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Forgive me for this n00b question, but what do you get with ProtonMail (with respect to security) that you don't get with, say, gmail?


ProtonMail team here. Here is our assessment about how ProtonMail compares to Gmail from the security/privacy perspective: https://protonmail.com/blog/protonmail-vs-gmail-security/


>"No tracking and logging Google records literally every action done by its users. This includes your IP address, every search that you do, which emails you open, which websites you visit, and much more. ProtonMail takes the opposite approach and by default, does not monitor or record user activity, not even IP addresses."

Has this been verified by an independent third party?

Also how do you determine there's an issue with with IP prefixes in AS 15897 Vodaphone Turkey[1], if you don't log IP addresses?

[1] https://bgpview.io/asn/15897


> Has this been verified by an independent third party?

For one thing, it seems to have been verified by the Turkish government, seing how gmail is not blocked, and protonmail is ;)


> Has this been verified by an independent third party?

Which would that be? ;-)

I use ProtonMail myself. I kind of doubt that all their promises are true. But at least it's an entity separate from Google. A few years ago my whole Internet life somehow went through Google, from Search over Mail up to News, Discussions, Drive, YouTube... I find it creepy that when I click an article in an online shop, not even buying it, a stupid ad of it might appear for a week. Even if you agree that ads have a purpose, there is no purpose for showing me an ad for a thing that I looked at myself already!

I have no indication of ProtonMail doing anything in this direction (I see their ads only on protonmail.com), that's reason enough for me already. Also I trust them that their servers are not going to be hacked so that those contents will land on troyhunt.com.


They might be using some service that tries to access an endpoint of theirs from multiple AS across the world. Not sure if Catchpoint has a Vodafone TR endpoint.


Not a user but I would guess follow up on user complaints


I am neither a ProtonMail nor a Gmail user so this might be completely wrong, but as far as I understand it, the short answer to your question is:

ProtonMail offers an easy access to a client which supports End-To-End encryption for your emails.

So nobody besides the sender and the receiver can read the content of the email. Traditional emails are more or less plain text files which (usually) get encrypted for transfers between mail servers, but every mail server involved in the transmission can read the content.


Encryption between protonmail accounts and when sending to non proton mail accounts:

When you send an encrypted message to a non-ProtonMail user, they receive a link which loads the encrypted message onto their browser, which they can decrypt using a passphrase that you have shared with them. You can also send unencrypted messages to Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook and others, just like regular email.


ProtonMail isn’t run by a data mining ad agency that works on military drones.


Not but its been around now for 17 years without a major security breach.


Well, my server runs for 19 years now without a major secuirty breach... so do I know.

But to answer OP: you cannot ever delete gmail message. Even spam is kept forever to comply with LE, since some of your real messages could by accodent go to junk. With Proton once I delete a message, its gone forever since it was part of my internal encrypted blob of messages. once I logged off deleted message is gone.


>"Well, my server runs for 19 years now without a major secuirty breach... so do I know"

Do you really believe Gmail and your personal server possess the same value as targets?

>"you cannot ever delete gmail message. Even spam is kept forever to comply with LE"

Do you have a citation for this?


> Do you really believe Gmail and your personal server possess the same value as targets?

That's also the point. :) Why put your data into a service that has higher chance of being targetted (and you may never know if it was). Also if you're in control of the device, you'll be the one receiving the subpoena/search warrant (or a swat team), so you'll know if it was targetted.


Kind of difficult to have a “breach” when the back door is wide open.


Except for that time when Google's data centers were completely owned by the NSA.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-i...


Except they didn't "own" Google's data centers at all. They tapped a fiber optic cable outside any data centers. Every other wavelength and individual strand in that cable would have also been susceptible. Fiber optic cables aren't some secret, they're quite visible(orange) and accessible in public rightaways. So yeah Protonmail is not much safer from that level of hostility is it?

Lastly for all Protonmail's righteous talk about governments. They're own /24 is announced by an Israeli company that does defense contracting[1] and has their own hardware division - the RAD Bynet Group who makes lots of network hardware including hardware that does deep packet and SSL inspection[2]. Proton mails seems to like to brush this off but for a company that wants to position itself as a player in the fight against government intrusion into privacy, it has a pretty bad smell.

https://bgpview.io/prefix/185.70.40.0/24

http://www.bynet.co.il/en/defense/

https://cryptome.org/2015/11/protonmail-ddos.htm

[1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bynet-data-communica...

[2] https://www.radware.com/solutions/ssl-sniffing/


Why don't you link their response while you are at it?

https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/protonmail-isr...


Because I acknowledged that they've responded to it with:

"Proton mails seems to like to brush this off ..."

