this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2024
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You upload your private key to the cloud. Encrypted or not, this is a bad idea. No thanks. I can do the signing locally and then I'll do the decryption with my own private key locally without them storing it as well.
Edit: mixed public keys with private keys
An encrypted key is a useless blob. What matters is the decryption key for that key, which is your password (or a key derived from it, I assume), which is client side.
They can't sign with your public key. Signing is done using your private one, otherwise nobody can verify the signature.
Either way:
You can do it using the bridge, exactly like you would with any client-side tooling.
It's still insecure. They decryption process is still in the proton company hands and they could add some client specific code to log the password on the fly. Proton is obliged to follow the swiss law and I can imagine situation that police asks proton (+ gag order ) to log certain data for specific clients like passwords and ips. Still private keys are better to be stored separately. You can sync them easily if you with with either rsync or rclone
It's not "insecure", it's simply a supply chain risk. You have the same exact problem with any client software that you might use. There are still jurisdictions, there are still supply chain attacks. The posture is different simply by a small tradeoff: business incentive and size for proton as pluses vs quicker updates (via JS code) and slower updates vs worse security and dependency on a handful of individuals in case of other tools.
Any software that makes the crypto operations can do stuff with the keys if compromised or coerced by law enforcement to do so.
In any case, if this tradeoff doesn't suit you, the bridge allows you to use your preferred tool, so this is kinda of a moot point.
The main argument for me is that if you rely on mail and gpg not to get caught by those who can coerce proton, you are already failing.
I used bridge for many years. It was totally unusable - 1) you cannot delete emails with it ( deleted emails were coming back ), 2) synchronization issues so it made me move to another "plain and simple" email provider offering pop3 and imap and also gpg integration ( but without that e2e hype talk )
I can't comment on this, since I don't use the bridge for a while. But it's just an IMAP/SMTP server, so not sure why certain features wouldn't work. What service did you end up using which has gpg integration?
I used protonmail for 3 years - bridge issues have been being ignored by protonmail support in my opinion. "Clean cache and try again". I stopped using protonmail and switched to mailbox.org. So far so good.
From what I read though, the GPG security model for mailbox.org is the same as it is for Proton webmail (except for the browser plugin, where the difference is not really there). I like mailbox.org, to be clear, but I don't get how it is an alternative to the bridge.
I don't use mailbox gpg sevice simple as that. I use mailbox perfect imap (k-9) / pop3 (desktop) integration and use gpg natively in case if that person uses gpg. Thunderbird (desktop), k-9 with openkeychain on android. I don't say proton is bad. It's quite good if you never want to export mails outside our webmail. I do want it so protonmail is not for me. Most my protonmail issues were with their bridge they, until the moment I migrated to mailbox, have not resolved.
Oh that makes sense. Yeah, definitely simple encryption and exported (unencrypted) emails are not going to work together.
I am all in support for European tech companies, so I think that mailbox.org, tuta, proton etc. Are all good options.