If you need secure messaging, use something other than email.
Forget security for a second, imagining every email as public record will make you more considerate and less biased writer. And from a business perspective, email should be viewed as a public legal record, because in some cases it will be used that way.
That's not to say that there shouldn't be private messaging options, it's just that email isn't one of them and was never really built to be. PGP was always sort of a tacked on solution with a lot of faults (no forward secrecy, plenty of meta data leakage, usability issues)
All that being said, I still left Gmail for Fastmail. Just because I consider every email I write to be public doesn't mean I want Google getting a free pass to mine and sell my data.
I'm forced to send proof of identity as well as proof of address via email. I'm receiving bank statements and countless other sensitive documents via email. And I have absolutely no other choice.
Whoever gets a hold of my email can impersonate me in almost every context.
So no, I do not consider the contents of my email public. Absolutely not!
I'm not willing to consider a service completely insecure just because it can never be completely secure.
Some say we should give up making email more secure, because it can never be as secure as more modern messaging services.
That doesn't make sense to me, because we don't have a choice other than to use email in ways that require very high levels of security. I cannot behave as if my email could become public any moment.
I would love if the world were to move on to more secure messaging platforms. But it's simply not the world we live in right now.
> doesn't mean I want Google getting a free pass to mine and sell my data.
AFAIK, they don't do that with gmail. Do you have any evidence to the contrary?
We need to hold Google's feet to fire on privacy, but it is also important that we do not exaggerate or distort the facts.
did you even read the article you linked
The usual methods for achieving this are government regulation and oversight (free of capture), and independent third-party audits (likewise).
The good news is that there seems to be ... some, slight ... progress in this direction.
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On the other hand, what Apple does with your photos that you allow to be exfiltrated through iCloud... that's your own stupid fault.
I tore off my nest thermostats and replaced them with dumb ones. I miss the ability to change my heat remotely, but at the end of the day. I don’t need that functionality.
They say they won’t use it to sell ads:
> “To help you easily view and keep track of your purchases, bookings and subscriptions in one place, we’ve created a private destination that can only be seen by you,” a Google spokesperson told CNBC. “You can delete this information at any time. We don’t use any information from your Gmail messages to serve you ads, and that includes the email receipts and confirmations shown on the Purchase page.”
What guarantee is there that this is not being used for other purposes? To train other kinds of models? To, say, monitor other people’s AWS bills, in order to optimize their own offerings? How likely is it that such a project was approved with no gain except adding perceived value to the Gmail product? I have a hard time believing they would do it only for that.
Why? Adding perceived values is how you get more users. More users == increased revenue.
I think the important question is: if Google were doing something nefarious like that, why on earth would they tie it to a public feature instead of just keeping it totally secret?
They may make money off ads but I don't think they have any real incentive to lie about what they're doing. Because most of their users don't actually care. I would be curious if anyone knows of any scenario where Google has outright lied about what they do and don't do with information, because I've never heard of it.
For me, I moved off gmail for other reasons: my email is too important to randomly lose access to because e.g. their youtube AI thinks I'm spamming a channel on Youtube. I look at all my data in Google as if I might lose access to it forever some day, because someday I might, with zero recourse.
They do not. See https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en
"We will not scan or read your Gmail messages to show you ads."
that reads to me like ""We may do it for other purposes."
https://policies.google.com/terms?hl=en
> Our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored.
None of these are unique to email.
This is the attitude one should take for any electronic form of communication. Even old-fashioned ink on paper letters of significance have made it into the public record for all to see.
I think this is mainly governed by expectation and received benefits.
I would let my doctor see me naked, because I'm expecting the doctor will fix my problem if I agreed to do so, and I assume the doctor will respect my privacy by not leaking information about my physical characteristics and private parts with others.
But what if it's for example the owner of my favor restaurant asking to see the same? I don't think I would go there anymore.
It's trivial to use an email provider in a more privacy-friendly jurisdiction (e.g. Mailbox.org in Germany) and with a bit of effort you can even move to a provider the PGP-encrypts incoming email which can then be decrypted by your email client (which can connect with IMAP).
Given that the first measure is near-zero effort and saves you from silent/warrantless law enforcement requests, I think it's worth it.
Encryption is a bit more annoying but it does save you from later disclosure of your emails.
https://protonmail.com/bridge/
Or did it not work for you?
I do agree that it would be great to be able to use your own mail client on iOS. Not sure that will ever happen though.
Agreed. Even if you use protonmail, google still has most of your email because they have the most of everyone else's.
Part of the reason I use Protonmail(and pay for it) is because I want to support the notion that the web can be made up of different services as opposed to all being calls to .google.com or .facebook.com.
I have far more incoming emails than outgoing and most of them are automated - probably not using GMail. That includes most of the most sensitive content like invoices and account management.
Food for thought.
Because you’ve got to get your email over someone’s pipes eventually.
Fastmail is excellent. If you want secure/private/not easily spoofable by a 5 year old and you’re using email.... then you’re doing it all wrong.
Certainly not.
My comment is relating to their data encryption laws that was passed in 2018. If you care about your privacy in any way, shape or form, individuals should be very wary of using services that operate from, or are owned by individuals in Australia (and the rest of the 5 eyes for that matter) unless you have your encryption keys and all encryption happens on your client app.
And what can the Australian government do that the US government can't these days?
Personally I'd wanted to move to Australia but stopped chasing that due to their data encryption laws.
What's permitted is to build something that targets a particular person in such a way that it cannot possibly affect another person's security.
The example I use (though IANAL) is that a request to backdoor WhatsApp's encryption would not be permitted under the law. However I think that pushing an update that checks for a particular person's hard-coded phone number and forwards messages to law enforcement would be permitted.
The law in question: http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ta1997214...
If they had a better app I'd gladly pay. I just can't stomach gmail anymore and Fastmail was next best.
Based on comments over in /r/protonmail there's some redesigns coming for the apps that should hopefully improve on the creature comforts.
I suppose it’s a limitation of the protocol, and it’s good that protonmail doesn’t store your emails plaintext. However, they know the encryption keys...and so will any attacker.
I went to the Office 365 email package because I get more value out of the exchange server. Any emails I want to encrypt, I will do so myself. 99.99999% of my inbox is spam and automated mailing list crap and notifications and TOS updates, with maybe one or two emails every couple of months that are actually from a human being.
I might be mistaken, but my understanding is that they encrypt your encryption keys using your password within the browser. They only store the encrypted blob and thus they are unable to decrypt any emails.
Having said that, since emails come in unencrypted anyway, they can, in theory, log everything there. Including the sender, receiver and what the email contains.
I have an account with them and spent months troubleshooting a carddav sync issue with my two Mac computers before giving up and switching contacts over to iCloud.
Proton mail seems pretty hungry for business. I inquired for a paid plan and they follow up all the time with sales people who have unique email addresses.
Tried to export and reimport to no avail.
Many services I need do not give me an alternative. I only continue to use email because of those services.