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ProtonMail Now Supports Bitcoin Payments
- jmeyer2k 9y agoBitcoin is not anonymous.
- savethefuture 9y agoThe transactions may be public, but your identity can be masked if done properly.
- nugget 9y agoIf you want to mask your identity wouldn't you be better off buying Visa gift cards with cash at a major store and then using them to purchase services online?
- gruez 9y agosurveillance cameras at the checkout, not to mention the ridiculously high reload fee.
- alexmat 9y agoStores have cameras and Visa cards have unique numbers. Not too hard to put the two together. Bitcoin let's you transact without having to interact in physical space to acquire or spend them.
- Spivak 9y agoAnd just how are you going to do a dollar <-> bitcoin exchange without revealing any information about your identity?
- HNNoLikey 9y agoBitcoin mixers would serve you well in this instance. Just buy BTC normally and clean via a mixer.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y agoAnd how do you know that that the Bitcoin mixer you decided to use is not actually operated by the FBI and that they are actually keeping a private log tying bitcoins in with bitcoins out?
- HNNoLikey 9y agoHad similar questions yesterday and some hackers responded here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15016338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15016338
- e12e 9y agoThat doesn't seem to address hostile mixers? Running dark-net bazaars, bitcoin mixers and "hacker"(cracker) forums seems like trivial intel basics. Just like running "anonymous" [ed:remailers,[1]] and tor nodes. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixmaster_anonymous_remailer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixmaster_anonymous_remailer
- HNNoLikey 9y agoI actually think it would suffice to payout at random times with an insanely high number of bitcoin addresses (all autogenerated via a script) for high number of users (the more the better). It would be virtually impossible to know who got how much BTC out (may be in, but not out). As for the hostile mixers, I'm afraid I can't offer any solution other than to rely on reputation. That said, it is rather telling that bitmixer.io is closing [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14843373 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14843373]. It may not be safe to run a mixer; the feds may come after you.
- ringaroundthetx 9y ago
- alexmat 9y agoYou don't have to trade for dollars. You can use one or more intermediaries such as gift cards and high resale value goods, just like using proxies to distance yourself. The more hops, the harder it is to connect.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- savethefuture 9y agoNo, you would not.
- koolba 9y agoEven better to have someone else buy the gift cards and then hand them off to you in a dark alley. Bonus points if you're both wearing trench coats and fedoras.
- X86BSD 9y agoOr using a coin designed to be anonymous and private, like.. Monero. You would still probably be on camera buying a Visa gift card in a retail store. With timestamp.
- jameskegel 9y agoThis is the correct answer.
- ringaroundthetx 9y agoNot really. You can unlink all of your cryptocurrency transactions with Monero. This is sufficient for fiat too.
- the_stc 9y agoIt is harder than that though. Monero has an issue in that everyone is only doing ringsize=3 transactions, providing little anonymity. If you buy from an exchange then turn around and sell it back, even with different amounts, you will be on a shortlist of suspects. To do Monero properly you need to wait a while (at least hours, better days) while churning to other addresses, being sure to keep your ringsize and fees looking like everyone else's. Hopefully they will raise the ringsize minimum to 10 in the upcoming hardfork - that will go some way towards fixing the problem. For now, I bet there will be cases of people happily bouncing to Monero via Shapeshift and getting busted.
- X86BSD 9y agoI could argue the merits of the ringsize but it would be moot because it's being bumped to 10 in September. So I will just leave this here as a note that the argument that a ringsize of 3 is not very anonymous will be moot in September for future readers.
- the_stc 9y agoEven with ringsize 10, it does not help if someone does BTC->XMR->BTC with the same exchange (or an exchange that shares records) without adding some XMR->XMR churn steps inbetween. My future freedom depends on me getting this right, so I am a bit sensitive on this topic. It took me a while to cut through the fluff and figure out how to churn enough to make it safe. Fortunately I also used multiple Bitcoin mixers on both sides and didn't originally get our Bitcoin investment in a way that's directly linked to any of our identities. It is somewhat irresponsible of Monero's marketing to make such grandiose privacy claims at the moment. I say this as someone that loves Monero and thinks their team is fantastic, and I'd bet Monero will be the privacy currency winner if it isn't already.
- CoreXtreme 9y agoPretty sure, it leaves a trail.
