. So they chose building dedicated tools (bridge, web client), rather than letting users use their own tools, because the PGP tooling sucks hard and it's extremely inaccessible for the general population.
This means that you need a fat client, whatever you do, or otherwise the server will have access to the data and there is no e2ee. Instead of using enigmail or other PGP plugins/tools, they built the bridge.
Proton stores your keys, and you have the decryption password. How do you think they handle password-based logins? Only the user should ever generate and store the private key. All they need now is your decryption password & they can read your messages. This is reason #1 not to trust Proton.
It isn't transparent, because most users aren't running their own frontend locally and tracking all the source code changes. They've already violated the first rule of PGP privacy by having your private key. Now you're merely trusting them to not send you a custom JS payload to have your decryption password sent to the server. How many users are actually utilizing their hidden API to ensure that decryption/encryption is only done client-side? If they have your private key, how many users do you think are using long enough passwords to make cracking their password more challenging? This is reason #2 to not trust Proton.
This is just entirely inaccurate and you've failed to provide any "proof' for your generalizations here.
If you actually understood PGP you'd know you can generate and use local-only keys with IMAPS and have support to use any IMAP client. Furthermore, the other apps by Proton like Proton Pass, Calendar, etc... all use undocumented APIs that they have yet to implement in their bridge using standard protocols like CalDav/CardDav/JSON or whatever else in order to be able to integrate with local tools. There is no security benefit in their implementation other than to lock you into a walled garden and give you a false sense of security.
Proton stores an encrypted blob.
"All they need now is your private key". It's literally a secret, they use
bcryptand then encrypt it. Also, "they" are not generally in the threat model. "They" can serve you JS that simply exfiltrates your email, because the emails are displayed in their web-app, they have no need to steal your password to decrypt your key and read your email...Probably we misunderstand what "transparent" means in this context. What I mean is that the average user will not do any PGP operation, in general. Encryption happens transparently for them, which is the whole thing about Proton: make encryption easy and default.
Again, as I said before, they control the JS, they can get the decrypted data without getting the password...? You always trust your client tooling. There is always a point where I trust someone, be it the "enigmail" maintainers, Thunderbird maintainers (it has access to messages post-decryption!), the CLI tool of choice etc.
I mean, their clients are open-source and have also been audited?
I don't know. But here we are talking about a different risk: someone compromising Proton, getting your encrypted private key, and starting bruteforcing
bcrypt-hashed-and-salted passwords. I find that risk acceptable.See other post.
Care to share any practical example/link, and how exactly this means not having a fat client that does the encryption/decryption for you?
Right, because *DAV protocol are so secure. They all support e2ee, right...? There is a security benefit, and the benefit is trusting the client software more than a server, especially if shared. You can export data and migrate when you want easily, so it's really a matter of preference.
You are awesome!
It doesn't matter that your private key is stored on their servers encrypted/hased or whatever. If you were simply storing it there, that would not be an issue. The problem is that you're also logging in and relying on whatever JS is sent to you to only happen client-side.
Most users aren't sending emails from their Proton to other Proton users either. Furthermore, the users that want encryption seek it out. They don't need to use Proton for encryption, especially when it would be easy for them to get an unknowing users decryption password.
Yes, you have to trust source code somewhere, but with Thunderbird or other mail clients that is open source and their apps are signed or you can reproducibily build from source. However, once that is built it doesn't change. With Proton, everytime you visit their site you don't know for sure that it hasn't changed unless you're monitoring the traffic. A government is much more likely to convince Proton to send a single user a custom JS payload, than to modify the source code of Thunderbird in a way that would create an exploit that bypasses firewalls, system sandboxing, etc.
You mean their PWA/WebView clients that can still send custom JS at anytime, or their bridge?
First, explain what you mean by a fat client? GnuPG is not a fat client.
Being able to export things is a lot different than being able to use Thunderbird for Calendars, or a different Contacts app on your phone. DAV is as secure as the server you run it on and the certificate you use for transport.
I feel like I covered this point? They make the client tool you are using, there is 0 need for them to steal your password to decrypt your key. Of course you are trusting them, you are seeing your unencrypted email in their webpage, where they can run arbitrary code. They do have their clients opensourced, but this doesn't mean much. You are always exposed to a supply-chain risk for your client software.
So...? The point is, if they do, encryption happen without them having to do anything, hence transparently. That was the point of my argument: my mom can make a proton account and send me an email and benefit from PGP without even knowing what PGP is.
