Just tried it out with my proton account. Looks great! It’s very simple, but I also like that about it. And of course being private is wonderful.
Simplicity is an underrated feature. I’m really excited to see this come out because I’m becoming a bigger fan of proton every day.
I don’t see anything different… How did you access it?
It’s rolling out slowly. I got access to it yesterday :)
How is it private?
Today we’re announcing a new end-to-end encrypted, collaborative document editor that puts your privacy first. Docs in Proton Drive are built on the same privacy and security principles as all our services, starting with end-to-end encryption. Docs let you collaborate in real time, leave comments, add photos, and store your files securely. Best of all, it’s all private — even keystrokes and cursor movements are encrypted.
Literally the second paragraph of the post (but I’m sure you haven’t read it, since you seem so busy replying to every comment here about how Proton is becoming Microsoft or something).
So sending a company your private key and trusting their servers to do E2E encryption despite them being able to modify their code whenever they feel like it to capture your password without encryption and masked in obfuscated JavaScript is now considered security? Wow, people really are gullible.
I agree with your general sentiment here (that such an arrangement is not trustworthy enough for me to feel completely private) but your delivery of said sentiment is really fucking rude, dude.
Even if it’s not secure enough for you or I to feel private, it likely exceeds the security necessary to satisfy most people’s threat models so they can not only feel private but objectively be more private than if they just used Google docs.
incremental or opportunistic privacy improvements are better than none, a fact that has seemed to be lost in elitist privacy circles these days.
He’s wrong about what he said, too. You do not send Proton your private key.
Incremental in what way? There is an illusion of privacy. If that makes people feel good then sure, you increase your illusion of privacy.
Dude, you’ve made your point on virtually every comment on this thread. We get it, you don’t trust them. The world has given all of us every reason not to blindly trust this sort of thing. But I’ve done enough digging that I’M happy with the security, and the fact they’re not feeding my private content to the AI monster.
Please, for the love of the flying spaghetti monster, don’t keep spamming EVERYONE with the same 3 points you’ve already made elsewhere.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about ? You’re not sending your private key to their server without first encrypting it first locally. Their servers are not doing the E2EE, your client is. The website front and apps are open source.
Yes they could send you a compromised front if you use it via their website, that’s a compromise you accept, otherwhise you could only use their apps which are open source.
Tell me… when you visit a website that gets updated daily, if not hourly. If it served you a different version of JavaScript than what it served someone else… would you know?
I already answered that. Yes you can’t trust a website’s content, that’s why they offer apps. It’s your choice to trust the website which is as secure as they can make it, or you simply use the apps…
Last I checked the apps are mostly just wrappers around WebView, so either way you’re getting served different content randomly without ever knowing. AND, Proton specifically prevents the desktop apps from functioning on unpaid accounts. That would be like Gmail disabling IMAP for unpaid users.
How does a WebView wrapped app offer much more security than a website? Why do they require a paid subscription to use the desktop apps?
ooooh I love this. Proton is just winning constantly these days.
No they’re not. They can’t even finish a single solution, let alone actually make anything functional when you’re not using their proprietary servers. They’re becoming Microsoft.
They can’t finish a single solution
Gee, it’s almost as if that’s the whole point of an ever-evolving SaaS platform.
Releasing unfinished products and expect users to just make do while they launch the next product can’t be the solution either.
Then it’s a good thing all of their products are fully functional and working as advertised, I guess.
Sure, whatever you want to belief :)
Which bits are not functional? I’m using their email and calendar… they aren’t completely polished, but they’re very usable.
Drive has no Linux client, Photos is extremely barebones and locks you basically in, as there is no export function.
Pass still has no proper SimpleLogin integration, no credit card support and UX wise is the browser extension pretty bad. Funny enough, years after launch you still can’t auto fill on Reddit.
The only thing I don’t like about Mail is that you still have to create reverse aliases through SimpleLogin. Better integration would be great.
Contacts still don’t sync to you local mobile contacts. Which means you either do it manually or you have to keep two sets updated.
Calendar is good too, I’ve heard it has no offline support though. Although I haven’t verified that.
Last thing I would like to see is notification support without Play Services.
Some of those things might be super unimportant to some, but for me it makes the use of their stuff unnecessary cumbersome. Especially if you consider that those are all Proton products and should work together well.
My by far biggest problem is their communication and general development speed though. Stuff like contact sync has been requested for 5(?) years now but there hasn’t been so much as a “we’re working on it”.
It feels to me they come out with new products all the time, like the document editor now, without addressing the little things that would make their ecosystem great.
Anyway, long ramble. But I appreciate that you asked for more details without insulting me.
A SaaS solution that claims to be private but won’t provide the backend code to prove it. You don’t find it at all suspicious that they claim releasing backend code would make it less secure? What kind of security product is not open for inspection? The same kind of “security” you get from Microsoft.
