
ProtonMail: Alleged data breach was a “hoax and failed extortion attempt” - dredmorbius
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/9xovso/dont_believe_everything_you_read_online_about/
======
Kaveren
I'll continue to shill for the company's services unless anything becomes
evident. Nobody has offered anything that ProtonMail / ProtonVPN wasn't able
to explain adequately.

Nobody else I'm aware of offers their own data center infrastructure, which is
extremely important as it's a key single point of failure in all other VPNs
and email service. There is no better option for most people.

Obviously if you're going to use ProtonMail, it's always technically better to
encrypt your emails with PGP or the like on top of it, but I still stand by my
firm recommendation of their services.

I'd like to imagine ProtonMail is in the same set as Lavabit. I think many
services portray themselves as if they're in said set, but I think its
cardinality is very, very small.

~~~
dredmorbius
Protonmail now support PGP encryption.

(Also noted by a dead comment.)

~~~
Boulth
To be honest they always supported PGP encryption (they are the biggest
contributor and lead Openpgpjs development). Since July it's possible to also
send encrypted messages to external contacts.

ProtonMail is actually very committed to OpenPGP as a standard (it's evident
by their engagement on the OpenPGP Mailing List).

~~~
dredmorbius
Protonmail hadn't supported arbitrary sender or recipient keys. They've just
issued a big update announcement that they're doing precisely that.

~~~
Boulth
It works since July see this blog post: [https://protonmail.com/blog/address-
verification-pgp-support...](https://protonmail.com/blog/address-verification-
pgp-support/)

I don't know why they announced it now but I've been using it previously.

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sublupo
I tend not to trust ProtonMail that much after seeing this thread:
[https://old.reddit.com/r/ProtonVPN/comments/8ww4h2/protonvpn...](https://old.reddit.com/r/ProtonVPN/comments/8ww4h2/protonvpn_and_tesonet/)
This is a reddit thread that criticizes ProtonVPN (same company as
ProtonMain). The mod in charge of the sub offers a rebuttal to a criticism
against them. Afterwards, the mod in charge of that sub locks it thereby
preventing the accuser the ability to reply to that claim.

Now it is possible that nothing wrong happened, but every time a business
tries to censor a criticism against them, I tend not to give the business the
benefit of the doubt.

~~~
jammygit
Was it the CEO who locked the thread, some developer, or some PR person?
There's a difference though between an emotional reaction by an employee and a
company's policy.

edit - I read the thread, it appears to be one of the original researchers
from the project and a deliberate choice.

I thought PIA was fairly reputable - does anybody know any actual facts around
the incident?

~~~
bscphil
When you say "PIA", are you referring to PrivateInternetAccess, or did you
mean ProtonVPN?

~~~
jammygit
private internet access

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seibelj
Although the extortion is almost certainly false, this is a good moment for
protonmail users to review their opsec procedures. Relying on a central
authority for anything is risky, and the more valuable a central point becomes
the bigger a target it gets...

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amingilani
I'm glad ProtonMail exists and would gladly shift my family domain over if it
weren't so prohibitively expensive for the most basic of features :/

Although, I guess you get what you pay for. They're really communicative, even
for their free offering.

~~~
projektir
Maybe I'm misreading something, but they appear to cost 4 Euro a month. How is
that "prohibitively expensive"?

~~~
thomasfedb
FastMail tiers are US$3/5/9 per user per month, so €4 doesn't seem wildly
unreasonable.

~~~
jammygit
I used to use protonmail. I think the reason I switched to fastmail was the
calendar support and the ability to use thunderbird easily on linux. Possibly
to sync contacts easier too.

When protonmail introduces those I'll be taking another look at them, but
they're taking a while.

It was a nice service while I used it.

~~~
k_sze
How do FastMail, ProtonMail, and Migadu stack up against each other nowadays?

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raverbashing
Usual 4chan (and maybe ulterior actors) action, throw manure around, see what
sticks.

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xupybd
Why are those right wing conspiracy theories? Sorry I don’t really understand
the context. They just don’t seem to have any political content to me but that
is probably just ignorance on my part.

~~~
Caspy7
I think demonizing CNN is a favorite on the right and I know "Rampant
pedophilia among high ranking government officials" is big among QAnon folk.

~~~
jammygit
As an outsider to american politics, CNN seems a bit silly in how they present
information. Just my opinion though, they give off a weird vibe compared to
the boring news I prefer

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jerkstate
a 4chan larp ends up as a denial on hackernews? is this notable?