And that's the whole point of the conversation: these users are techies and a super tiny minority. This way, they made a product that allow mainstream users to have encryption.
And this control is worth zilch if they get compromised. This is a control against a MiTM who intercepts your download, it's not a control if "the maker of Thunderbird" decides to screw you over in the same way that Proton would do by serving malicious JS code. If the threat actor you are considering is a malicious software supplier, you have exactly the same issue. There can be pressures from government agencies, the vendor might decide to go bananas or might get compromised.
Yes, this is true and it's the real only difference. I consider it a corner case and something that only affects the time needed to compromise your emails, not the feasibility, but it's true. I am counting on the other hand on a company who has business interests in not letting that happen and a security team to support that work.
Maybe...? If government actors are in your threat model, you shouldn't use email in the first place. Metadata are unencrypted and cannot be encrypted, and there are better tools. That said, government agencies have the resources to target the supply chain for individuals and simply "encourage" software distributors to distribute patched versions of the software. This is also a much better strategy because it's likely they can just get access to the whole endpoint and maintain easy persistence (while with JS you are in the browser sandbox and potentially system sandbox), potentially allowing to compromise even other tools (say, Signal). So yeah, the likelihood might be higher with JS-based software, but the impact is smaller. Everyone has their own risk appetite and can decide what they are comfortable with, but again, if you are considering the NSA (or equivalent) as your adversaries, don't use emails.
Yes.
What I mean is this: a client that implements quite some functionality besides what the server would require to work. In this case, the client handles key management, encryption, decryption, signature verification etc. all functionalities that the server doesn't even know they exist. This is normal, because the encryption is done on top of regular email protocols, so they require a lot of logic in the client side.
For sure it's different, I didn't say it's the same thing. I am saying that you can migrate away easily if your needs change and you'd rather have interoperability.
Exactly. Which is why in the very comment you quoted I said:
Are you trusting your Nextcloud instance (yours of hosted by someone else) not getting pwned/the server being seized/accessed physically/etc. more than you trust Proton not to get pwnd? Then *Dav tools might be for you.
All good points. It seems like we mostly agree on the same concepts. I don't disagree that people using Proton may have better privacy overall than other services, but I do disagree on the way they implemented it and find their design decisions and approach to be questionable. It screams that they are profit-hungry and admire Apple's walled garden.
some people want to be swindled.
Proton mail has some extra (security?) feature, or they just lack smtp support, and you cannot directly use it on thunderbird. They offer a "bridge" app which allows you to do it, I just use that.
You have to be a paying customer to use that app IIRC.
And a paying customer to use the desktop app too. Well, besides a 14 day free trial.
Proton's whole thing is it's meant to be secure, private, encrypted, etc. To achieve that, it requires the Proton app or website as an endpoint, so your email never leaves Proton's environment. As long as your reading your email in the Proton app/site, they can guarantee its privacy and security.
Once it sends your emails to Thunderbird or another client, it's leaving the Proton environment, and they can no longer control it. You're sacrificing the inherent privacy/security of Proton when you use Thunderbird (they claim).
All of that being said, it's an absolutely bullshit excuse. Tutanota does this same shit, only they don't even provide the bridge like Proton does.
It's true it's technically more secure for those emails to stay in the Proton environment, but they're still your god damn emails, and they should operate like every other email service by giving the user the option to export those emails in whatever way they damn well please, for free.
It's just more platform lock-in garbage. Your emails are trapped on their server, so they'll be no moving away to a different provider easily.
It’s more that they claim they cannot decrypt your data, so how do they send it to Thunderbird? The bridge does the decryption. Theoretically Thunderbird could add support for it.
Corps have used that BS excuse for ages. The whole "your phone is more secure when we control it" is a garbage BS line. Make it open source, give developers the tools & they'll make any app more secure than some bureaucracy that is constantly influenced by the national security agencies.
https://github.com/ProtonMail
glhf
None of those actually document their API nor provide source for the backend server code. Other than building hydroxide from PRs for CalDav, are there even any other open source implementations of CardDav/CalDav for Proton? I can't find a single implementation of Proton Pass that allows you to sync your passwords locally and be used in a different app. There is no shortage of people complaining about this:
https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/932842-proton-calendar/suggestions/8985673-cardav-caldav-support https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/01/goodbye-protonmail/ https://minutestomidnight.co.uk/blog/email-migration-from-proton-to-mailbox/
Why would anyone be interested in efforts on a platform with a closed-source backend and that is not developer focused? Not to mention, entirely unnecessary why you should have to use a bridge gateway in the first place with IMAPS & PGP/GPG, CalDav & CardDav. Like I said, Proton is engaged in some questionable practices.
