No, that’s not how it works. If you set up mailbox encryption (mailbox guard), you set up (or let mailbox.org generate) a pgp keypair. Any time you want to read an email, you have to unlock the key first. This way you can use regular imap, the body of emails will just arrive encrypted (and optionally the subjects as well I believe), you only need a pgp decryption tool to read the mails (which Thunderbird/K9 supports out of the box (with OpenKeychain on Android)).
diaphragmwp@discuss.tchncs.de 5 days ago
Right. A user from another server sends you mail. The mail is unencrypted on their side because they don’t know your key yet, or they don’t know how to use OpenPGP, or it’s automated.
Servers talk SMTP between each other, not just a client sending mail.
The round trip time in this protocol is fucking insane, but that’s what the people in the year 1980 thought of. They never thought this would be used outside of universities.
Anyways, inevitably,
mail.mailbox.orggets the message, unencrypted. It can encrypt it later, needs the key though.Ghoelian@piefed.social 5 days ago
Yes I know how mail encryption works. The point is that mails get encrypted as soon as they enter mailbox’ servers, so mailbox can never know any contents, so they have nothing to hand over to authorities if they come asking. They do have to know the private key used for this though, that is a risk to consider. Of course, if you want fully secure mail, you need both parties agreeing on encrypting/decrypting the mail. Or just don’t use email, use a secure protocol instead.