I imagine it probably is inspected, just not by the public. They probably do it themselves.
And they may have contracts with certain companies specializing in this sort of security that also inspect it.
And there’s also the cybersecurity companies that test it whether they’re contracted or not. At some companies, their entire job revolves around finding bugs (especially security bugs) in other companies’ software.
Just because it’s not on GitHub doesn’t mean it’s not a good product that hasn’t been thoroughly tested.
Surely we’re not gullible enough to accept “we inspected ourselves and determined we are secure and you should use our services”?
That’s where the second and third paragraphs come in. Because other companies likely test it themselves, too.
They’ll typically report security bugs privately and then, after X amount of months, publicly announce the bug. Doing it this way will, ideally, force the other company to patch the bug prior to the announcement. If not, they’ll end up with a publicly known security bug that bad actors can now exploit. The announcement will also let the public (including companies) know to update their software.
Yes, and those other paragraphs are the same thing other proprietary companies do. Your opening paragraph is just absurd on the face of it because “inspected” does not mean “by themselves”.
The second paragraph is literally speculation about something that might happen.
The third paragraph is about bug bounties, which every major software company does and which does not involve code inspection.
You just smokescreened and talked around the fact that your opening statement “it probably is inspected” is entirely unverifiable and non-credible even if true. I guess since you started that sentence with “I imagine” then it is technically true. You did imagine that.
You realize that Microsoft code is inspected as well, even more heavily and regulated… and yet they still end up with major breaches. Security evolves through open source collaboration and inspection by experts that aren’t being paid to say you’re doing a good job.
You are making a lot good points… But is there any other practical solution?
Seems this is the best a normie on budget can get
They’re not actually good points at all… Proton’s open sourcing of the clients is for the purpose of trust in terms of security and privacy. The backend doesn’t matter because the point is that the data is encrypted before it ever gets to the backend. The goal with Proton’s open sourcing is not the ability to make it self-hostable. Sure, a lot of concerns are valid, but this isn’t like Microsoft or Google. Nearly all of Proton is verifiably and provably secure. Well, at least as long as you trust the web clients being served are the ones whose code is publicly available. But again… You can’t verify that with any SaaS. Such a risk is even present with self-hosting tbh. But that’s another discussion.
Yeah because enterprises primarily use a ton of open source security tools…
ಠ_ಠ
Enterprises are using a plethora of open source tools at this point. They may still utilize closed source solutions, but they definitely have quite a bit of open source solutions tied in.
You don’t find it at all suspicious that they claim releasing backend code would make it less secure? What kind of security product is not open for inspection?
No, because Proton has 3rd party audits all the time and they share the results openly.
Microsoft has third party audits all the time and say they’re secure, and then you learn of new backdoors every 6 months. Audit companies are unreliable and paid to give good feedback while doing the least work possible.
All Their services are online based right? I don’t understand why using their proprietary servers is an argument here.
Because their primary audience is those gullible enough to believe they somehow can’t read your messages, yet they can easily capture your private password.
Damn. Proton is doing a good job of stacking up W’s these days.
They act just like Microsoft. Lot’s of people think Microsoft is successful. If you think Microsoft is the champion of privacy though you might be in a cult.
I’ll tell you what. When proton ships a product that takes a screenshot of my desktop every 5 seconds and stores it in an unsecured DB any user on my computer can access, we’ll call them even.
I’ll tell you what. If you can prove to me by pointing to the specific source code that would prevent Proton from capturing your private key password when you login or decrypt using their standard clients then I’ll join the Proton cult.
I’d almost believe you were paid to hate on proton, but you’d get fired for how fucking dumb your arguments are.
Comparing proton with Microsoft like this is a joke.
Really? So Proton saying that they can’t open source the backend code to improve security isn’t something Microsoft would say as well? Proton sells statements, but they don’t back up those statements with proof.
Exposing their backend code to the public would be inviting bad actors to find loopholes in the logic. Your excuse for how they’re not secure is in fact one of their security features. No code is perfect, and you give enough people enough time to peruse through your software they’ll find a flaw to exploit. So they only provide their code to 3rd party audit companies they trust.
Sounds just like Microsoft to me.
The only open source mentioned in the post is their encryption. Not the document editing software. OP please remove your change to the article title, it’s extremely misleading.
Well, they’re not wrong. It is ‘open-source’, not Free Software.
Are they trying to become Google alternative?
Only if they start shutting all their services down if they don’t become the world leader within the first 3 years.
Doesn’t appear you can do anything of that via the Drive mobile app. Maybe one day they will make that possible.
If they can ever get a spreadsheet application I could fully get away from Google for that kind of thing without losing out on anything I care about.
