ProtonMail is getting into the email alias game

The secure email provider ProtonMail has announced that SimpleLogin has joined Proton in an effort to make it easier for its users to generate email aliases.

According to a new blog post from Proton founder and CEO Andy Yen, the firm has been following SimpleLogin closely for some time now as the company’s users leverage its service to prevent their email addresses from being leaked to spammers.

For those unfamiliar, SimpleLogin is a browser extension, web app and mobile app that provides users with anonymous email addresses whenever they sign up for a new online service. As its name suggests, the company offers a simple way to create a login by generating an email alias so that users don’t need to disclose their real email address.

If an online service you use gets hacked, frequently sends you spam or sells your email address to advertisers, you can disable that email alias in order to safeguard your inbox. This is why SimpleLogin is a complementary service to ProtonMail as it prevents malicious actors from exploiting your real email address while ProtonMail protects your sensitive emails and other personal data using encryption.

ProtonMail and SimpleLogin

Now that SimpleLogin has joined Proton, in the coming months the company plans to better integrate its functionality into ProtonMail so that its users will be able to hide their email addresses using the service.

If you already use SimpleLogin with ProtonMail though, things will continue to work the same as before. Going forward, SimpleLogin will continue working as a separate service and its team will continue building new features and adding functionality but now with the benefit of Proton’s infrastructure and security engineering capabilities.

Proton itself began as a crowdfunded project and as former scientists, its creators strongly believe in peer review and transparency. In the privacy space, SimpleLogin is one of the few organizations whose values align with those of Proton’s which is why the two companies joining forces is a natural fit.

We’ll likely hear more about how ProtonMail users can utilize SimpleLogin to create their own email aliases directly from the service once Proton adds its technology to its own.

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The best alternative email apps for iOS 15 in 2022

It’d be fair to say that much of the world runs on email, making it a must to have the best iOS email app for you.

While tools like Slack, WhatsApp and Discord all exist for instant messaging, email remains the way many people communicate. Whether it’s sending projects for approval, connecting with a loved one, or simply sharing notes for the latest office meeting, there’s plenty of life in email yet.

While your iPhone comes with Apple Mail installed, it’s not for everyone. Apple continues to improve it, but it can be a little clunky to use and lacks many of the more nuanced features of other email apps. iI’s also not much to look at. For basic sending and receiving messages, it’s great, but if you deal with a lot of emails, you may be looking for something flashier.

Thankfully, we’ve got you covered with the best alternative email apps for iOS, all of which make smart changes to the basic formula.

Microsoft Outlook

Outlook iOS app

(Image credit: TechRadar)

It’s perhaps strange to trumpet Outlook as one of the best email apps for the iPhone, but it really is an excellent choice.

Microsoft’s long-running email client looks better here than it ever has before, and it’s plenty powerful too. Its Smart Inbox works out which emails are important and snoozes the others for later. You can also swipe emails to perform quick actions (something that many other apps on this list do).

Perhaps our favorite aspect though is that the calendar within Outlook is so good you can use it as your main planner. Its inclusion means that all your meetings and events, whether they’re from Google Calendar, iCloud, or elsewhere, are in one place.

Hey

Hey iOS Mail app

(Image credit: TechRadar)

Hey has been the subject of much discussion, both in terms of its pricing, feature set, and the fact that the developer and Apple had a falling out over in-app payments.

Nonetheless, Hey is an excellent email client if you can stomach the $ 99 annual fee. Hey users get all kinds of great features, like the ability to screen emails from new senders, and unique filtering rules like the Paper Trail (for receipts) or The Feed (for newsletters).

To use Hey, you’ll have to direct all your existing email to it, but doing so will let you pick a custom @hey.com address.

Spark

Spark iOS mail app

(Image credit: TechRadar)

Of all of the apps on this list, Spark feels the fastest to use, and it’s got a great visual style with plenty of color in icons but mostly plain everywhere else.

Available on the App Store for free, there are plenty of features here that should give Apple something to ponder for an updated version of Mail.

As with others on this list, there’s a Smart inbox, but we’re particularly fond of Spark's array of 'actions' – you can snooze a thread, remind yourself to follow up later, create Smart Notifications, and more. There’s also a nice slide-over calendar, too.

Spark also plays nicely with attachments, letting you download and open files within the app itself rather than dipping into another option. Attachment search is great, too, and you can attach whatever you’re sending to cloud services straight from the app.

Edison

Edison iOS Mail app

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Edison is another good-looking Apple Mail alternative, but its real superpower is its built-in assistant.

Edison’s assistant will filter your emails by type or sender, and it’s perfect for those with butterfingers since it’ll let you undo the sending of an email up to fifteen seconds after you hit the Send button. There are also the slide-to-action options seen elsewhere on this list, too.

Edison leans a little on Hey’s business model, now that it works with OnMail. You can use Edison for free, but paying $ 4.99 will get you a custom domain, password-protected large file links, and an increased attachment size up to 250MB.

Twobird

Twobird iOS Mail app

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The new kid on the mail-block, Twobird is part email app and part to-do list – and it’s great at both.