- alexmat 9y agohttps://github.com/nopara73/ZeroLink/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/nopara73/ZeroLink/blob/master/README.md
- jrs95 9y agoIt does if you've connected it to a bank account, but if you didn't do that, or you used funds that originated from a bank account to get access to a wallet which wasn't connected to you directly, you could make it a rather difficult trail to follow with certainty
- beaner 9y agoIt's not the opposite, either. Not all transactions are necessarily traceable to an entity or individual.
- mtgx 9y agoMonero support would be nice.
- X86BSD 9y ago+1 Monero does not have the problems Bitcoin has regarding privacy and anonymity. I also would much rather see it supported than Bitcoin.
- ringaroundthetx 9y agoI've used shapeshift for this for years. Every time I get a bitcoin invoice, I shapeshift some Monero I don't get why anyone would ever want a snapshot of their finances ever.
- intopieces 9y agoYou are never anonymous when you connect to the Internet, even over Tor, even through 7 proxies. There is always a connection right back to you. We need to move beyond the obsession with anonymity and refocus the goal as being privacy. Then, recognize that privacy has several levels. That way, the expectation is more clear.
- the_stc 9y agoThis is disingenuous. Bitcoin is very anti-anonymous. Tor is rather anonymous. Saying that perfect anonymity does not exist because there's always some bits leaking to an omniscient entity is not helpful. ProtonMail should support Monero. For now, I pay using a group of Monero wallets I churn every few hours and xmr.to. I suppose Bitcoin is the least common denominator in that sense.
- intopieces 9y ago>Bitcoin is very anti-anonymous. That's correct. It is very anti-anonymous by its design; its security rests everyone verifying the transactions. The distinction you make is the same one I attempt to make by arguing against anonymity as a goal. Both Bitcoin and Tor are, in the mind of the public, construed as ways to be anonymous on the Internet. That is dangerous.
- ComodoHacker 9y ago>We need to move beyond the obsession with anonymity and refocus the goal as being privacy. You mean "we" == a dozen of first world countries? There is strong demand for anonymity all over the world.
- intopieces 9y ago> There is strong demand for anonymity all over the world. Is there? From whom? Facebook is still growing rapidly and now claims more than 2B users. It seems that not even privacy is in high demand, much less anonymity.
- olegkikin 9y agoIt's close to being anonymous though. If I give you a random bitcoin address, what are the odds you can identify the owner of it? It's very close to zero.
- dsacco 9y agoIn practice? The odds are pretty likely. Most people have poor opsec, and you can uniquely identify anyone with fewer than 33 bits of data.
- ebcode 9y agoAnd yet Satoshi Nakamoto still has not been doxxed.
- dsacco 9y agoI said "likely", not "certainly." Satoshi Nakamoto is the exception that proves the rule; part of his infamy is precisely due to the fact that he has not yet identified, which is extraordinary.
- olegkikin 9y agoLet's test your claim. Here's a transaction between many addresses. How many can you identify? https://blockchain.info/tx/5e3f8e728e7a9c14231806de537ae617773dea89c97027708bc03e59e247f6d6 https://blockchain.info/tx/5e3f8e728e7a9c14231806de537ae6177...
- VMG 9y agoLet's make it easier: how many of the transactions in the most recent block (as of writing) can be tied to individuals? https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000005d8e91c8b1b365faa3898d0f4877d86df084819e8093ad https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000005d8e91c8b1b3...
- vabmit 9y agoIf you're very concerned, you could use a high speed/volume BitCoin Mixer[1]. For example, if it currently has sufficient volume, something on the Darknet like BitBlender[2][3]. There are a number of different mixers out there. You could also, of course, wash the BitCoins by hand yourself. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_mixer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_mixer [2] https://bitblender.io/ https://bitblender.io/ [3] http://bitblendervrfkzr.onion/ http://bitblendervrfkzr.onion/
- jameskegel 9y agoNo this is the incorrect answer. Mixers congest the network and cause many unneeded fees and they are NOT future proof and do NOT deliver suddenly-fungible bitcoins at the other end. Use Monero, not ZCash, not DASH with a special type of transaction, use MONERO with genuine ring confidential transactions. RingCT - https://lab.getmonero.org/pubs/MRL-0005.pdf https://lab.getmonero.org/pubs/MRL-0005.pdf Monero vs ZCash vs Mixers - https://moneroforcash.com/monero-vs-dash-vs-zcash-vs-bitcoinmixers.php https://moneroforcash.com/monero-vs-dash-vs-zcash-vs-bitcoin...
