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It’s misleading marketing. They sell their email service as “E2EE”, even though the majority of emails flowing through their system are in fact NOT end to end encrypted, they’re visible to Proton in plaintext upon receipt. This is a fundamental limitation of email protocols. You only get E2EE by using PGP at both ends.



Indeed, and as far as I understand, even PGP-encrypted mail can be automatically forwarded and viewed easily, provided I have the correct PGP key installed in my client.


> You only get E2EE by using PGP at both ends.

That's true for all email though, right? What is Protons value add?


This is a matter of semantics... anyone who actually cares about E2EE probably understands the nature of email being cleartext over the wire and that Proton can't control what is outside of their control. Maybe inaccurate but I doubt they are misleading (in the sense that they are hoping to fool people into thinking their email is encrypted over the wire).

Marketing copy would not likely care to include "E2EE" .... "at the point that Protonmail recieves your message" on their frontpage.

Further, this is explain quite clearly on their FAQ: https://proton.me/support/proton-mail-encryption-explained

</pearlclutching>


I’m gonna start selling sugar-free soda and when people point out that there is sugar in the soda I’ll explain to them that the sugar was added to the mixture by a different supplier before the mixture arrived at my factory.

My factory does not add any sugar to the soda. Therefore it’s clearly fair to market it as sugar-free!


"...No sugars added!"




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