Because most people don't care about those particular things. Almost all the world uses completely proprietary tools (Gmail) that also violate your privacy.
It's not unnecessary, it's the result of a technical choice. A winning technical choice actually. PGP has a negligible user-base, while Proton has already 100 million accounts. I would be surprised if there were 10 million people actually using PGP. They sacrificed the flexibility and composability of tools (which results almost always in complexity) and made an opinionated solution that works well enough for the mainstream population, who has no interest in picking their tools and simply expects a Gmail-like experience.
And if you really have stringent requirements, they anyway provided the bridge, so that you can have that flexibility if it's really important for you.
If you use GnuPG or one of the GUI implementations it does.
You do realize e2ee merely means that two users share public keys when they communicate in order to decrypt the messages they receive, right?
You're talking about people paying for cloud services that manage everything for them. Nothing to stop you from hosting your own on an encrypted drive. EteSync does E2E already, and there is already a plethora of apps supporting PGP on Android and Desktop to encrypt/decrypt messages.
No, because it's the server that terminates the TLS connection, not the recipient's client. TLS is purely a security control to protect the transport between you and the server you are talking to. It doesn't have anything to do with e2ee. It's still important, of course, but not for e2ee.
And how does TLS between you and your mail server help with this? Does it give you any guarantee that the public key was not tampered when it reached your server? Or instead you use the fingerprint, generally transmitted through another medium to verify that?
An encrypted drive is useful only when the server is off against physical attacks. While the server is powered on (which is when it gets breached - not considering physical attacks) the data is still in clear.
And...it requires a specialized client anyway. In fact, they built a DAV bridge (https://github.com/etesync/etesync-dav). Now tell me, if you use this on -say- your phone, can you use other DAV tools without using such bridge? No, because it does something very similar to what Proton does. If proton bridge will get calendar/contacts functionality too (if, because I have no idea how popular of a FR it is), you are in the exact same situation.
The ProtonBridge used to be garbage so people have wanted a dedicated app for awhile now. Over the past year or two, the Bridge finally works fairly reliably so ...a little too late.
So the bridge now syncs your calendars, contacts, files & passwords? 😛 Their bridge still sucks like it always has.
Idk, got thunderbird set up and feeling pretty happy with it.
The proton desktop app was pretty slow when i checked it. I might give thunderbird a go.
Have to use a student account, gmail and my main protonmail account. Tying everything up in one window is just nice.
(Webmail provider releases a bespoke desktop app)
(me, old fart, bumbles out from behind the cables and servers and muck)
You fools! Have any of you whippersnappers ever heard of IMAP? No? Thought so.
[I'm not that familiar with ProtonMail. Chances are they already support IMAP. In which case: ... ....why? Why this? Why in this day and age?]
It's worse than you thought.
The webmail provider released a dedicated browser that can only open the webmail and called it a "desktop" app.
Additionally, they don't support IMAP. There's an app to run on your computer that becomes a bridge. The proprietary protocol is translated to IMAP. You can't use your favorite client if your operating system can't run that bridge and you're not a premium user because for "reasons" only premium users can run that local bridge
They don't support IMAP because they want emails to remain end-to-end encrypted, and IMAP doesn't have any way of doing that. The gateway decrypts the emails locally, then serves them as plain text.
We need something better than IMAP, that's designed for modern use cases. Something that's not stateful... Maybe a web service or something like that. JMAP seems promising but barely any providers have implemented it.
Still, if an user prefers the convenience of using any client instead of e2e, could enable it in a setting. Maybe the user subscribed because they liked the interface and the overall features of the plan, and not because of the encrypted email solution and just wants to add the account on the mobile client instead of a dedicated app
Being closed like this IMHO is just to increase user retention
If thex subscribed because of the interface (ehich is certainly plausible), what would they need IMAP support for? Also, if you really want IMAP, xou can have it, you just need their (open source) Proton Bridge for it (thats a sofrware) so that ut retains all features. But then I would need my own email client.
On mobile you're forced to use their "open source" app that is only available on the closed source app stores and not on fdroid because it uses Google push services
Not true, it's been available on Fdroid for quite some time now. And it doesn't need play services for the notifications to work either.