- vabmit 9y agoWe will hopefully support ZCash in the future. But, unfortunately, we don't right now. I am a member of the ZCash forum, though. I have been keeping a close watch on the project/coin and am very impressed with it. I don't know anything about Monero. I either hadn't heard of it before or just didn't give it any attention after seeing it because of the flood of coins lately. Thanks for the pointer and endorsement of it - I will take a look at it when I have a chance.
- jameskegel 9y agoZCash is not Monero, is not fungible, and does not have complete privacy. I was very clear about this distinction in the previous post because ZCash is not the right answer, and every time something is said about Monero the next comment agrees about everything that makes Monero valuable, and then goes on to talk about ZCash as if the two are interchangeable. This is a false equivalence that can confuse readers who don't care to research better.
- riazrizvi 9y agoBitcoin is more anonymous than electronic banking.
- cevn 9y agoCan I pay for ProtonVPN in coin as well?
- arosier 9y agoYa, you can signup for ProtonVPN through ProtonMail; therefore, you can pay with coin through ProtonMail for ProtonVPN.
- rdslw 9y agoI would use OVPN. It supports bitcoin [0]. You can check quite recent truly and honestly made (!) comparison of VPNs here: https://vpnreport.org/ https://vpnreport.org/ Disclaimer: There are no affiliate links in this comment. (!) not shown within first 10 google results among the usual crap for 'best xxx services' [0] https://www.ovpn.com/en/blog/complete-guide-for-using-bitcoin/ https://www.ovpn.com/en/blog/complete-guide-for-using-bitcoi...
- csomar 9y agoThis is a little bit "late". Fastmail has supported Bitcoin payment for a very long time. In fact, I was surprised last year when I wanted to try proton mail and they didn't have Bitcoin payments.
- sdotsen 9y agoSo you couldn't just use a CC or some other form of payment? Seriously?
- blunte 9y agoI expect that's not the point he was trying to make. I believe he/she was stating their surprise that bitcoin was not a payment option back then. "Seriously."
- MaymayMaster 9y agoProtonMail's priorities have always been sporadic.
- sdotsen 9y agoNo the point is it stopped him from using/trying the service. If he really was interested he would've found an alternative payment solution
- Matt3o12_ 9y agoThe point was he wanted to test a service which does not ask him for his billing address, CC info and other stuff, which not only completely deanonymize him, he would also have to trust them to store this information safely (which you cannot really expect any company to do). So in a way, his test was completed (no I don’t want to use this service) before he was even able to test their product. Just imagine you want to test the food of the newly opened restaurant downstairs. Before you actually get to test the meal, have been treated like shit. Sure, you could have stayed to try the food, but you have already decided that it is not worth it.
- invincibles 9y agoIs this only for payments to Protonmail itself, or for transferring payments among accounts? It would be great if there were an easy way for businesses to sign up and immediately get the ability to receive Bitcoin payments.
- blunte 9y agoMore "progress" from ProtonMail, while they still provide no way to export emails in bulk. They recommend you forward every individual email or print it. The Export feature has been an open request since before March 2015. Another feature which would give users a way to get their mail out of PM is the ability to check mail from a client like Outlook or Thunderbird. That has been an open feature request since before February 2015. They, as with other companies that refuse to listen to their customers, will eventually fail. Of course failure may mean being bought by a larger competitor (and a few of the bad decision-makers cashing out)...
- vabmit 9y agoTry to relax a bit. It is good for your health. :) Both of those features are under development. If you would like to see them sooner rather than later, perhaps you know some great programmers that you could recommend to careers@protonmail.ch? Or, you could share ProtonMail's Careers page: https://protonmail.com/careers https://protonmail.com/careers ProtonMail is hiring!
- pvg 9y agoMaybe they should also be hiring some sort of customer interaction expert as well.
- andrewvc 9y agoThis is a great example of how not to interact with customers. Telling a customer who's been waiting on a feature for over a year to relax is just insulting. I picked Fastmail due to their excellent support reputation, you all could learn from them!
- MollyR 9y agoI'm thinking of switching my business email to protonmail from gmail. Any users like it ? The whole google memo revealed google employees are not as trustworthy as I thought. All the social media talk of blacklists, and inquisition tactics from some of upper management is bad for business. I've already gotten emails from clients asking me to change their business google services to something else (anything else in their own words).
