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Comment by thih9 | Hacker News Reader

I didn't know what exactly is proton mail bridge. This is what I've found:

> Proton Mail Bridge is a desktop application that runs in the background, encrypting and decrypting messages as they enter and leave your computer. It lets you add your Proton Mail account to your favorite email client via IMAP/SMTP by creating a local email server on your computer.

Source: https://proton.me/mail/bridge

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Protonmail doesn't support email clients with POP/IMAP like most hosting companies do. They only let you use their proprietary apps on mobile. Desktop users can log in to the website or use Bridge which is just a hacky way of creating a local Protonmail server that your email client thinks is a hosting provider. I could never get it set up on my machine so I just used the browser implementation. sigh.

They aren't offering IMAP as an email provider? What's up with that?

If they offer IMAP, they would also need to decrypt your data on their side, which I'm happy they go to lenghts to avoid.

This is a case of Proton sacrificing convenience for privacy. If the former is more important for you than the latter, there are better alternatives out there.

I don't know, and it's why I moved off them. Additionally, the Bridge is only available for Windows/Linux/Mac, so if you want to use your own email client on mobile, I guess your only option is to VPN into your home network and expose a bridge instance there or something. No hard feelings, but I can't really recommend them as an email host if what you're looking for is... an email host.

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