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Fastmail vs Proton Mail
(lemm.ee)
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this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2024
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Privacy
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What vendor lock-in are you talking about?
I can take my domain, customize DNS records and in a couple of minutes I am using a new provider. They also allow to export email content, which means I obviously don't lose anything.
With a free email account, you are anyway locked-in as with every provider, because you are using their domain. You can set automatic forwarding in that case.
Vendor lock exists when you invest substantial amount of work to build tools around a specific platform (say, AWS), or where you have no way to easily take the data from one platform out and use something else to do the same thing (say, Meta).
The fact that you can't use SMTP, which is a protocol that requires data on the server is not a vendor lock-in in any sense of the word. It's a decision that depends on having that content e2e encrypted, because the two things are simy incompatible.
Also the code for all Proton clients and the bridge is open source, and the bridge is essentially a client that emulates being a server so that you can use your preferred tools to access the emails. Even in this scenario, there is no vendor lock and all it takes is changing the configuration of your tool from the local bridge address to whatever SMTP server you want to use elsewhere.
Can you please describe in which way you are actually locked-in, to show that you have a clue about what the word means?
No, they aren't. There are lots of ways to do e2e encryption on e-mail over SMTP (OpenPGP, S/MIME etc.). SMTP itself also supports TLS for secure server-to-server communications (or server-to-client in submission contexts) as well as header minimization options to prevent metadata leakage. And Proton decided NOT to use any of those proven solutions and go for some obscure propriety thing instead because it fits their business better and makes development faster.
The bridge exists yet, you can only run in certain devices AND it only exists until they allow it to exist. You don't know if there are rate limits on the bridge usage and other small details that may restrict your ability to move large amounts of email around.
Decent providers will give you an export option that will export all your e-mail using industry standard formats such as mbox and maildir. Do you know what Proton does? They provide you a convoluted mess of EML files + metadata as JSON files that you can't import to another service without some data loss. Same goes for Contacts and Calendars.
E-mail, contacts, calendars, notes and whatnot is one of the few truly open and truly interoperable solutions we still have nowadays. Protocols like IMAP, POP3, SMTP, WebDAV, CardDAV, CalDAV make it so you can have e-mail at any provider, talk to people from other providers and use any client application you would like - not like the bullshit that Whatsapp, Messenger, Telegram, Signal and others that that you can only communicate with people using the same provider.
Proton mail is so closed that you can't even sync your Proton mail contacts / calendars with iOS or Android - you can only use their closed source mail client to access that data or the webui. Not even Apple, the most anti-competitive and closed company in the world, holds your contacts and calendars hostage - they allow you to sync with ANY CardDAV and CalDAV server and their iCloud service also supports those protocols so you can use it any 3rd party client.
Proton doesn't respect the open internet by not basing their services on those protocols and then they feed miss-information (like the thing about e2e encryption being impossible on SMTP) and by using it you're just contributing to a less open Internet.
im not involved in this discussion really but i wanna add a couple things.
Proton is the only e2ee email provider that uses PGP interoperability, because they are trying to be more open, and also means that anyone can do e2ee with you not just other proton accounts. this is different from skiff, tuta, etc
also their export tool allows mbox, contrary to what you said.
From their own documentation:
https://proton.me/support/export-import-emails
you haven't used the tool. but ok lol.
Yes, and that requires using a client. The JS code of the webclient and the bridge are clients for PGP.
TLS is completely pointless in this conversation. TLS is a point-to-point protocol and it's not e2e where the definition of the "ends" are message recipient and sender (i.e., their client applications), it only protects the transport from your client to the server, then the server terminates the connection and has access to the plaintext data. Proton also uses TLS, but again, it has no use whatsoever for e2ee.
They didn't do anything obscure, they have opensource clients that do PGP encryption similar to how your web client would do. Doing encryption on the client is the only way to ensure the server can't have access to the content of the emails. It just happens that the client is called "proton bridge" or "proton web" instead of OpenPGP.
It's their official product, and anyway it's not a blocker for anything. They stop giving you the bridge? You move in less than 1h to another provider.
Do you know that there are, or are we arguing on hypotheticals?
True. You can still get the data out, whether they don't do in a "best practice" way or not. It's not vendor lock.
https://github.com/ProtonMail. All the mail clients are opensource.
Also, WebDAV, CardDAV, CalDAV do not support e2ee. You need once again a client that extends it, which is what Proton also does!
So the question is very simple: do you prefer e2ee or you prefer native plain caldav/webdav/carddav? If the answer for you is the latter, Proton is simply a product that is not for you. If you prefer the former, then Proton does it. Either way, this is not again vendor-lock. They allow you to export contacts and calendar in a standard format, and you can move to a new provider.
