[blairbeckwith]

Lack of POP/IMAP is a big, major con. You're forced to use their web or native interfaces. They don't make this super obvious outside of an FAQ on their site. I signed up and then found out. I wonder how much churn that causes them.

[rmorey]

You actually can use IMAP/SMTP with ProtonMail using their new bridge application (only on Windows and macOS right now, Linux "coming soon")

https://protonmail.com/bridge

[peatmoss]

Oh my, yes, that’s a huge downside / nonstarter for me. Thank you.

[zyrthofar]

I was about to switch in a couple of weeks, until I read your comment.

How would encrypted emails work in a client like Thunderbird? Would it normally be handled correctly if POP/IMAP was available?

[peatmoss]

This is the grand problem with email. At least two standards exist: PGP & SMIME

But... those aren’t particularly friendly and thus aren’t widely used. The main usability issue is a fundamental one, namely that management of crypto keys is hard.

Hearing that Protonmail requires their own client suggests to me that they’ve given up on the standards due to usability issues, and have instead adopted a managed key model like Apple’s iMessage.

iMessage is end-to-end encrypted, but Apple manages keys on your behalf. It’s not a bad compromise between privacy and usability depending on your threat model.

But, at this point I’m deeply suspicious of anything that isn’t standards based or that locks me into a particular vendor’s software. I’m therefore skeptical that we’ll satisfactorily solve email privacy for a majority of people in my lifetime.

EDIT: Thunderbird would work with Fastmail for encryption using PGP or SMIME (at least I think Thunderbird supports SMIME). Protonmail wouldn’t work, I’d guess.

[Boulth]

> Thunderbird would work with Fastmail for encryption using PGP or SMIME (at least I think Thunderbird supports SMIME).

Thunderbird supports SMIME natively, just like most of email clients. But of course there are some usability issues, like you need to enable encryption each time per email, or require it for all emails, there is no middle ground like "encrypt if I have keys, do not encrypt otherwise".

[bproven]

The other issue is inability to search your mail's message bodies in the web/mobile app. This is due to the encryption...

[Braxton_Hicks]

Do you have a link to where you read that?