It's available on an unofficial repository that can be optionally added to fdroid, it's not available on fdroid
Even so, your statement that it is only available on closed-source app stores is wrong. And it doesn't even matter that it's not provided by "My First F-Droid Repo Demo" (yes, that'd the name of the official repo). Many open source apps are on IzzyOnDroid, including Jerboa, what do you use to write on Lemmy?
Either way, your original comment is completely wrong and it doesnt help that it's "only" available in the most popular extra repo.
E2E is their flagship feature and pretty much only selling point. I'm really not surprised they don't allow to just disable it.
On a lighter note, the protocol might be proprietary but the bridge still seems to be fully open source : https://github.com/ProtonMail/proton-bridge
I don't think think Proton shows bad will on this one. The only alternative I can think of (as a non expert) would be IMAP + GPG encrypted emails but very few desktop clients support GPG, which would make them less accessible 🤷♂️ Having their own protocol also probably makes it much much easier for them to iterate on it, opening up usually makes think much robust but also slower.
The bridge Is "open" but somehow it works only for premium users.
Is this where the source code is supposed to be ? https://github.com/ProtonMail/inbox-desktop
Looks like it, it's available as a zip in the releases along with the compiled app, but isn't yet uploaded fully on GitHub.
I sure hope they make a Flatpak like they did for VPN (although it's not working properly at all rn). I don't get why they are still troubling themselves to support two other formats already during beta, when this is probably just an Electron app.
The cli is working fine. They changed a few things for free subscribers but idk if it affects the cli.
no AppImage, no Flatpak, no PPA, and no COPR
AUR FTW!
If that's the case, then I might have to use distrobox for once.
Protonmail still does not have an official app in F-Droid. Just because of this reason I ended my paid subscription and moved to Tutanota.
Not going away from Proton myself, but yes this is damned infuriating. Although I'd deal with a reliable Android app. The Beta Android looks good, but why Proton has struggled so much with Android is beyond my current digging.
Tutanota doesn't have a good way to export emails in bulk. Their feature set is getting richer, but once invested, the exit cost is quite high, speaking from experience.
On a related note? When my friend on proton send me (regular imap, openpgp) and several others (gmail, outlook) an email with all of us as recipients, it seems that proton cheats? I get to decrypt the message, where's the others just read plain ø, unincrypted text.
At first i thought this smart. But now i kind of realize how much of a nightmare this seems to be.
On the other hand, i am not really sure how they do it? Is it to different mails, with fake headers? Or is it more like: if no encryption is available, show thisb (dentical) text instead?
So, what is general concesus about Proton, is it safe or not? I dont use it because you need to pay for Bridge to use it in Thunderbird. Maybe I would use if it has a dedicated app.
It depends on what you want. If you want a solution that makes sure your provider won't be able to read your data? It is sure safe for that.
Generally I would distrust any company claiming that our swiss privacy laws are worth a dime - in fact they are shit and among the worst in Europe. Swiss intelligence laws actually force companies to cooperate in a much broader sense than even the national security laws in the US do. And of course there is no judge involved and they can basically share the collected data with whoever they want.
It's pretty great. Especially considering that you get a full ecosystem with Mail, Calendar, Drive, VPN and Pass.
I would also like to take this opportunity to shout out murena.io. They host open source cloud solutions. You get a Nextcloud with OnlyOffice and lots of other goodies and their pricing is pretty good
The people behind Murena are also the devs of /e/OS, a de-Googled Android OS that they also sell phones they pre-load it on. My one critique of it so far, owning one of the phones, is that I wish they would work on making it compatible with more well-known phone models available outside Europe. They sold this model I'm using, the Murena One (some Chinese OEM they slapped their name on), here in the US through their website, but I had to run around for two days trying to find a carrier whose service would work on it (or who would even try - eventually T-Mobile worked, the European-based carrier, what a surprise...) and I can't get anyone to do repairs on it because it's not one of the well-known brands. The case they gave me for it is essentially purely cosmetic, and only a week or so into owning it, I dropped it at a restaurant and it got a huge area of dead pixels at the bottom of the screen that nobody will fix because they can't get a new screen for it. If I could install /e/OS myself on more than just the Google Pixel (paying Google to not have to use Android, fun...) that would be great and solve my problems.