And I don't find they're explanation particularly cogent. And for a company that makes such a big deal about their Swiss affiliation this seems to big a particularly glaring detail.

From your link:

>"Recently, malicious rumors have surfaced that our partnership with Radware means Israel has compromised ProtonMail email privacy (since Radware’s international headquarters is in Israel). These rumors have mostly been spread by conspiracy theorists who don’t at all understand ProtonMail’s technology."

Do you think that Protonamil is privy to what goes on in the hardware of either Binat-Rad Group Ltd's Radware DPI asics or the network topology in Binat-Rad Group's data centers?

And Binat-Rad does have a relationship with the Israeli government:

"In our opinion, the Company’s working capital is sufficient for the Company’s present requirements. Since our inception, we have financed our operations through a combination of issuing debt and/or equity securities, including two public offerings, research and development and/or marketing grants from the Government of Israel and cash generated by operations."[1]

And if you think that Binat-Rad is not involved in politics, see:

https://www.haaretz.com/1.5204589

[1] https://seekingalpha.com/filing/458350


Greg Cochran, an expert geneticist who wrote 'The 10,000 Year Explosion' has a different view.

1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3310KWlDXg (especially the Q&A which is dominated by epigenetics).

2) This explains it in text -> https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2012/10/26/epigenetics/


Greg Cochran isn't an expert geneticist. He's a consultant with a PhD in physics who was an anthropology adjunct for ten years.

He doesn't have any training as a geneticist or in biological research.

It's all in his LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregory-cochran-48b51b79/


Yes this is why it's unable to find any music outside of the Billboard Top 20 chart.


Since this is your first job out of school, this tip won't help you unfortunately. In any case, it's good to keep a buffer of 6-months spending handy in savings (outside of retirement accounts, those should preferably NEVER be touched outside of TRUE emergencies). Having a buffer-fund, you will find, will keep your mind at ease and give you options to walk away from very toxic environments. Good luck buddy!


Just wanted to say - cool handle! World War 1 history fan?


Wrong von Moltke. General military history fan, mostly 19th and 20th centuries.


Ah the Franco-Prussian war then. Nice


Lol Do people EVER follow-up after feel good policies to see how they worked out? http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-04-14/coal-rises...


What does that have to do with the GP's comment? Neither coal nor nuclear are classified as renewable.


Just one question, have you looked at the frequency of extreme weather events over the last century?

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/All_U.S._Hurricanes.html

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/gw_hurricanes/fig33.jpg


Do we really think a century of data is a lot? Especially when you are talking about ~20 events per year?

Can you explain why 1850 looks comparable or worse than the 1990s and worse than 2010s so far? I don't see what this proves.

The inputs for "man's impact" in the 1850s would not come close to modern day. If we took that into account, by your logic, the bar charts should explode out the top! But it doesn't. Not even close.

1850 - 1.2B people 2010s - ~7B people and a lot more pollution

From your linked data, the impact of AGW on hurricanes over the last year = 0

Edit: I think you may agree with me that it doesn't point to more extreme weather events. If so - my comment is directed at the parent.


Yes to your 'EDIT'. If we can't even see increasing frequency of hurricanes, then how can we even begin to attribute things to AGW?


What was really horrible and downright ATROCIOUS was the Messenger (SMS) integration into Hangouts. I was jumping for joy when they freed SMS from Hangouts again recently.


I'm not sure what you mean by freed SMS from Hangouts - once the two are merged you send and receive SMS in the Hangouts interface, as far as I know that hasn't changed. (That's how I do it today.) It's pretty simple, there's a dropdown menu next to the message input box that lets you select between Hangouts or SMS (if you have a phone number attached to that contact.) Works the same on mobile or in the browser. I remember there was some confusion around that when they initially added it but for the past few months it's been pretty straightforward and reliable.

EDIT: I see now, I think my experience is different from others in that I only use my Google Voice number for everything. Doing SMS to/from your actual phone number inside of hangouts is definitely a disaster. If that were my use case I'd be using the Messenger app. If you're exclusively using your Google Voice number, though, the integration is pretty straightforward.


Your EDIT is right! That was my use case. When I got my new Nexus 6P, I saw a nice, well-functioning new Messenger app and danced a little.


Messenger has been in the Play Store for at least a year or two now, and you could always designate it as your SMS app. It was only recently that they started nudging users to switch to it from Hangouts (which is funny considering that they nudged everyone to use Hangouts for SMS not that long ago).


Do you know how much is spent on US infrastructure per year? Do you think it's the lack of funds responsible for sub-par US infrastructure?


No, but it looks like since after WWii we've been mostly reactive rather than forward looking and proactive.

There are tens of thousands of bridges in need of repair or replacement, for starters.


+1 lol


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