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ProtonMail Adds Tor Onion Site To Fight Risk Of State Censorship (techcrunch.com)

Posted by msmash on from the secure-mails dept.

ProtonMail now has a home on the dark web. The encrypted email provider announced Thursday it will allow its users to access the site through the Tor anonymity service. From a report: Swiss-based PGP end-to-end encrypted email provider, ProtonMail, now has an onion address, allowing users to access its service via a direct connection to the Tor anonymizing network -- in what it describes as an active measure aimed at defending against state-sponsored censorship. The startup, which has amassed more than two million users for its e2e encrypted email service so far, launching out of beta just over a year ago, says it's worried about an increased risk of state-level blocking of pro-privacy tools -- pointing to recent moves such as encryption messaging app Signal being blocked in Egypt, and the UK passing expansive surveillance legislation that mandates tracking of web activity and can also require companies to eschew e2e encryption and backdoor products. The service also saw a bump in sign ups after the election of Donald Trump as US president, last fall -- with web users apparently seeking a non-US based secure email provider in light of the incoming commander-in-chief's expansive digital surveillance powers.

4 of 26 comments (clear)

  1. ProtonMail users by colin_faber · · Score: 4, Informative

    I've been a user since their beta days, and I can say the service generally works well with a few exceptions in the UI. Most notably it's slow, very slow, and the TOR interface seems to be even slower. Combine that with lack of features (like mailbox purge) and mandatory space constraints it makes the service very hard to use for day to day messaging needs. That all said, I really do like the service and find the entire concept of browser based encrypted UI, with encryption handler happing within the browser itself very interesting and a neat way forward (possibly for larger sites like gmail in the future).

    1. Re:ProtonMail users by CronoCloud · · Score: 4, Informative

      Why not use PGP with a real e-mail client? ProtonMail doesn't support keyservers or downloading pubkeys to a keyring which adds a few annoyances to the process of sending/recieving ProtonMail with someone using PGP on a real client.

      Also if your pubkey is newer than this one:

      pub   1024D/C9E6D134 1999-09-26
      uid                  Colin Faber <cfaber@fpsn.net>
      sub   3072g/9220F7D1 1999-09-26

      You might want to upload it to the keyservers and at it your Slashdot profile here:

      https://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=edituser

      Then it will be available at http://slashdot.org/~colin_faber/pubkey

  2. Re:They DIDN'T sign up because of Trump... by srg33 · · Score: 1, Informative

    Time to feed the troll?
    Both the summary and the article clearly state that "The service also saw a bump in sign ups after the election of Donald Trump as US president ..."
    So, AC learn to read and come back later.

  3. Link missing by zdzichu · · Score: 3, Informative

    Summary lacks the most important thing: link to the site itself - https://protonirockerxow.onion... .

    --
    :wq