Proton Mail, the leading privacy-focused email service, is making its first foray into blockchain technology with Key Transparency, which will allow users to verify email addresses. From a report: In an interview with Fortune, CEO and founder Andy Yen made clear that although the new feature uses blockchain, the key technology behind crypto, Key Transparency isn’t “some sketchy cryptocurrency” linked to an “exit scam.” A student of cryptography, Yen added that the new feature is “blockchain in a very pure form,” and it allows the platform to solve the thorny issue of ensuring that every email address actually belongs to the person who’s claiming it.

Proton Mail uses end-to-end encryption, a secure form of communication that ensures only the intended recipient can read the information. Senders encrypt an email using their intended recipient’s public key – a long string of letters and numbers – which the recipient can then decrypt with their own private key. The issue, Yen said, is ensuring that the public key actually belongs to the intended recipient. “Maybe it’s the NSA that has created a fake public key linked to you, and I’m somehow tricked into encrypting data with that public key,” he told Fortune. In the security space, the tactic is known as a “man-in-the-middle attack,” like a postal worker opening your bank statement to get your social security number and then resealing the envelope.

Blockchains are an immutable ledger, meaning any data initially entered onto them can’t be altered. Yen realized that putting users’ public keys on a blockchain would create a record ensuring those keys actually belonged to them – and would be cross-referenced whenever other users send emails. “In order for the verification to be trusted, it needs to be public, and it needs to be unchanging,” Yen said.

Curious if anyone here would use a feature like this? It sounds neat but I don’t think I’m going to be needing a feature like this on a day-to-day basis, though I could see use cases for folks handling sensitive information.

  • LWD@lemm.ee
    16·
    1 year ago

    I love your hypocrisy: you see no difference between neoliberals and the alt-right, but then you get offended when somebody rightly compares one cryptocurrency to another.

    I’m sure you would tell me that you were no Hitler fan if you loved Mussolini, and that obviously Peter Thiel loves Bitcoin and Cardano is absolutely dissimilar!

    But hey, what do the cardano evangelist say about Peter Thiel?

    Been taking a second pass on this book and when Thiel goes over disruptive tech and monopolies, I just couldn’t help noticing that Cardano fit every qualification to a tee.

    His theory that the dominant entity is never the first and almost without exception is the second or third iteration of the technology since they vastly improve from the ground up on where the previous efforts failed or have limitations. It is also explained that to achieve a monopoly, the technology has to first address and dominate a small demographic so it can then move exponentially to expand from that proof of concept to the world. To me, I saw countless examples that perfectly matched Cardano. How it was created, why it was created (excels where ETH fails), how it compares to its competitors(faster, less expensive), what they are doing now (Africa), where and in the near future. Had to start a discussion on this. Looking forward to hearing everyone’s thoughts.

    LOL