On Sat, Jan 21, 2023 at 12:12 AM Keith Lofstrom <kei...@kl-ic.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 20, 2023 at 02:58:15PM -0800, Ben Koenig wrote: > > Well, it appears that Proton has made their decision and are blaming PLUG > > for this issue. > > > > Yes, that's correct. Proton Mail does not allow third-party services to > > send messages on our behalf. > > It's their party, they can cry if they want to. Protonmail > is useful as a privacy-protecting email service, but is not > useful as a general purpose tool. > > Perhaps we should explore alternatives to Protonmail that are > (1) zealously protective of privacy, and (2) compatible with > mailing lists like plug, and (3) incompatible with masquerade > by spammers ... which I suspect motivates Protonmail's policy. > > From the 10,000 foot level, email seems to be broken, diluted > by spam and abused by criminals, so perhaps we should find > (or invent and sell) better baskets to put our precious > communication eggs in. No clue how; I run my own email > server, and spend way too much time training spam filters. > > Keith > > -- > Keith Lofstrom kei...@keithl.com So I take issue with that approach. Not saying anyone has to change but there's a problem that everyone says they want to fix, but never actually does when the opportunity presents itself.. Protonmail is zealously protective at privacy, that's where it excels. The problem is that their implementation creates ambiguity and fails to take into consideration how email is actually used. My core problem is that if they communicated this effectively then it would be a decision on their end. Sales/Marketing tells me one thing, Support tells me something else. If anything they are literally over-zealous, to the point of embarking on an Inquisition to execute bad emails. Now most people in this situation would say "meh, moving on to someone else's product." But for me there's more to it. Forgive me for bringing politics in, but political systems are nothing more than a management system that reflects the cultures and societies that they manage. And right now much of the "developed" world is having a bit of a problem with things like facts, trust, and basic honesty. I mean, nobody here thinks Bill Gates is a good person, but we've all heard the conspiracy theories, right? It is easy to go and have an opinion here, but it's very different to actually root cause where the confusion and anger comes from. When companies (which are just big groups of people) get into a habit of misleading and in some cases, intentionally lying it creates problems for trust and throws off communication. We had an example of that here on PLUG not long ago. The discussion regarding censorship via Cloudflare was rooted in fear and concern. This invited someone attempting to correct the record, and honestly neither of them were wrong. But we all know there are issues with censorship, whether it be the result of malicious activity, technical failure, or even the fact that someone can, if they felt the urge to cut someone off. I mean right now, Protonmail is silently dropping their own users' emails. And what makes this so strange to me is that they have the technical infrastructure to A) determine that an email might be spoofed and B) notify the user. This is good, make identity verification something that I (the User) am in full control of. Instead they are deciding that in the case of other Proton users, drop the message, tell the recipient nothing, and move on. A potentially legit message disappearing without a trace. No warning, no FAQ, and no marketing material that tells me such a thing may happen? That's sketchy, super fucking sketchy. Email isn't broken, people are. Even those of us who claim to have knowledge in this area have been known to do things incorrectly. Running from one vendor to the next isn't going to change anything - You just keep running. -Ben
