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Proton’s Lumo AI chatbot: not end-to-end encrypted, not open source
(pivot-to-ai.com)
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this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2025
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Incoming Emails that aren't from proton, or PGP encrypted (which are like 99% of emails), arrives at Proton Servers via TLS which they decrypt and then have the full plaintext. This is not some conspiracy, this is just how email works.
Now, Proton and various other "encrypted email" services then take that plaintext and encypt it with your public key, then store the ciphertext on their servers, and then they're supposed to discard the plaintext, so that in case of a future court order, they wouldn't have the plaintext anymore.
But you can't be certain if they are lying, since they do necessarily have to have access to the plaintext for email to function. So "we can't read your emails" comes with a huge asterisk, it onlu applies to those sent between Proton accounts or other PGP encrypted emails, your average bank statement and tax forms are all accessible by Proton (you're only relying on their promise to not read it).
Ok yeah thats a far cry from Proton actually “Having your unencrypted emails on their servers” as if they’re not encrypted at rest.
There’s the standard layer of trust you need to have in a third party when you’re not self hosting. Proton has proven so far that they do in fact encrypt your emails and haven’t given any up to authorities when ordered to so I’m not sure where the issue is. I thought they were caught not encrypting them or something.
We need to call for an audit on Protons policy and see if they actually do what they say, that way we can know for almost certain that everything is good as they say
I mean we know from documented events that Proton doesn’t store you emails in plain text because there have been Swiss orders to turn over information which they have to comply with and they’ve never turned in emails, because they can’t.
Do you have a source for that? I know they handed over an IP address, but I haven't heard about them handing over an email.
As far as I know they have not handed over any emails.
That's what I thought, but you never know.
I hate it when people share this bullshit without proof, as far as I know Proton is still fighting for pro consumer and pro privacy laws and services.
See my other reply. There is no way to retrieve your mail using IMAP on a regular client if they're encrypted on the server. And Gmail can retrieve your mails from proton using IMAP. It's even in their own (proton's) documentation.
That is probably why you can’t retrieve your emails using IMAP from a regular client.
I don’t think it can. Where in the documentation did you find that?
An online search brought me here : https://www.getmailbird.com/setup/en/access-protonmail-com-via-imap-smtp which did looks like a documentation page about how to do exactly that. Obviously, it has nothing to do with them, and the actual details makes no sense the lower you get in the page. I've been had :)
They still can see most mails transit from their service in plaintext in both directions, though, which remain a privacy issue, but it has more to do with email protocols than anything.