
ProtonMail Bridge is now open source - BafS
https://protonmail.com/blog/bridge-open-source/
======
AbuAssar
“ ProtonMail Bridge is a desktop application that allows you to fully
integrate your ProtonMail account with any IMAP and SMTP email client,
including Outlook, Thunderbird, or Apple Mail. Open sourcing the code lets
anyone verify how the encryption process takes place through Bridge as the
emails are transferred between your ProtonMail account and your desktop email
app.”

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cjbprime
For anyone else wondering what this is, looks like it downloads encrypted mail
from ProtonMail, decrypts it and exposes the unencrypted mail to your email
clients as an IMAP server.

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aijony
And to think I was going to cancel my subscription because the bridge wasn't
open source...

Not to mention that I missed the Linux support announcement:
[https://protonmail.com/blog/proton-bridge-linux-
launch/](https://protonmail.com/blog/proton-bridge-linux-launch/)

~~~
phito
Great! I was using another open source bridge but it didn't support 2FA :/

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brobinson
This is really cool to see.

Hopefully I can debug why the Bridge pegs two cores and writes out 10gb+ of a
single log line over and over when I try to transfer one particular email
through it overnight. :-)

(same thing happens in the dedicated mailbox migration program, which is
probably using the same shared libraries)

------
neilv
I emailed them a while ago, to encourage pursuing an open standard for their
protocol, such as through the IETF.

Open sourcing Bridge is helpful, and perhaps a step towards that.

Perhaps, with this reference, some other mail providers will implement the
server-side protocol to Bridge, and some MUA developers will
implement/integrate the client-side protocol.

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mfincham
It would be great if someone forked this to allow it to function as an XOAUTH2
IMAP proxy for other providers.

This would be particularly useful with big e-mail providers (Google,
Microsoft) looking at retiring password based authentication in the near
future.

~~~
zxcvbn4038
I've been curious about ProtonMail for a long while - my greatest hesitation
is that I use multiple addresses and ProtonMail seems to be based around a
single address. I'm not sure why email providers all want to charge per
address - why not allow multiple addresses and charge for transit or storage?
However at minimum multiple instances of this running could be a step towards
multiple accounts.

~~~
kalium_xyz
They allow multiple addresses and domains if you pay for premium, its not per
address but a monthly fee which includes the functionality of handling them.
Their UI is actually really friendly for multiple addresses unlike for example
gmail.

------
mark_l_watson
The new book “The Infinte Game” has an idea of ‘Just Causes’, an idea that
means business, organizations, or individuals have a long term and often not
totally achievable goal, that is to benefit customers and society.

I think that ProtonMail has the Just Cause of protecting privacy.

~~~
kayoone
Or they found a good market fit with privacy conscious customers and are going
all the way. Either way, it's a win for the consumer.

------
markosaric
Nice to see!

I'm on Gnome Linux and ProtonMail only mention Thunderbird in their docs, but
I've made the bridge work with Geary too. Geary is a bit more simple and
modern looking email client alternative. See
[https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Geary](https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Geary)

Still I normally end up using the web interface for ProtonMail as it fits my
workflow better and only need to have one tab open in my browser. They even
have a nicer looking beta which also has an in-built dark theme at
[https://beta.protonmail.com](https://beta.protonmail.com)

~~~
desktop-app
> Still I normally end up using the web interface for ProtonMail as it fits my
> workflow better and only need to have one tab open in my browser. They even
> have a nicer looking beta which also has an in-built dark theme at
> [https://beta.protonmail.com](https://beta.protonmail.com)

Btw, you can have both static beta web client and offline access to the email
messages using
[https://github.com/vladimiry/ElectronMail](https://github.com/vladimiry/ElectronMail)
even being on free account as opposed to Bridge thing. The app also supports
"persistent sessions" feature, unlimited full-text search (body content also
gets scnned) and other fancy stuff.

------
fmakunbound
Dang. That is encouraging that they can peruse an open source model.

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s09dfhks
It looks like you still have to have a paid account to use this?

~~~
brnt
For those without premium accounts, I have good experiences with
[https://github.com/emersion/hydroxide](https://github.com/emersion/hydroxide)

------
antpls
I applause ProtonMail services and initiatives, it can only be good for us.

However why did they develop anything specific? SMTP / IMAP already support
secure connection (i believe). Or it could be encapsulated in a secure lower
transport protocol.

Also I thought there were tons of GPG/PGP extensions for email clients already
to read encrypted emails

~~~
kube-system
IMAP, et al, require mail to be unencrypted on the server side; they are only
encrypted in-transit.

~~~
antpls
Which is why Protonmail uses GPG/PGP for the encrypted ones, I believe. So
there should be no reason that we cannot use any mail client with GPG/PGP
support.

~~~
kube-system
Their service does stuff beyond the basic functions of PGP. That is handled by
the bridge, and wouldn't be handled by your favorite flavor of email client
and PGP plugin.

One example: if you message another ProtonMail user, all of the PGP
functionality is handled automatically. I don't think this would be possible
with any other solution.

