Is there an encrypted email client that just works?

Question

My bar for &lsquo;just works&rsquo; is that max 5 minutes of fiddling around should be sufficient to get it setup. (and no more than 1 minute of fiddling after each update/change of settings)Bonus points if it can gracefully fall back to being a regular email client, when needed, without having to click more than a few buttons.It can be for any major platform, iOS, android, Windows, Linux, Mac, etc&hellip;I would appreciate any suggestions no matter how obscure.

flaptrap · Accepted Answer

Yes, the sender needs the recipient's public key. I did not find any service supporting this. Even Proton Mail (https://proton.me/support/password-protected-emails) writes, "To read the message, they must enter a previously agreed-upon password." Thus, the sender sends cleartext to the email provider, hehe.

gregjor · Answer

Both the sender and receiver need to share a secret or key to encrypt and decrypt. All of the major email services already support encryption (S/MIME), including Outlook, GMail, iOS Mail, Proton, etc. PGP encrypted email has been available for a long time. The problem is sharing the decryption key with the recipient, which makes encrypted email impractical except for communicating with specific individuals.