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K. Lindstrom

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  1. Encryption of all metadata

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    43 comments  ·  Proton Mail » New feature  ·  Admin →
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    Under review  ·  AdminProton (Community Team, Proton) responded

    We have given this quite a bit of thought, but at the present moment, it is not clear the advantages would outweigh the disadvantages.

    The biggest problem is search. Encrypting all metadata would break metadata search entirely on the web client as there is still no efficient way to handle search of encrypted data within a browser.

    Secondly, metadata encryption’s value from a privacy standpoint is also somewhat dubious. Because we ultimately must deliver the message to the recipient, we must know who the recipient is. At the current time, there still isn’t any proven and viable way to work around this.

    Metadata encryption is an area of continued research for us, and when the opportunity arises and the technology for doing this matures, we will definitely implement it in ProtonMail.

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    K. Lindstrom commented  · 

    If metadata is a privacy issue,would it not be much better to load a Veracrypt file onto an OwnCloud server in Switzerland or Norway and share the access link and encryption keys with the intended correspondent? That way no metadata is even generated or needed. You just append your new message to your shared correspondence file and let the recipient know to look at the file via Protonmail or an anonymous riseup.net email. I think Protonmail should offer cloud file storage with Veracrypt functionality built in. That would be a major contribution towards security and anonymity

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