Pro/Con of “Private” Email

Protonmail

Pro: Allows Tor, Many use it so network effect of proton to proton encryption

Con: Huge increases in data handoffs to governments makes you question how much data they can get, some question if it’s a honeypot. Even if not, you’re potentially targeted for even being there, and they have a bad track record.

Tutanota

Pros: Better track record than Protonmail

Cons: Bans Tor and many VPNs. Severe Browser fingerprinting annoyance when signing up. They auto-delete your account if you don’t login for 6 months, but you can get around this by adding 2-factor authentication TOTP with KeePass XC

Skiff

Pro: Fast sign-ups, very easy to get a burner account

Con: They use Cloudflare. Cloudflare intercepts all traffic, so 0% private. This company is essentially propaganda.

Mail in a Box (software)

This is self-hosting using open source software on a VPS

Pro: More private than any provider. It does most of the setup work for you

Con: Requires $5 to 15 a month on a VPS (but can be split among friends). VPS provider can still access emails by snapshots of memory. Unless you put it in a docker container, you can’t do anything else on the VPS

Luke Smith Scripts (software)

Pro: Fast way to get an email VPS setup

Con: Requires it to be put directly on the server, which can mess up OTHER things you got going on there, like using aaPanel

aaPanel (software)

Pro: Easy to manage a lot of services going on, including WordPress or databases with your email

Con: Not worth setting up this whole thing up for JUST email.

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Protonmail scans e-mails.

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Discussion

Evidence?

Account Activity: Due to limitations of the SMTP protocol, we have access to the following email metadata: sender and recipient email addresses, the IP address incoming messages originated from, attachment name, message subject, and message sent and received times. We do NOT have access to encrypted message content, but unencrypted messages sent from external providers to your Account, or from Proton Mail to external unencrypted email services, are scanned for spam and viruses to pursue the legitimate interest of protecting the integrity of our Services and users. Such inbound messages are scanned for spam in memory, and then encrypted and written to disk

Great point. I knew it came in unencrypted, didn't realize they scanned it. Great find

Thats the way all emaill providers are doing. Nothing special here 😉

Yes, but many people assume that Protonmail is special.

This is mostly marketing gibberish.

Using GPG/PGP or DeltaChat with Gmail is more secure than using ProtonMail with external providers.

Don't use GMail JFC

I don't use it. I wrote that Gmail with Delta Chat or GPG was more secure that Protonmail or Tutanota.

GMail is a horror with privacy. Proton is much much better

Start using GPG or Delta Chat

But why?

I don't know what are you asking for.

Why is it more secure using Gmail + GPG or Delta.Chat ?

Your keys your data.

Protonmail scans your emails and possesses your private keys.

Why I don't use Gmail?

I don't like it.

Thank you for the explanation.

I guess I'll chime in here too, because no one seems to have any technically correct info in this thread. The post is correct regarding SMTP. But not PGP encrypted emails.

PGP encrypted with private keys stored in ProtonMail?

This is another point not mentioned before.

External pgp is stronger than protons in house version via web browser

If it's gmail to protonmail, it comes in unencrypted then they encrypt it