Are private email providers worth it? (lemmy.zip)

submitted 1 week ago by notarobot@lemmy.zip to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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I think I know the answer, bit maybe I'm missing something

Since proton only sends and receives encrypted emails to other proton accounts, that means that when you get or send an email to someone else, they have to send / receive unencrypted and there is no way for us to verify what they are doing. Right?

Also if most accounts are google Microsoft, they still get 90% of my emails. By switching to proton I think I've gained nothing, while losing convenience , added another trust point, and having two different companies have my data instead of just one

Proton drive, calendar and VPN I think are fine

Sorry for the poor syntax. I'm at work working on email related things, and this topic kept distracting me. I might correct it later

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[-] sjmulder@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 1 week ago

Note that ProtonMail actually supports automatic encryption to email accounts that publish their public keys in a Web Key Directory, which I’ve set up for mine. When you type such an email address in the To field, it’ll turn into a special color with a lock symbol.

Likewise, ProtonMail also exposed a WKD so people can send encrypted emails to ProtonMail accounts. I don’t know of any mail clients that support this though (I used the command line to pull keys)

[-] Jason2357@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago

Wow, til I learn about WKD! I used to have a key on keyservers, but hated how that was basically a spam trap and the fact that anyone could upload a key there for my own address. It was easy because I own my own domain and already have a web server there.

I set it up and tested it with help from https://www.webkeydirectory.com/

Looks like it's being added to clients: https://wiki.gnupg.org/WKD/DistributionOfWKD

this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2025

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