all 8 comments

[–][deleted] 5 insightful - 3 fun5 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 3 fun -  (4 children)

Neither are particularly secure because you cannot trust proton or tutanotas 3rd party encryption, only your own PGP key. But it is possible to register for protonmail over tor from their .onion site. You may need to restart the browser a few times to get a clean exit node. Once one gets blacklisted by too many people registering from it, they take away the captcha and force you to enter some sort of identifying info, but it can be done with a little persistence, I have a couple. This is the most anonymous you are going to get, it is very difficult to find email services you can register like that, I'm not aware of any others that wont get automatically listed as spam if you try to email someone.

As long as you only access that account through your tor browser, and keep identifying info out of the messages you can probably safely assume you are anonymous. If you want secure, just use gmail and PGP, but keep in mind that any messages that arent sent to you from people encrypting them on any service are visible to that service, even if you encrypt all your outgoing messages, which would require all your recipients to have PGP keys as well.

If you really need both anonymous and secure, you probably shouldn't use email at all. Something like Signal or similar registered with a phony number is your best bet for that

[–]JasonCarswell[S] 1 insightful - 3 fun1 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 3 fun -  (3 children)

Didn't know you were a security expert too.

Larry likes the TOR too. We kept talking about setting up a open source VPN and a TOR portal on my indie server and my VPN, but nothing ever happened.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 3 fun2 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 3 fun -  (2 children)

Larry actually clued me in to the fact it was possible to register anonymously for protonmail over tor.

As much as I am flattered by your expert label, I can't actually take credit for being a security expert, I just know the fundamentals and have had similar issues finding good email solutions where anonymity and security are concerned

[–]JasonCarswell[S] 1 insightful - 3 fun1 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 3 fun -  (1 child)

I guess the rest of us, including me, don't even know the fundamentals.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 3 fun2 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

I guess the rest of us, including me, don't even know the fundamentals.

Yes, I suppose expertise is a relative concept. Compared to someone who doesn't program computers for a living, yeah its fair to say I'm an expert, but there are also people who inside the field of computer science are 'security experts' and I cannot honestly profess to be one of those. My boss would say 'Phooey is a good programmer', but he would not say 'Phooey is a qualified expert on security' even if he generally trusts me to secure apps and websites according to best practices. If we had any kind of sophisticated attack however, I would not be the expert they call in to save the day

[–]Alphix 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

I wouldn't trust proton mail. I don't recall exactly why, but I've put it on my "avoid" mental list, after seeing reasons.

I like tutanota, and also have used oldies like hushmail.com, safe-mail.net and others like these.

[–]JasonCarswell[S] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Thanks. Good to know too.

Added to this thing I'm working on to launch for my local folks.
https://Projex.Wiki/wiki/WEFringe_group_email_lists

[–]JasonCarswell[S] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

https://Proton.me/mail — “Get a private, secure, and encrypted email”

https://Tutanota.com — “Secure mail for everyone!”

Tutanota: Encrypted Open Source Email Service for Privacy Minded People (2019-11-09) https://ItsFOSS.com/tutanota-review/

ProtonMail vs. Tutanota: Which Is the Best Secure Email Provider? (2021-03-29) https://www.HowToGeek.com/718159/protonmail-vs.-tutanota-which-is-the-best-secure-email-provider