The email experience removes as much from around the actual content of your email as it can, cleaning up the experience to let you focus on the who and the what. You’ll also be able to turn the emails in your inbox into a task list of sorts, tying it in with your other daily reminders, while smart notifications work out what you need to know and when.

Twobird is off to a great start, but there’s a big caveat – there’s no option to currently add your iCloud here, sadly. Gmail and Exchange users, however, will find a lot to love.

AirMail

AirMail iOS app

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Airmail has a smart-looking design that feels ripped straight from Apple’s own design language. In fact, it feels like Apple Mail, but better.

The real strength of Airmail is in its integrations with other services – be those web services or other apps on your phone. If you use it, chances are, Airmail can too; Google Drive, Todoist, Drafts, Trello, they’re all here. It’s a far cry from Apple’s more siloed experience.

While Airmail is free, you can upgrade to a Pro plan for $ 2.99 per month (or $ 9.99 per year). Doing so gets you a unified inbox, multiple themes, and the option to snooze and delay sending.

Spike

Spike iOS Mail app

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Spike shakes things up by attempting to blur the lines between email and instant messaging. It looks closer to iMessage than it does to Apple Mail, which may put some people off.

In truth, it’s closer to something like Slack, stripping away the need for long emails full of headers and signatures and boiling it down to the message content and any attachments. It’s configurable for teams, too, so you can send an email to a group of colleagues as if it were a Slack message.

There are built-in notes and task management options, too, with both working collaboratively. And just like others on this list, there’s a Priority Inbox so you never miss an important email.

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Yahoo closes email service in China as it lowers curtain on the country

Yahoo has completely ceased its operations in China now that web services company has ended support for its email service in the country.

In a recent email sent out to customers, the company explained that it would soon close Yahoo Mail in China while advising them to switch to an alternative email service as soon as possible. Yahoo also recommended that users download their contacts, schedules and other important data before its email service closed for good in the country.

In an FAQ page on its site, Yahoo explained why it decided to end support for Yahoo Mail in China citing the country's new privacy regulations as the main reason, saying:

“In recognition of the increasingly challenging business and legal environment in China, including new privacy regulations, Yahoo services will no longer be accessible from mainland China. In all other regions, Yahoo features will continue to function as expected and there will be no changes to Yahoo Mail account, emails, photos or other inbox content for users globally.”

Leaving China

With the shuttering of Yahoo Mail, the company is now no longer operating at any capacity in China. This is because it ended support for its other services in the country back in November of last year at the same time China's Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) came into effect.

Under PIPL, global businesses are required to regulate the storage and privacy of their data in a way that meets the demands of the Chinese government. However, the new law is both precise and vague at the same time which has made operating in the country much more difficult for global businesses.

While Yahoo's search engine hasn't been available in China for years, the company closed its original email service back in 2013. The year before though, Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba bought a 20 percent stake in the firm and was responsible for managing the Chinese mail migration while still using the Yahoo brand under a tech and IP cross-licensing deal.

Yahoo isn't the only big company leaving the country though as Microsoft shut down LinkedIn in China back in October citing similar reasons.

Via The Register

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Office 365 unveils major email security boost

Microsoft has added a new security layer to its Office 365 email service as it looks to improve the integrity of the messages going in and out. 

The company says its new protection, SMTP MTA Strict Transport Security (MTA-STS), a feature it first announced in H2 2020, will solve problems such as expired TLS certificates, problems with third-party certificates, or unsupported secure protocols.

“We have been validating our implementation and are now pleased to announce support for MTA-STS for all outgoing messages from Exchange Online,” Microsoft said in an announcement. 

Extra protection

In practice, the new security layer means all emails that are sent through Exchange Online will only be delivered through connections that have both authentication and encryption. 

That should render downgrade, and man-in-the-middle attacks impossible, or at least – a lot harder to pull off.

“Downgrade attacks are possible where the STARTTLS response can be deleted, thus rendering the message in cleartext. Man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks are also possible, whereby the message can be rerouted to an attacker's server,” the announcement added.

“MTA-STS (RFC8461) helps thwart such attacks by providing a mechanism for setting domain policies that specify whether the receiving domain supports TLS and what to do when TLS can't be negotiated, for example stop the transmission.”

Those interested in adopting MTA-STS should refer to this link, where Microsoft explains the process in detail.

The company is already working on further strengthening the security of Office 365 email. DANE for SMTP (DNS-based Authentication of Named Entities), which is said to provide even better protection than MTA-STS, will be rolled out in the coming months. 

“We will deploy support for DANE for SMTP and DNSSEC in two phases. The first phase, DANE and DNSSEC for outbound email (from Exchange Online to external destinations), is slowly being deployed between now and March 2022. We expect the second phase, support for inbound email, to start by the end of 2022,” BleepingComputer cited the Exchange team.

“We've been working on support for both MTA-STS and DANE for SMTP. At the very least, we encourage customers to secure their domains with MTA-STS,” Microsoft added.

“You can use both standards on the same domain at the same time, so customers are free to use both when Exchange Online offers inbound protection using DANE for SMTP by the end of 2022. By supporting both standards, you can account for senders who may support only one method.”

Via: BleepingComputer 

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