As the mod of !c/e_os, I am so happy you brought this up. I use /e/ on my Fairphone 4, it's great. The Easy Installer has come a long way, you should check it out https://doc.e.foundation/easy-installer
Edit: You can also check all the supported devices here
I've looked at the list. The only model that could give me what I'm looking for (5G, actually familiar to US-based carriers and repair shops) is the Pixel. I understand it's not all the fault of the /e/OS devs since there's factors like many bootloaders not being unlockable on US phones or other hardware complications, but I do get the feeling that the North American market does tend to be an afterthought. From what I can see, a majority of the list is either only available in Europe or will only work with very few carriers here, with lack of 5G capability being a big setback for carrier compatibility. That 5G requirement for many carriers really does hurt European based phone tech compatibility over here quite a bit.
So how would you sync your Proton Passwords with NextCloud, or with VaultWarden? Or actively sync them locally to be used with an open source app?
Oh, that's right.. you can't. Proton will say... "Just trust our payloads bro! There is no way we'd ever deliver a modified payload to get your password. Sorry you can't sync your calendar & contacts, just use our Windows apps."
I wouldn't? I suggested Murena as a Proton alternative. I don't know if they have a password manager right know but you can always throw a KeePass database into your Nextcloud.
My sincerest apologies. I misread the thread and thought you were advocating for Proton, which IMO is a questionable company. Thanks for the clarification.
I use both. Proton fits most of my needs, Murena does the rest. I'm not attached to any of them though, if I'm given good enough a reason, I'll drop Proton immediately
At least you're open to moving on. I think keeping an open attitude in any scenario is prob the best option. For most people, I'd recommend they keep using whatever works for them. If you're happy with Proton then switching may just cause frustration. However, if you're very much security focused and also care about things like being able to access your calendars/contacts in the apps you want, then I'd prob suggest just using SimpleLogin for email with their GPG feature, vaultwarden for passwords (you can still use the BitWarden phone apps), and Nextcloud for Calendar/Contacts which also supports DAVx for mobile.
I do use the SimpleLogin aliases, it's one of my favorite services they offer. Most of my web storage (which I barely use anyway) and calendar and stuff is all Nextcloud
It is about as safe as trusting Apple at their word to protect your privacy.
So whats more privacy friendly, using a browser to check email, og using the official Proton app?
Neither. The single app that Proton has done somewhat right with is their VPN and only because they haven't eliminated port forwarding. Everything else they've utilized non-standard protocols and failed to provide source code or API docs. They basically said that users are too stupid to protect themselves, and that you should just trust them to do it for you.
They failed to provide CalDav & CardDav syncing for things like calendars & contacts, IMAPS for mail, and prioritized things like their cloud-only password store. They had no valid reason not to use standardized protocols other than to prevent their users from actively syncing local copies of their data to integrate with privacy-friendly open source software. They act like Apple & a lot of their users prob. are Apple fan bois who will trust a company no questions asked. I have no reason to trust them whatsoever.
Thank you for that.
Is the search functionality improved in the desktop app?
It just opens the web app
What's wrong with IMAP and SMTP?
They generally require to have data visible on the server and/or handle independently encryption/decryption with related tools and key management (including key discovery).
For some, it might be worth, for 99% of the population who wouldn't be able to do this but also doesn't want their content availablento the provider, it's not.
What is the point of email clients? Why not just use the web browser?
More reliable notifications? That's my reason, at least.
My hope, for proton, would be improved search functionality. Currently search only works for email subject, not body. It's really lackluster.
FYI, you can enable a local index for message content searches:
https://proton.me/support/search-message-content#how-to-enable-search-message-content
More useful if you have several email addresses, you can more easily check all of them in one place
Finally? Why does it need an app all of a sudden...
Making email secure and good is very hard and it involves either making it inconvenient or getting rid of interoperability with existing systems. As long as I've been tracking it your choices for client when using Proton were webmail or mobile apps. The news here is that a new option has opened up not that an old option is being taken away
This is just patently false. GPG is not inconvenient & there are a plethora of apps that has made it much more user friendly. The fact that Proton has decided to take away freedom & tell you it is more secure is just bologna. There is no reason to trust Proton at all.
GPG is a huge pain in the ass to manage. Everyone knows this, because it's the case. The web of trust also doesn't scale and has many problems, handling key securely is hard, making GPG work on all devices is something which is completely impossible for people without solid technical skills.
If you think otherwise, you are just in a bubble.
You're a serial killer. Everyone knows this, because it's the case.
