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.
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.
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
The only benefit i can see of web app is it is in a controlled browser environment…could be helpful with security?
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.
Cool. Now please do Proton Drive and Calendar. Please and thank you Proton.
Calender is included in the mail app
no proton drive??
This came way sooner than expected, be grateful. It’ll arrive soon enough. Patience, young padawan
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.
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.
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.
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.
no AppImage, no Flatpak, no PPA, and no COPR
AUR FTW!
Is the search functionality improved in the desktop app?
It just opens the web app
(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
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.
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?
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!
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).
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’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.
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
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.
Yeah I installed it recently on my widows and it is super sleek.
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.
Good job mozilla!
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
Yes Thunderbird is getting really nice nowadays.
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
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
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.
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?
Using pidgeons since they can’t speak and no one would suspect you sending a pidgeon anymore in 2024
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.
What are people’s thoughts on https://forwardemail.net/en/blog/docs/best-quantum-safe-encrypted-email-service
“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.
