…email will inherently be a lot less secure than messaging, no matter what you do.
If you truly want to be private about something, don’t email it lol
this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2026
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Is it really so hard to make it secure? If both parties are using some kind of secure email client, couldn't the clients just encrypt and decrypt the subject/content?
no matter what you do.
Even PGP?
...TBF, getting your counterparty to also use PGP is the heavy lift there.
Security yes, privacy not especially.
PGP lets you encrypt the messages and sign them to digitally prove you sent them.
It doesn't help with the problem here which is that the metadata of who you are (the IP used to log into the webmail and the email address of the sender) and who you're talking to (the email of the recipient) and when (timestamps etc.) were able to be leaked.
In fact, depending on the implementation, PGP could be considered slightly worse for privacy because you'd have the added identity proof of the message having a signature that only you could create with your private key (although that's encrypted, it's a stronger identity proof than the sender email address). It also generally leaks the recipients' key IDs too (although that's configurable) PGP is great for accountability, message confidentiality and non-repudiation. Not so much for privacy. For that you'd need other systems.
Good point re: metadata. Keeping that private is an underrated aspect of security.
Or go talk to the other person out in the middle of a field somewhere without your phones. And I'm not even 100% sure anymore that that would work. Like, maybe the lanternflies are bugged (pun intended).
Well I'd suggest a forest instead but anyway depends how you get there :
- look up online how? there might be now a path on a server to your target destination
- disconnect phone in a pattern that's usually not how you use it? more surveillance
- public transport tracking, plate tracking until you leave the city
- rough estimation on your direction then follow up with drones tracking you, if it's 100m high it's hard to notice
... anyway, ending the paranoia comment ;)
Don't forget facial recognition! Then just in case you decided to wear a mask, gait recognition!
The bird surveillance system is always watching. Remember birds aren't real!
Flying tape recorders.
When a service can only hand over a timestamp, that’s when you know the encryption is doing its job. 🔐
This comparison makes no sense.
Signal doesn't have payment data. It's not a paid service. Proton is a paid subscription service and that payment data needs to be accessible in order to charge the user and they're not a payment processor.
The fact that it's a paid service doesn't mean they have to keep your PID and payment info on file. I use posteo.de for my email, which is a paid service. But my payment info is only used during the payment process and they don't keep it on file once they receive the payment. You buy like 12 or 20 months and have that many credits. When it starts to get low, you buy some more.
Proton let me delete the payment information between charges, but they certainly made it a painful process. I had to email support
Interesting system! Correct me if I'm wrong though, but buying credits does look like it's not an automatically recurring payment (to buy credits), so that makes sense (they do keep the receipts though according to their privacy policy. Decoupled from the account, but they do keep data).
That's a bit different from Proton's credit card payment method (which is the case here) that automatically recurs. If Posteo offered automatically recurring payments, they'd have to save payment data as well (which they also explain in the privacy policy).
To be clear, Proton does also offer more private ways of paying. Paying by credit card is not the only option. Bitcoin or cash is also possible. I just found out that Proton does also actually offer a credit system as well, but it's unclear to me if that's decoupled or not. Definitely a place where they could do better.
Right, it's not automatically recurring. If you get below some number of credits (I forget how many), they notify you (by email of course!) so you have plenty of time to buy some more.
What if a user donates to Signal?
Not sure, they do seem to store something (pretty unclear what though), but I'm guessing that can be fully decoupled from a user's account, since it's unrelated to the actual service.
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That is exactly what they did, the user used a credit card with their damn name on it, while Proton even allows you to send them cash money for the service.
The FBI filed a MLAT (Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty) request which was processed by the Swiss Federal Department of Justice and Police.
The Swiss gave a legal binding order to Proton to hand over information that they had, the only information that was handed over was the payment identifier.
I don't get why people get hung up on a company complying with a legal order by their justice system, especially with Proton that could not hand over any more information.
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Service A is compelled to hand over all the data it has on a user
They comply
Service B is compelled to hand over all the data it has on a user
They comply
"And that's how it's done!"
Proton has the disadvantage of having to work with other email services as well, so there's protocol limitations. When mailing from one Proton mailbox to another, they do intentionally avoid SMTP for this reason, but Signal has the advantage of "owning" the whole protocol, too.
I imagine if you donate with a CC to Signal, they might also be forced to turn that over. The weakness is not in Signal or Proton, but in the Visa/Mastercard duopoly and CC processing in general. Cryptocurrency has some advantages here, but they are outweighed by the abuse, fraud, speculation, and general dishonestly (and just general failure to be good currencies for "normal" purchases.)
The criticism is that better privacy can be achieved by not saving data, it is a good criticism but I don't know how legit it is because I don't know if credit card payments can be processed without saving the data (i would assume yes, if tokenized)
Just saw someone claim Signal was a honeypot the other day, no sources of course. Then this info comes out.
I hate this sentiment. I was part of a bachelor party, and we had a group chat going. Had Android/iPhone users, so it was just a MMS chat. I suggested we use signal, and one of the iPhone users goes on a rant
"I'm not gonna use Signal. It's just a honeypot for the CIA. Why else would they fund it if they didn't get any value out of. It's obviously a honey pot"
Do they think MMS is magically invisible?
I'm not gonna use Signal. It's just a honeypot for the CIA.
No you're thinking of telegram.
So there is actually disinfo about it being funded by the CIA. I had heard it was, and tbh didn't care too much. I figured they funded it because they used it and got value. It's well audited so I trust it. Only learned it's disinfo when I looked for a source to include in my original reply
https://euvsdisinfo.eu/report/us-intelligences-services-control-the-signal-app/
It is goofy for sure. Nobody that claims it is one ever supplies proof beyond “trust me, bro” or they get screechy and hostile when you ask for sources.
Host your own matrix server
Don't hate the player. You can't send mail with E2E encrypted headers and you can't leave payment data and expect Proton to violate regulations and delete it.
Signal has to deal with neither of these issues.
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God, I wish more people used Signal
I've been using Signal more to test if I can recommend it to other people... it's mostly like WhatsApp, which is good...
Except, can we please disable all of those god damn popups. Everyday: "Hey! Verify your pin!", "Hey! Verify your LONG ASS recovery key!", "Hey, plz donate!", "HEY! I couldn't start a backup", "HEY LOOK AT ME!"
I've never had a single one of those prompts or notifications... Now I'm worried I've done it wrong.
- I have never been asked to verify my recovery key.
- It asks to verify pin once a month. Which I think is fair, since it can help you recover from a lockout / transfer your device.
- backups are important, but they can also be disabled
- Donating to open source projects is important, as it's a large portion of their funding.
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I don't like Proton after the CEO posted the pro-Trump statement and did not use them after that.
Its really weird how people are blaming Protonmail when it was the Swiss government that complied with the FBI. That to me is really suspicious. The US government is currently not a trusted source of accuracy, and for the Swiss to readily agree to it?
Worse, the chuds blaming the proton user?
Protonmail is used by a lot of reporters/whistleblowers. As what point is their work also a threat to the US government and will the Swiss force Protonmail to hand that over too?
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One is a messenger the other is using the e-mail protocols, aren't there differences in how the metadata is possible to be encrypted between those too. Just wonder if this is a fair comparison.
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