- jameskegel 9y ago> google memo revealed google employees are not as trustworthy What made you feel this way, specifically, in the memo?
- arkadiyt 9y agoI just set it up for my custom domain and it could not have been any simpler or easier. They have a really clean UI/status checks for setting up MX/SPF/DKIM/DMARC, I setup some custom addresses and a catch-all and it all just worked.
- tscs37 9y agoHow is their catchall support? Last I checked into the status, they only planned to support it for business accounts and limited sending to only a few aliases.
- jron 9y agoIt doesn't look like they have an option to validate account creation from a bitcoin payment instead of an SMS/email. I suspect it would be a popular feature.
- txmx2000 9y agoDisappointed that there's no mention of a discount. Cryptocurrency payments will save them a lot of money. Web/email hosting is an industry with a high risk if fraud.
- orthecreedence 9y ago> Cryptocurrency payments will save them a lot of money ...until they convert it to cash?
- Klathmon 9y agoThe reason it will save them money is because there are no "chargebacks" or reverts with bitcoin. You get $10 worth of bitcoin in your account and it's confirmed, you have $10 of bitcoin, and nobody can take it back. That, plus the lack of a 3% fee (although there might be one for their bitcoin processor) means a good amount of savings for some.
- wakkaflokka 9y agoI've been forwarding all of my email from Gmail to ProtonMail, just to see how I like the ProtonMail interface. So far I'm liking it a lot. A little weirdness on getting timely notifications on Android. But I might switch completely. Anybody make the switch?
- maxk42 9y agoI prefer it by far. I only use it for a small fraction of my business, though.
- blunte 9y agoI did, and I switched back. Maybe I'll try them again if they ever release a feature that allows me to export (bulk) email. Until then, any emails you receive directly to PM are trapped there (unless you manually forward each one, by hand).
- teleproto 9y agoBut are they open source yet? Sure, you can find the web client sources. How about the server, and the mobile apps? The website makes a big deal of them being open source after all ( https://protonmail.com/blog/protonmail-open-source/ https://protonmail.com/blog/protonmail-open-source/ ).
- blfr 9y agoIf you like Proton features and want to move away from Gmail, consider Mailpile[1]. It's almost ready, there's a release candidate and packages for Debian/Ubuntu; it offers to protect your data with a master password like Proton; it supports GPG which with all its problems is still the way to encrypt your emails; and you can run it on your own server. Best of all it's open source and written in Python. You can know exactly what it does with your messages. Mailpile is an email client (MUA) so you will need a server (MTA). At first you can try it out with your regular ISP, even Gmail. Later you can set up your own server. Setup is a little involved but much less than people tell you and, if you choose a competently run distro, requires very little ongoing maintenance. With your own server, you can have it working exactly as you like. Export feature? No problem, you have direct access to the maildir, mailbox or the database. Want a catch-all? One switch in the config. You will have little trouble finding a provider who accepts your preferred method of payment, too. [1] https://www.mailpile.is/ https://www.mailpile.is/
- the_common_man 9y agoThere is also cloudron.io. It has imap/smtp/sieve/catch-all/relaying/aliases/tagging/rest api. Fairly complete. https://cloudron.io/documentation/email/ https://cloudron.io/documentation/email/
- nullwarp 9y agoMy only complaint with cloudron is that the auto-update mechanism requires a subscription. You can manually upgrade, but it's awkward and I broke it more than once while trying.
- type0 9y agoCan you use one subscription to update multiple cloudron VPS servers or would you need to have a separate for each one?
- thinbeige 9y agoPR. Nothing else. Who wants to pay with Bitcoin when Bitcoin is skyrocketing like crazy?
- ringaroundthetx 9y agoeveryone that pays with bitcoin now that everything is cheaper? yeah it goes counter to all of the anti-deflationary schools of economics, but when have economists ever gotten actual human behavior right?
- thinbeige 9y agoNobody does. And this is the problem with having no inflation. Every economy needs a slight inflation, otherwise people stop consuming, instead save all their money and it gets worse => deflation. Bitcoin equals gold, nobody uses Bitcoin to consume anything. I don't know which human behavior you refer to.
