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Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
ProtonMail suggests fear of the Donald prompting lockdown
"ProtonMail follows the Swiss policy of neutrality. We do not take any position for or against Trump," the Swiss company's CEO stated on Monday, before revealing that new user sign-ups immediately doubled following Trump's election victory.
ProtonMail has published figures showing that as soon as the election results rolled in, the public began to seek out privacy-focused services such as its own.
CEO Andy Yen said that, in communicating with these new users, the company found people apprehensive about the decisions that President Trump might take and what they would mean considering the surveillance activities of the National Security Agency.
"Given Trump's campaign rhetoric against journalists, political enemies, immigrants, and Muslims, there is concern that Trump could use the new tools at his disposal to target certain groups," Yen said. "As the NSA currently operates completely out of the public eye with very little legal oversight, all of this could be done in secret."
ProtonMail was launched back in May 2014 by scientists who had met at CERN and MIT. In response to the Snowden revelations regarding collusion between the NSA and other email providers such as Google, they created a government-resistant, end-to-end encrypted email service.
Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/14/protonmail_subs_double_after_trump_victory/
(Score: 2) by Celestial on Tuesday November 15 2016, @12:55PM
From experience, this is a bad idea. I used Lavabit as my e-mail provider from about 2010 through 2013. Then all of a sudden, it disappeared. A week or so later, it turned out it shut down permanently as an end run around the government. Three years worth of e-mail messages, gone.
Last year, I created an e-mail account on one of Protonmail's competitors. It wasn't great, but it worked well enough. However, a few months ago it suffered some sort of hardware failure, and lost about seven weeks worth of e-mail. The owner never bothered to make backups. I learned my lesson. I switched to a generic e-mail provider and my own domain name.
I'm not saying Protonmail would suffer the same fate as the first two, but if it does, you're screwed.
On the topic of e-mail encryption in general, it's a dead end. It works for some technically literate people just fine, but for the masses... good luck. Most people I know use Gmail on the web or on their tablet or smartphone. An encrypted e-mail message will appear as nothing but gobbledygook, and they won't bother using an actual e-mail client as Gmail works just fine for them.
(Score: 1) by nobu_the_bard on Tuesday November 15 2016, @02:40PM
In the healthcare industry "encrypted" emails are often just a web link to a secured website where the mail can be read within some number of days.
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Tuesday November 15 2016, @03:39PM
Does the weblink at least use HTTPS?
I have noticed my local banks tend to use a similar system. The User agreement simply asserts that e-mail is not secure. They apparently don't even entertain the possibility that you can try to secure e-mail.
(Score: 1) by nobu_the_bard on Tuesday November 15 2016, @06:00PM
Yeah it always uses HTTPS. Sometimes it requires a free account to login to read the mail (depends on the vendor). One time I saw one, you had to actually download a certificate to read it, but I think that vendor didn't last long.
There's usually various measures to try to ensure the email is read only by the approved the recipient, a combination technical and other measures ("are you actually Dr. Jane Doe? y/n"). The mails usually give feedback to the sender that the mail was read, and records stuff about the reader like usernames used, IP address, date&time, etc. The feedback matters for when the correspondence legally requires the recipient be notified and that we have proof that they were.