Protonmail, have people gotten their invitations?

I largely agree with you and my own flawed arguments were crudely put in an attempt to point out a flaw that I'd noticed which was (as an ordinary sort of user) that people that I sent emails, simply couldn't see my mail to them and (in my own scenario) wouldn't necessarily know what to do to rectify that on their own and that I might not know that they hadn't received it. Yes, on reflection my arguments were flawed coming from the gut rather than the mind and I hadn't really taken usb sticks into account either.

 

Well, I certainly understand the frustration of sending an email and not having it work, or worse not even realizing that it didn't work.

I'm assuming you sent your friends one of the encrypted emails for non-Protonmail users. And when they tried to follow the link back to Protonmail's website, their browser was unable to launch the website. I supposed the positive side of this is that you could explain to your friends that they need to update their browser (assuming the problem was on their own computer). If they are not deliberately keeping an old version of the browser (for reasons that I would find difficult to understand), then you'd be doing them a favor. For the average user, not having an up to date browser is probably the biggest security risk they can have (since it's the main software that people use). And if they are using public computers, you could tell them how to get a usb stick and use a portable version of Firefox, which really would be a huge step up security wise, for the use of public computers.

It is certainly frustrating, in general, how relatively easy it would be for most people with a computer to use GPG. There's a plugin for the Mac email client. There's enigmail for Thunderbird. There are GPG extensions for Firefox and Chrome. It wouldn't take that much for us all to be using GPG. But even a couple extra steps pretty much guarantees that most people won't do it. Even my more computer savvy friends can't be bothered.

I don't know what the solution is to that. It's as much, if not more, a social problem as a technological one. I guess it's up to people like us to get the people we know to do these things. And I think Tutanota and Protonmail are (hopefully) a step in the right direction. Some of my friends are willing to try it. And they're familiar with the process of just signing up for an email account, whereas I think even simple extensions and plugins confuse them.

Anyway, good luck with your efforts to convert people to encrypted email. We all need some luck in this area.

 

Thanks cb474 Much appreciated

 

Alas, PM invitation received with a pair of heavy duty Zircon-encrusted tweezers in my hand.

 

I had gotten my account for contributing to their crowdfunding campaign but my friend had request in December (late december) and received the invitation this last Monday (16th of February)