Do you see how that works? You can say whatever you want, but unless you can provide some proof then you're just parroting whatever you've heard. If you want to learn how to use GPG then let me know and I'd be happy to show you several open source tools that make it very easy so you can stop parroting BS. Otherwise, you're entitled to your opinion and I'll continue to believe you're a serial killer.
The bubble you're referring to is your own ignorance.
There are certain things that are known facts, there is no need to prove them every time.
The simple fact that:
You can also see:
A recent talk, I will quote the preamble:
And you can find as many opinion pieces as you want, by just searching (for example: https://nullprogram.com/blog/2017/03/12/).
However, if you really believe I am wrong, and you disagree that PGP tooling is widely considered bad, complex and almost a meme in the security community, you are welcome to show where I am wrong. Show me a simple PGP setup that non-technical people use.
P.s.
I also found https://arxiv.org/pdf/1510.08555.pdf, an interesting paper which is a followup of another paper 10 years older about usability of PGP tools.
I also prefer gpg but it is not super beginner friendly. I generally recommend people away from proton and tuta unless they really want encrypted email and gpg isn't something they can figure out
GPG isn't beginner friendly if you're only using the CLI. However, even then there are tons of documentations and even Gemini/ChatGPT would prob be good at helping users create/manage their keys. However, I can provide a list of user-friendly GUI apps to create/manage/encrypt/etc. using GPG if you'd like that make it as easy. I mean, you can pay a company that says they'll protect your privacy but history has shown paying for privacy is unreliable.
@timewarp @Quill7513 The only real alternative IMHO is hosting your own mail server and *that* is no alternative at all, because big-tech will blacklist your server immediately… so Proton/Tuta are the lesser of all evils. If you have a true alternative I am listening.
You can use PGP with just about any email service. I personally just use SimpleLogin, where you can add your public key to have all your messages encrypted. But Thunderbird, KMail, Evolution, FairMail, etc all support email encryption too with IMAP.
@timewarp ok, PGP … remember EFAIL… and all kinds of usability issues which inevitably lead to security issues by ‘wrong use’ at some point. And another *centralized* ‘web of trust’ (benign as it may be) is also not something I look forward to. O well, some genius will emerge at some point and deliver us 🥳 may he/she/it/them be FOSS-minded
It's quite possible that privacy is too hard for you and trash talking open source makes you feel better about the money you're paying to someone else to say they'll do a better job for you.
@timewarp don’t know what you’re talking about, I love FOSS…
Okay, well it's just the vulnerabilities you mentioned were geared towards email client issues that among other things would automatically load HTML data upon decryption. Furthermore, primary vulnerable targets were 10 year old email clients at the time that hadn't received any security updates. The SE data packet issue had been documented even in the spec since at least 2007 about its security issues and recommended rapid mitigation techniques. All in all, the EFAIL documented issues with mail client failures, not with OpenPGP itself.
Second, OpenPGP web-of-trust, or whatever you want to call it (public keyservers) is entirely optional. In fact, Proton relies heavily on this in from what I can tell actually enforces it in a more insecure way, but opting users into their internal keyserver automatically.
Proton seems on the wrong side of the usability - privacy spectrum. Every last feature I'd want from an online provider is impossible or massively neutered by the overly strict security.
I wish there was a similar service in a trustworthy country with a more sane level of safety, like opt-in encryption for example.
mailbox.org has pretty good pgp key integration and will encrypted all emails that come in with a public key of your choosing.
What are people’s thoughts on https://forwardemail.net/en/blog/docs/best-quantum-safe-encrypted-email-service
https://encryp.ch/blog/disturbing-facts-about-protonmail/
i'm begging you, don't buy snake oil.
Not only is this article three years old, it is also lacking in terms of sources. Additionally, the language and phrasing is quite inappropriate for the purpose of spreading the information. Lots of text is just mean and offensive without any actual purpose.
It also seems to be largely based on speculation rather than actual solid evidence.
I'm not against investigating the legitimacy of established and trusted privacy-first providers. However, this seems a bit lackluster.
Also: Email is inherently insecure, we all know that. Proton services are open source, independently audited and verifiably E2EE, except for Mail, which uses PGP for the emails themselves and E2EE to store them.
for what claim do you want a source that isn't provided?
All of the hyperbole and speculation? The SSL stuff with TOR for example. That's not proof, that's a hint at best
they say plainly what they don't know. what they don't know, you don't know. and if you don't know, you are trusting on faith, not evidence.