Why tf does Proton Mail need Google Play Services to show notifications?

whew-zee When I installed and set up the Proton Mail app, it said it'd need Google Play services to send push notifications.

The whole reason I'm using Proton Mail (and, in part, GrapheneOS) is to get away from Google, so that's unacceptable. I also don't understand why Google Services would ever be necessary for something as simple as push notifications.

Fundamentally this is up to the app author, since it's their servers that are sending the notifications to their app. So this would need to be taken up with Proton.

whew-zee I also don't understand why Google Services would ever be necessary for something as simple as push notifications.

As delitako writes, basically, push notifications are not simple if the speed of the notifications matters and the battery life of the client device also matters.

RRZishe Does graphene have a plan of providing an alternative to Google for push messages?

As delitako writes, UnifiedPush (or another contender) could be coded into apps by the authors of the apps. But it is not possible for the GrapheneOS developers to break into Proton's servers to make Proton's servers send notifications via something other than Google's FCM servers.

The situation is less than ideal, but it's outside of the scope of the GrapheneOS team.

de0u Ya, I definitely don't want the graphene team trying to hack into Proton for two reasons. 1. The graphene team is super smart and I have my emails in proton 2. It would really suck if the graphene team ended up in jail... Lol 🤣🤣🤣

But in all seriousness I wish there was some kind of app that would pretend to be Google and tell Proton and other apps "hey, I'm your guy for push notifications! And BTW, send them to this link (i.e. push.grapheneos.org) and not to Google.com".

I don't know if that even makes sense... But that's kinda what I'm thinking...

Perhaps not the ideal solution, but I came across this, it appears to work on GOS without Google services for ProtonMail just fine:

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/dev.lbeernaert.youhavemail/

They answered on Reddit that they have it in their plan.

They are using UserVoice to gather feedback. The idea was already suggested a long time ago.
The more noise we make about it, the more it should be taken as a priority.

foxjaw The only problem with Tuta is that it doesn't autostart after reboot, which to me happened every morning if I set autoreboot to 4 hours and every time I had to manually kick start it, then it worked okay. Now I just use their webapp.

Proton mail doesn't have eta on their own push implementation, doubt it will ever have, they've been saying for years they work on it.

Sounds like Mailbox.org with encrypted mailbox + K9-Mail + OpenKeychain is the best option then for zero knowledge email hosters.

RRZishe Does graphene have a plan of providing an alternative to Google for push messages? Because I sadly need to use Google for push notifications and it really bothers me.

As previously mentioned, there are a few alternatives already available. You have the unified push which was already mentioned, as well as conversations/jabber & NTFY

I sent couple of emails to Proton developers requesting to implement web socket for the apk available on their website but they don't even bother. So, I switched to Tutanota.

Murcielago with this approach you are just hiding from the fact that you use Firebase for notifications albeit in an indirect way (by thinking that two different users can not be linked by other personally identifiable activity, network connection or tracking and fingerprinting).

[deleted]

Good point, thanks for clarifying. I didn't mean to say that activities of two user profiles cannot be linked by other measures - I am aware of that problem.

That's why it's just a suggestion of a workaround that might offer the original questioner an idea until Proton implements alternative push notification, if he

• is dependent on push notifications
• can't/won't change his email provider

foxjaw Proton is already susceptible to Apple/Google Push notification theft, since they also reveal the mail titles as well as the sender mail, which is very insecure tbh.

This is incorrect. Please double check your statements before posting.

For Apple users, on each login, the app generates an asymmetric keypair, saves the private key on Keychain, and sends the public key to Proton’s push notification server accompanied by the user’s session ID. This server encrypts every push notification with the public key, and the application extension decrypts it using the private key from Keychain, ensuring that Apple (or an intelligence agency sitting on Apple’s servers) does not have access to the contents of push notifications. Raw push notifications are not persisted on the device for long and are not included in backup. The private key is removed from Keychain on logout, and the public key is not reused across sessions.​

https://proton.me/blog/ios-security-model

For Android users, Proton Mail’s push notification servers always encrypt the notifications they send, and the Proton Mail client decrypts these notifications locally. These notifications are never stored on the device.

https://proton.me/blog/android-client-security-model

If need be, an individual could always simply turn off their device's notifications on the lock screen to be more private. That way, someone who picks up their phone won’t be able to see the individual's contacts, message previews, reminders and alerts.