SMTP does not allow e2ee by definition. I am not sure whether you don't understand SMTP or how e2ee works, but SMTP is a protocol based on the server having access to the content. The only way you can do e2ee is using a client that encyrpts the content, like PGP (which is what Proton uses), before sending it to the server. This is exactly what happens with Proton, the webclients use SMTP to talk to proton server but before that they do client-side encryption (using PGP), exactly like you would do with any other client (see https://github.com/search?q=repo%3AProtonMail%2FWebClients%20smtp&type=code).
Now, you made a claim, which is that Proton vendor locks you:
So your claim that you are vendor locked it's simply false, deal with it.
You made some additional claims about Proton not using plain standard protocols. That's true. None of those protocols support e2ee, so they wrote clients that extend those protocols. All clients are opensourced, including the bridge. This has anyway nothing to do with being vendor locked, which in fact you completely did not explain. You talked about interoperability at most, which is not related to vendor lock.
You also made additional uniformed or false claims:
So tell me, why is it that Proton simply didn't go for OpenPGP + SMTP + IMAP and simply build a nice web / desktop client for it and kept it compatible with all the other generic solutions out there? What's the point? Why can't Proton be just a simple way to get OpenPGP working for anyone who doesn't have the tech knowledge / time instead of a bunch of proprietary solutions?
The old Lavabit service (before Snowden) was a good example of how you can keep email secure while still providing generic IMAP/SMTP access. It worked, even better than everyone expected. While their model wasn't perfect they indeed solved the problem.
It isn't and I hope I'm never proven right about Proton for your own sake.
Yes you move if you can. Once you've about a TB of e-mail good luck on their export with all the missing metadata. :)
It has all to do with vendor lock-in and it is already explained. If a company uses shady stuff that restricts interoperability by definition it is a form of vendor lock-in as you won't be able to move to another provider as quickly and fast as you might with others.
And it is, because there's specific metadata that might get leaked on email headers if not minimized by other techniques that will get protected with TLS between servers. It isn't perfect but it's better than having email servers delivering PGP mail over plain text connections. You should be ashamed of yourself for even suggesting that there's no usefulness whatsoever for this use case.
No. I never said they were, but here's how decent companies deal with that: they encrypt the data in transit (using TLS) and when stored on their servers by using key store and that is itself encrypted with your login password / hash / derivation or some similar technique. When a device want's to retrieve the information then the server uses the submitted password to decrypt the key and then it uses it to decrypt the information and sends it to the client.
You clearly have bought into their propaganda but oh well think whatever you want, you're the one using the service and it's your data that will be hostage after all.
How is this relevant? I don't know and I don't care why they picked this technical solution.
It is, and you have been proven wrong. Either that, or you completely misuse or worse misunderstand what vendor lock is.
It's not if. You can.
Yes, you explained interoperability that has nothing to do with vendor lock. They are two. different. things.
False. Again. Interoperability it's a property that has to do with using the application. Interoperable applications potentially can totally vendor lock. Lemmy interoperates with Mastodon, but vendor locks you because you can not export everything and port all your content away. You definition is wrong. Just admit you misused the term and move on, there is no need to double down.
They use TLS. TLS is useful for transport security. Proton uses TLS. TLS doesn't have anything to do with e2ee in the context of emails because TLS is always terminated by the server. Therefore it is by definition not an e2ee protocol in this context. It is in the context of web, because there the two "ends" are your browser and the web server. It's not in the context of messaging where the other "end" is another client.
This has nothing to do with perfection, you are simply misunderstanding fundamentally what e2ee is in this context.
And in fact Proton doesn't do that.
I am not ashamed because I understand TLS, and I understand that it's useless in the context of email e2ee. You simply don't understand the topic but feel brave enough to evangelize on the internet about something you don't fully understand.
JFC. Proton uses TLS for transit connections. E2EE means that the server does not have access to the data. If the server has the key, in whatever form, and can perform a decryption, it's not e2ee. The only way to have e2ee for these protocols is that the client(s) and only the clients do the encryption/decryption operations. This is exactly what Proton clients do. They use DAV protocols but they extend them with implementing encryption on the client side. Therefore, naturally, by design, they are not compatible with servers which -instead- expect data unencrypted to serve it, unencrypted (only via TLS, which again, it's a transport protocol, has nothing to do with application data) to other clients.
Ironically, when saying what "decent companies" do, you have described what Proton does: they use your client key to encrypt data on client side. Then they transfer this data via a secure channel (TLS). The server has no keys and sees only encrypted data, and serves such data to other clients (Proton web, android etc.) that do the decryption/encryption operation back. Underlying it's still CalDAV/WebDAV.
I don't need to buy propaganda, I am a security professional and do this stuff for a living. I also understand what vendor lock is because all the companies I ever worked with had forms of vendor lock, and I am aware of Proton features instead.
