this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2025
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The worst part is that once again, proton is trying to convince its users that it's more secure than it really is. You have to wonder what else they are lying or deceiving about.
Both your take, and the author, seem to not understand how LLMs work. At all.
At some point, yes, an LLM model has to process clear text tokens. There's no getting around that. Anyone who creates an LLM that can process 30 billion parameters while encrypted will become an overnight billionaire from military contracts alone. If you want absolute privacy, process locally. Lumo has limitations, but goes farther than duck.ai at respecting privacy. Your threat model and equipment mean YOU make a decision for YOUR needs. This is an option. This is not trying to be one size fits all. You don't HAVE to use it. It's not being forced down your throat like Gemini or CoPilot.
And their LLM. - it's Mistral, OpenHands and OLMO, all open source. It's in their documentation. So this article is straight up lies about that. Like.... Did Google write this article? It's simply propaganda.
Also, Proton does have some circumstances where it lets you decrypt your own email locally. Otherwise it's basically impossible to search your email for text in the email body. They already had that as an option, and if users want AI assistants, that's obviously their bridge. But it's not a default setup. It's an option you have to set up. It's not for everyone. Some users want that. It's not forced on everyone. Chill TF out.
Their AI is not local, so adding it to your email means breaking e2ee. That's to some extent fine. You can make an informed decision about it.
But proton is not putting warning labels on this. They are trying to confuse people into thinking it is the same security as their e2ee mails. Just look at the "zero trust" bullshit on protons own page.
Where does it say "zero trust" 'on Protons own page'? It does not say "zero-trust" anywhere, it says "zero-access". The data is encrypted at rest, so it is not e2ee. They never mention end-to-end encryption for Lumo, except for ghost mode, and they are talking about the chat once it's complete and you choose to leave it there to use later, not about the prompts you send in.
Which means that they are not advertising anything they are not doing or cannot do.
By posting this disinformation all you're achieving is getting people to pedal back to all the shit services out there for "free" because many will start believing that privacy is way harder than it actually is so 'what's the point' or, even worse, no alternative will help me be more private so I might as well just stop trying.
My friend, I think the confusion stems from you thinking you have deep technical understanding on this, when everything you say demonstrates that you don't.
First off, you don't even know the terminology. A local LLM is one YOU run on YOUR machine.
Lumo apparently runs on Proton servers - where their email and docs all are as well. So I'm not sure what "Their AI is not local!" even means other than you don't know what LLMs do or what they actually are. Do you expect a 32B LLM that would use about a 32GB video card to all get downloaded and ran in a browser? Buddy....just...no.
Look, Proton can at any time MITM attack your email, or if you use them as a VPN, MITM VPN traffic if it feels like. Any VPN or secure email provider can actually do that. Mullvad can, Nord, take your pick. That's just a fact. Google's business model is to MITM attack your life, so we have the counterfactual already. So your threat model needs to include how much do you trust the entity handling your data not to do that, intentionally or letting others through negligence.
There is no such thing as e2ee LLMs. That's not how any of this works. Doing e2ee for the chats to get what you type into the LLM context window, letting the LLM process tokens the only way they can, getting you back your response, and getting it to not keep logs or data, is about as good as it gets for not having a local LLM - which, remember, means on YOUR machine. If that's unacceptable for you, then don't use it. But don't brandish your ignorance like you're some expert, and that everyone on earth needs to adhere to whatever "standards" you think up that seem ill-informed.
Also, clearly you aren't using Proton anyway because if you need to search the text of your emails, you have to process that locally, and you have to click through 2 separate warnings that tell you in all bold text "This breaks the e2ee! Are you REALLY sure you want to do this?" So your complaint about warnings is just a flag saying you don't actually know and are just guessing.
Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. You seem to be confused by basic English.
They are not supposed to be able to and well designed e2ee services can't be. That's the whole point of e2ee.
I know. When did I say there is?
So then you object to the premise any LLM setup that isn't local can ever be "secure" and can't seem to articulate that.
What exactly is dishonest here? The language on their site is factually accurate, I've had to read it 7 times today because of you all. You just object to the premise of non-local LLMs and are, IMO, disingenuously making that a "brand issue" because....why? It sounds like a very emotional argument as it's not backed by any technical discussion beyond "local only secure, nothing else."
Beyond the fact that
So then you trust that their system is well-designed already? What is this cognitive dissonance that they can secure the relatively insecure format of email, but can't figure out TLS and flushing logs for an LLM on their own servers? If anything, it's not even a complicated setup. TLS to the context window, don't keep logs, flush the data. How do you think no-log VPNs work? This isn't exactly all that far off from that.
I object to how it is written. Yes, technically it is not wrong. But it intentionally uses confusing language and rare technical terminology to imply it is as secure as e2ee. They compare it to proton mail and drive that are supposedly e2ee.
Only drive is. Email is not always e2ee, it uses zero-access encryption which I believe is the same exact mechanism used by this chatbot, so the comparison is quite fair tbh.
Well, even the mail is sometimes e2ee. Making the comparison without specifying is like marketing your safe as being used in Fort Knox and it turns out it is a cheap safe used for payroll documents like in every company. Technically true but misleading as hell. When you hear Fort Knox, you think gold vault. If you hear proton mail, you think e2ee even if most mails are external.
And even if you disagree about mail, there is no excuse for comparing to proton drive.
Email is almost always zero-access encryption (like live chats), considering the % of proton users and the amount of emails between them (or the even smaller % of PGP users). Drive is e2ee like chat history. Basically I see email : chats = drive : history.
Anyway, I agree it could be done better, but I don't really see the big deal. Any user unable to understand this won't get the difference between zero-access and e2e.
It is e2ee -- with the LLM context window!
When you email someone outside Proton servers, doesn't the same thing happen anyway? But the LLM is on Proton servers, so what's the actual vulnerability?
It is not. Not in any meaningful way.
Yes it does.
Again, the issue is not the technology. The issue is deceptive marketing. Why doesn't their site clearly say what you say? Why use confusing technical terms most people won't understand and compare it to drive that is fully e2ee?
It is deceptive. This thread is full of people who know enough to not be deceived and they think it should be obvious to everyone... but it's not.
Because this is highly nuanced technical hair splitting, which is not typically a good way to sell things.
Look, we need to agree to disagree here, because you are not changing your mind, but I don't see anything compelling here that's introduced a sliver of doubt for me. If anything, forcing me to look into it in detail makes me feel more OK with using it.
Whatever. Have a nice day.
Ah yes, telling the truth is not good for sales, therefore deception is ok.
Yeah, it seems we won't agree here. Have a nice day.
You said yourself that it wasn't actually wrong or deceptive or inaccurate, but rather "confusing."
read your own words.
I didn't. Being wrong and being deceptive are two different things.
You're using their client. You get a fresh copy every time it changes. Of course you are vulnerable to a MITM attack, if they chose to attempt one.
If you insist on being a fanboy than go ahead. But this is like arguing a bulletproof vest is useless because it does not cover your entire body.
Or because the bulletproof vest company might sell you a faulty one as part of a conspiracy to kill you.
Scribe can be local, if that's what you are referring to.
They also have a specific section on it at https://proton.me/support/proton-scribe-writing-assistant#local-or-server
Also emails for the most part are not e2ee, they can't be because the other party is not using encryption. They use "zero-access" which is different. It means proton gets the email in clear text, encrypts it with your public PGP key, deletes the original, and sends it to you.
See https://proton.me/support/proton-mail-encryption-explained