Is the Android Protonmail app on F-Droid safe?
Is the Android Protonmail app on F-Droid safe?
Is the Android Protonmail app on F-Droid safe? Protonmail is not available on F-Droid and I would like to get it on F-Droid to receive automated updates.
I agree with you. It's so weird that they host their VPN app on F-Droid but not their email app. It seems like it wouldn't take too much effort on their part to add Proton Mail to F-Droid.
I remember reading a discussion somowhere and it seems they won't add ProtonMail app to the F-Droid as it relies on Google Play services for push notifications.
If that's the case, it makes me wonder why they designed it this way. Their main selling point is privacy, yet they are so closely aligned with Google's services? Seems very questionable, especially since other email clients such as K-9 provide notifications just fine on Android.
This is the sort of thing that gives me second thoughts as a paid subscriber about using Proton's services at all.
I overall trust APKs from IzzySoft as those are just fetched official releases compiled by app developers themselves. You can verify that yourself by downloading older version APK from ProtonMail GitHub repo then updating the app through F-Droid. If it updates then it means that the APK from GitHub and APK from F-Droid are signed with the same key.
Another way would be to use something like Obtainium to track new releases on the official ProtonMail repo.
If in doubt, hit up their GitHub
https://github.com/ProtonMail/proton-mail-android
And use Obtainium to get updates.