- DINKDINK 9y agoYour argument is: "Why would anyone spend any money if it's worth tomorrow?!" to support a pro-inflation argument The counterargument / parallel reality in an inflationary world is: "Why would anyone accept any money if it's worth less tomorrow?!" The only difference between the two paradigms is that in the later, the currency creators have the power and in the former, the currency owners have the power. It is no coincidence that the financial institution has chosen to be in control of inflation and extract the wealth first, via seignorage, of currency inflation.
- dmoy 9y ago> Why would anyone accept any money if it's worth less tomorrow I mean they sort of don't, in the case of rapid inflation. See e.g. Brazil decades ago, with payment delays abound all over. But that's not what we're talking about for a healthy economy, with a relatively small steady inflation rate. Very different.
- 9y ago
- firekvz 9y agonow that we are talking about email. what is a good open source email server to use nowdays? or some free provider where i can use my own domain?
- jancborchardt 9y agoA good open source email server is https://mailinabox.email/ https://mailinabox.email/ :)
- kristianp 9y agoWhich will be quickly converted back to Euro or Swiss Francs for them by their payment provider. I doubt they'll keep any of that bitcoin.
- tradersam 9y agoYou never know, Overstock.com is now keeping 50% of their crypto payments in crypto.[1] [1]: https://www.coindesk.com/ostk-hodl-overstock-keep-50-bitcoin-payments-investments/ https://www.coindesk.com/ostk-hodl-overstock-keep-50-bitcoin...
- GigabyteCoin 9y ago>"You can now get secure email anonymously" How exactly... by paying with Bitcoin? And this is coming from a security-conscious company? Unless I mined the Bitcoins myself, and never spent the remaining 12.45 BTC that I mined (after presumably spending 0.05 BTC on protonmail)... it is far from "Anonymous". If they started accepting Zcash, however...
- tradersam 9y ago> Zcash Monero would be a better option.
- GigabyteCoin 9y agoCare to elaborate? I don't know a ton about Zcash or Monero, I only know that Zcash advertises and actually produces truly anonymous transactions (that the founders can unmask, or so I have read). Is Monero anonymous as well? For every transaction? Or only specific ones (like Zcash).
- tradersam 9y agoHere's a really good explanation of RingCT: https://monero.stackexchange.com/questions/83/how-does-monero-privacy-and-security-compare-to-zcash https://monero.stackexchange.com/questions/83/how-does-moner...
- brewdad 9y agoI've played around with ProtonMail in the past but never made the switch. I see now that there is a one password mode that seems more convenient than my legacy 2 password mode. I already have 2FA setup. Given that, is one password mode safe enough or are you still using 2 passwords?
- rtpg 9y agoSo this product is still priced in Euros, though you can pay in BTC. Are there major products out there priced in Bitcoin yet?
- StavrosK 9y agoNo, but I can give you a subscription that charges you a random amount each month, which is pretty close.
- blunte 9y agoUntil bitcoin is accepted essentially everywhere, but all levels of private and business, you won't see BTC-first prices. That's because the companies that accept bitcoin as payment have their own expenses, and it's unlikely that most of their bills can be paid by bitcoin. It's easier to understand if you imagine your businesses in your country allowing you to buy products at a fixed price in some other country's currency.
- yakshaving_jgt 9y agoI want to use ProtonMail (and will pay for it), but lack of IMAP is a deal-breaker. Some of the other commenters mentioned IMAP is in beta; can I get on this too? I'm currently managing an iRedMail instance and it's not ideal.
- TheSpecialist 9y agoIf I go for the highest paid tier, it comes with Proton VPN. Ist that only ONE VPN user or do all users of that tier get to use ProtonVPN?
- bartbutler 9y agoYou get 10 VPN connections which you can distribute among your users however you see fit.
- BusinessInsider 9y agoNice, but they really should actually use Bitcoin cash. Legacy Bitcoin fees can be higher than their actual monthly plans.
- Strategizer 9y agoThey have been accepting Bitcoin for a long time already, now its just integrated better. The whole talk about "freedom and privacy" in relation to Bitcoin made me a bit nauseous. These are tech guys. It destroys trust for them to be blabbering nonsense about privacy like this.
- trustworthy 9y agoVery good initiative. Happy to see that you're moving in the right direction. Remember, though, that Bitcoin is many things and anonymous is not one of them. It's pseudo-anonymous at best. You should consider accepting the open-source, community-driven, private criptocurrency Monero that has been around for many years now. If you have plans on adopting Monero, send me a message and I'll be glad to guide you on the right direction.