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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  Vijay Mallya, protected by ProtonMail?
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Vijay Mallya, protected by ProtonMail?

Did Vijay Mallya use this encrypted email service to give an interview or not? That may be tough to establishbut here is what ProtonMail can do for you

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The Sunday Guardian published an email trail on Tuesday to establish that it had indeed got a response to its questions from liquor baron Vijay Mallya on 12 March from his ProtonMail ID. The report says Mallya responded to the questionnaire using the encrypted email client. In response, Mallya, through a series of Twitter posts, denied that he ever responded to those mails and said he had never even heard of ProtonMail.

This service first attracted widespread attention after the main character, Elliot Alderson, was shown using it in the famous hacking TV show Mr Robot.

While it is hard to conclusively establish whether Mallya has a ProtonMail ID or not, one can’t ignore the fact that more and more people are relying on encrypted mails. Former Central Intelligence Agency employee and whistle-blower Edward Snowden reportedly used an encrypted email service called Lavabit to send an email to invite lawyers and human rights activists to a press conference in Moscow in 2013.

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Why people use ProtonMail

ProtonMail was set up in 2013 at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, a research facility, by a group of researchers working there. The company is based in Switzerland and the service has more than half a million active users. When the service was showcased in Mr Robot, the nuances of encryption and the way hacking works were explained.

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What gives ProtonMail an advantage over similar services is that it doesn’t track user data such as the Internet Protocol address used to log into the email account. Also, it doesn’t ask for personal information such as the user’s age or mobile number. The user can set a time after which the mail will be deleted from the receiver’s inbox, similar to the Snapchat Messenger, where messages auto delete after a certain period of time.

How email encryption works

To understand the significance of email encryption, one needs to know how encryption works. Encryption basically uses an algorithm called cipher, which transforms all comprehensible text into a series of random characters. This renders the message unreadable to everyone except the person who has the private key to decrypt and read it.

Some regular email clients have add-ons and extensions which allow users to send and receive mails too. The Chrome browser has an extension called Secure Mail for Gmail that can encrypt all messages and mails sent through Gmail to other email clients, not necessarily Gmail. This adds another button within your Gmail. So the next time you type a mail, you would be able to see an option to encrypt. Click on it and select a question and an answer that only the receiver will pick.

Encryption, if implemented properly with all the right security protocols, such as TOR (a network that hides a user’s identity from surveillance agencies) and PGP (this is a data encryption tool which uses an algorithm that makes decrypting quick), can be effective. ProtonMail supports TOR and PGP.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Abhijit Ahaskar
Abhijit writes on tech policy, gaming, security, AI, robotics, electronics and startups. He has been in the media industry for over 12 years.
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Published: 15 Mar 2016, 08:45 PM IST
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