Hacker News Reader

Comment by kodt | Hacker News Reader

When 90% of the people you email are on Gmail or GSuite does Proton mail really help? Yeah you get end to end encryption for other Proton mail users, but I don't know a single one. Google is going to have all of my emails anyway.

As for Facebook it is best just to quit. I don't even use Facebook to keep in touch with friends anymore. The value in Facebook is some of the groups. Local neighborhood groups seem to be the best source of information or things happening around your area if you care to know about it. Also different hobbies/interests have local FB groups that are the most active place for discussion with far more users than a small subreddit or dying forum community.

Perhaps I am old but I don't know a single person that uses Whatsapp or Signal. Everyone just uses old fashioned SMS or iMessage if they have iPhones.

View on HN

> When 90% of the people you email are on Gmail or GSuite does Proton mail really help?

This is such a common, but strange attitude to have in these circumstances. Think about how user migration works. It's not like it happens overnight and suddenly your 100% gmail contact list is 100% proton. No, it goes from 100% to 99%, then continues to 92%, then to 75%, and so on. Having this defeatist attitude guarantees that bad actors retain their users.

As an example -- I switched to use Signal for messaging a few years ago. I was the only one in my circle that made the jump. Slowly but surely, people have started to switch over. Today about 10% of my contacts use Signal, and our chats are encrypted e2e. Every few months a few more people make the jump. If all of these people had the same attitude as you, nothing would ever change.

I don't think it's necessarily a strange attitude, just more about what people might use email for versus what they might use instant messaging for - which target audience. My Signal experience mirrors yours, as I think folks really don't care too awful much which app is used, so long as everyone can use it together to chat/communicate as possible work peers, friends or family.

Email, however, is the line item on every single one of my bills (utility, credit, etc.), my mortgage, my doctors, my bank accounts - a cornerstone of what it takes to live in our modern society. Migrating to a new email address is daunting (to me) due to all these arms and legs having had this email address in use for ... 2 decades? (however long GMail has been around). It can be done, but it's a lot more work to go through for the average individual than just installing a new app.

I did this recently and it is daunting.

For anyone reading this I recommend using your own domain for your email (e.g. yourname@yourdomain.co). That way you own it and can change providers whenever you wish.

WhatsApp is massive in Europe, I'm currently in Spain and nobody uses anything else.

I'm in Mexico City and spent the last 6 mos in Columbia and What's App is EXCLUSIVE in the latter and completely dominant in Mexico. Nobody uses SMS.

Maybe in some parts of Europe, but not all. I'm in Norway and none of my WhatsApp contacts are Norwegian, everyone use Facebook messenger. I don't want to use WhatsApp more than I have to because of the way it tries to get access to my phone contacts and my phone number every time I want to add someone new

In South America too. In Peru, many mobile phone plans come with free data for WhatsApp, fb and Instagram which makes it way harder for people to even think of changing messaging platforms.

Argentina Brazil and France also are very Whats app dependent

France is actually a bit mixed between SMS, Whatsapp, and Facebook Messenger. My impression is that it's been shifting slowly to Whatsapp but it might be my environment.

I'm on Proton and will email you :).

Seriously though, a real benefit you get from an e2ee email when no one you communicate with uses it is that all of your receipts, memberships, newsletter, etc. correspondences are not being read/scanned by your email provider.

For Signal I asked my wife to switch and she did (just for her and I) and we've been using it for over a year. My Dad recently hopped on as well. These things go slow, but when someone close switches it feels nice knowing that all my conversations are private.

>When 90% of the people you email are on Gmail or GSuite does Proton mail really help?

Depends on your threat model.

Having all your email in one place is a juicy target.

But the Swiss want a warrant for a specific crime, and then it's my understanding your government needs your password to decrypt the emails at rest.

Not being able to go on fishing expeditions is a good feature especially if you have years of email.

>Perhaps I am old but I don't know a single person that uses Whatsapp or Signal. Everyone just uses old fashioned SMS or iMessage if they have iPhones.

When I explain people can use Signal on wifi and not get any spam calls, many older folks are open to using it. You don't always need to sell Signal on privacy - older folks on a limited income may not have infinite data, being able to use wifi for calls and texts cuts data use and they like that.

You're living in a US bubble.

Agree. I've heard WhatsApp usage worldwide is huge, but I'm in the US, and I don't know a single person who uses it.

I find that in the US, anyone who communicates with people in other countries uses Whatsapp. It was the first easy way to communicate across borders and not have to worry about international charges. It’s also better than SMS/MMS.

> It was the first easy way to communicate across borders and not have to worry about international charges

It was absolutely not. Skype was before, and many others. If you're talking about general communication applications/medium over internet.

I meant easy way for non computer literate people. You handed someone a phone, installed Whatsapp, it sent the auto verification text and now you could communicate without having to know your own username/password or without have to know someone else’s username. It was seamless, and that’s why it caught on so quick, and requiring the phone number verification made it so there was no spam.

The on boarding was so quick and painless, I feel like that’s what made it spread so quickly.

Same. I used whatsapp for like 2 months to talk to a single person, my podcast partner that was in Australia and we quit the podcast and I never used it again.

I have 2 contacts that use signal, one is a VC that I've texted one occasion when we were trying to talk on the phone but Fi was being Fi and he could barely hear me.

I have 2 contacts that have Marco Polo installed for video messages, 1 hasn't been online in over a month and the other is my fiance that's currently living 9 hours away so we use it most days just to see each other.

My brother and mother message me exclusively on messenger, as do a half dozen of my friends even though we have each other's numbers.

Everyone else is regular sms/mms.

Funny enough, the only friends I chat with on WhatsApp are US expats living in Europe for the last couple of years.

I admit that but switching to Signal does me no good if no-one I know uses it. I am not saying no-one should switch.

At least Signal is seamless once you set it up. I use it for all of my SMS/MMS messages even though my immediate family and a couple of other contacts are the only Signal users I text.

I'd like to get my friends and family on Signal or Riot but I can't get anyone to use them.

Everyone uses SMS (or talks about using Whatsapp but might or might not actually). I was using Google Hangouts long before Whatsapp or Signal started being taken up and now they assume that's what I'd prefer, like that's how I should be communicated with, even when I'd prefer something else.

It's strange.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com