Open source ? Does that mean I can host my own ? Would it be compatible with other self hosted instance ?
EDIT: the only source code I found hasn’t been maintained for 3 years.
As I’ve slowly been expanding my homelab, NextCloud caught my attention. I haven’t tried it quite yet, but it might be closer to what you’re looking for.
If you do want to host your own google docs, look into Onlyoffice, or LibreOffice with Collabora
Awesome…I can move my budget over to my proton.me account now.
I don’t think there’s a spreadsheet app yet. Hopefully soon
They’re just too expensive. Like, sure, it costs money to run, but 3.49€/month (the discounted 24 month rate) for the mail only plan, 15 GB storage. (41.88€, $45.17 USD, $67.28 AUD per year)
That’s really expensive if you just want mail.
The other stuff, is also really expensive. To the point that makes you think, “there is no way google is making THIS much to make up the difference in advertising to me for a comparable plan”.
remember, it’s not just about making up the difference per user in advertising, it’s about getting and keeping as many people into their ecosystem as possible.
then they make some cash from selling data, and having more data to scrape to train their models and such. proton isnt making any off your data
it’d be great to be able to easily compare cost and expense, but companies obscure so much in the backend. rental car companies buy discounted in bulk, then sell the cars tens of thousands of miles later at a profit, and that’s before any income from rental
When I was degoogling a couple years ago I had a heck of a time choosing between protonmail and fastmail.
I went with the fastmail and, while I have no complaints, I’m starting to glance at greener grass.
If you were on Proton then you wouldn’t be able to sync your calendar & contacts and you’d have to share your private keys.
A lot of people confuse open source with community driven/governed.
If things go awry, you’ll be locked-in, married to Proton.How do you mean? You’d just export your data.
Proton drive has export?
Just signed up today for the family plan in my ongoing degoogling process
It’s a bit pricey but so far loving it. Specially Proton Pass, coming from bitwarden (which I liked), it’s nicer and faster, much faster
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket again, that’s what makes degoogling such a difficult thing. There’s several proton services I intentionally avoid and use alternatives for so I don’t have to uproot my entire digital life to leave them if they start being shitty. If you go from using all google services to all proton you’re setting yourself up to need the same sort of big migration down the road. 15 years ago google was also an awesome company that kept making incredibly useful things for users just because they could and look at them now.
And so what happens to your passwords if Proton were to go offline and you needed to continue using Proton Pass? Do they have an open source server you can use like Bitwarden does or vaultwarden? Or are you essentially locking yourself into a new walled garden for no reason other than name recognition? Why not just use KeePassXC which is encrypted locally rather than share your password with a third party who can easily capture your private key password?
I think a lot of these cloud-based password vaults will have a local database that syncs with the cloud. I think you can unlock them and access your passwords without internet access
Keyword… unlock, not add information or use them offline where they can sync to an open source backend. They are cloud-based password managers that are designed to operate online. The backend is not open source. It is designed to lock you into a walled garden.
Because of their integration with simplelogin.
Vaultwarden/Bitwarden integrate with SimpleLogin… and they offer other alias service providers as well.
Proton Pass works offline. Proton isn’t a walled garden.
It will cache credentials for a short time so you can still access some of your passwords. It will not let you add new credentials. It’s like a web browser working in offline mode for a period of time. It is a cloud-based password manager with a closed-source server backend.
Proton at this very moment
I CANT STOP WINNING!
I like how there seems to be more and more alternatives to MS Office, even from big companies like Google. Best case scenario, this could lead to companies actually starting to use an open format, like ODF, so that all these different office applications can be used without causing issues in the file and that would pave the way for open source alternatives, like LibreOffice or OnlyOffice, to become viable alternatives for a lot more people and companies. Do Google Docs and Proton Drive use/support ODF? I’m pretty sure MS Office supports it.
I wish msoffice would just die a miserable death
Word is a pain in the ass. Resize a table column by 1px and the rest of the document gets absolutely fucked
Excel suffers from similarly frustrating UI issues, but my main problem with it is that it’s being used for things that it was never intended to be used for. On the extreme side, a company will shove all their HR info into one xlsx file and then someone will accidentally, somehow unrecoverably, delete it
More commonly, I’ve had to use it as a progress tracking/ticketing tool. An entire team adding rows, deleting rows, accidentally clearing formulas, highlighting random fucking cells, resizing columns etc. all at the same time. It’s just hell.
Abusing Excel as a crappy database is a very real and very widespread problem.
You use what ya got, and you don’t buy database software or hire a database guy until you know you need one
But access comes with office, so if you have excel you have at least a software that is intended to be used as a DB (efficacy aside)
Let’s be real, using Excel as a makeshift database is probably still better than actually using Access lol