Maybe you should really stop, reflect and evaluate if you really have the competence to make certain claims on the internet. I understand nobody is there keeping score and there are no consequences, but you are honestly embarassing yourself and spreading false information due to the clear lack of understanding about concepts such as e2ee, transport security, vendor locking, etc.
Your just focusing on strict technical definitions and completely ignoring the context of things. I described before how TLS is useful in the context of some SMTP e2e encrypted solution.
Yet they don't provide the information in standard protocols...
I never questioned that. With SMTP you can do true e2ee using PGP and friends, with CalDAV/WebDAV you'll need to have some kind of middle man doing the encryption and decryption - it's a fair trade off for a specific problem. The original question here wasn't about CalDAV/WebDAV but about SMTP where you can have true e2ee. Your previous comment of "SMTP requires server to access the data" is simply wrong.
Do you have any proof that they use CalDAV/CardDAV? Most likely they don't. In the same way they don't do IMAP/SMTP.
Get over yourself and your purist approaches, when a company provides a service that is standardized in a specific set of protocols and they decide to go ahead and implement their own stuff it is, at least, a subtle, form of vendor lock-in. End of story.
Yes, mentioning things that have not to do with e2ee. Anything that is encrypted with TLS is not e2ee in the context of emails. You talked about metadata, but the server has access to those because it terminates the connection, therefore, they are not e2ee. It's a protection against leakage between you and the server (and between server and other server, and between server and the destination of your email), not between you and the destination, hence, irrelevant in the context of e2ee. Metadata such as destination can obviously never be e2ee, otherwise the server wouldn't know where to send the email, and since it needs access to it, it's not e2ee, whether you use TLS or not. TLS in this context doesn't contribute at all to end to end encryption. Your definition is wrong, e2ee is a technical definition, is not an abstract thing: e2ee means that only the two ends of a conversation have access to the data encrypted. TLS is by definition between you and your mail server, hence it doesn't provide any benefit in the context of e2ee. It is useful, but for other reasons that have nothing to do with e2ee.
Exactly, and this is what Proton does. You simply don't accept that Proton decided to write another client that is tightly coupled with their mail service, which is absolutely nothing malicious or vendor-locky, compared to using an already made client. Proton is simply PGP + SMTP.
Yes, and this middle-man is proton client, which sits on the client's side. I am glad you understood how the only way to have e2ee with *DAV automatically technically impedes you to use "whatever server". If anybody else but the client does the encryption/decryption, you lost the end-to-end part. I am not saying e2ee in this context is absolutely necessary, you might not care and value more the possibility to plug other *DAV servers, good. Proton is not for you in that case.
Yes, you can using a PGP client, like OpenPGP of Proton webmail, or Proton bridge. You need stuff on top of SMTP.
Nope, you are simply misinterpreting it. In SMTP the server requires access to the data because it's the one delivering it. PGP is built so that the data it's a ciphertext and not plaintext, so that the server can't see the actual content of the mail, but it needs to have the data and ship it, in contrast for example to a p2p protocol. PGP is however on top of SMTP and requires a client doing it for you. OpenPGP or Proton do exactly this. There is no way to support SMTP "natively" and offer e2ee. You would like Proton not to do e2ee and leave the responsibility of the client to do the PGP part, with the freedom of picking whatever client you want? Well, that's exactly the opposite of their business model, since what they aimed is to make PGP de-facto transparent to the users so that it's available even to people who are not advanced users.
https://github.com/search?q=org%3AProtonMail+CalDAV&type=code you can dig yourself into the code if you are curious to understand.
I sent you already a GIthub search of their clients for SMTP, look for yourself in the code. Do you think that makes any sense at all for them to reinvent the wheel and come up with ad-hoc protocols when all they need is a client? You can also have a look at the job offers they post: https://boards.eu.greenhouse.io/proton/jobs/4294852101 You can see SMTP mentioned and experience with Postfix in production. It's very likely that they are running that in the background.
No it's not. Vendor lock means:
Proton uses open standards, and just builds clients that wrap them. This means, emails are in a format that can easily be imported elsewhere, same for Calendar and Contacts. You are now watering down the definition of vendor lock to try to make your claim less wrong, but it is wrong. I repeat, and you are welcome to prove me wrong:
This means that I can change vendor easily without significant cost, hence I am not locked-in.
What you actually mean is that while using Proton you can't interoperate easily with other tools, and this is a by-design compromise to have e2ee done in the way they wanted to make it, which is available to mainstream population. You disagree with their approach? Absolutely legitimate, you prefer to use OpenPGP, handle keys and everything yourself? Then for sure, Proton is not worth for you as you can choose the tools you want if that's important for you. But there is no vendor-lock, they simply bundled together the email client with the PGP client, so that you don't have the full flexibility of separating the two.
You disagree with this definition of vendor lock? Awesome, give me your definition and link some source that use that definition. Because if you keep moving the goalpost and redefine what vendor lock means, there is no point to discuss.