Gmail claims no encryption to sympatico.ca email.

[jdabud-Davud]

Users are told by GMAIL that messages to sympatico.ca will not be encrypted. This is making some of our correspondents nervous about sending messages to us.

The recipient receives a warning like this:

Clicking on the unlocked icon gives a warning like this:

Looking at the security details in GMAIL in a message from a Sympatico sender one sees something like:

from: User Name <username@sympatico.ca>
to: GMAIL user name <GmailUserName@gmail.com>
date: Mar 1, 2023, 2:51 PM
subject: Re: Thunderbird Sympatico to GMAIL
mailed-by: sympatico.ca
security: Standard encryption (TLS) Learn more

The above seems to say that Sympatico sends encrypted messages but that Sympatico does not receive them.

That seems very unlikely to me, but we are talking about Bell.

Can someone please clarify this issue so that I can either reassure our correspondents or quit using Sympatico Email?

Thanks so much!

David.

[gesperli]

I don't think he does other than possibly marking an email as spam. He does have other Gmail addresses in the blocked senders list.

[jdabud-Davud]

Hello all,

Please let me start again.

There are at least two very different problems discussed in this thread.

(1) The problem discussed in the original post (OP), and

(2) One or more problems of messages not getting through to Bell emails.

I have observed (1) but not (2). I have three different sets of evidence for (1):

(1.1) The crossed-out red padlock that warned users of web Gmail who attempted to send emails to Bell email addresses.

(1.2) The data kept by Google on whether in-transit encryption on emails sent to and from various servers (including Bell.net servers). The current version of this data can be found here:

    https: slash slash transparencyreport.google.com slash safer-email slash overview

(1.3) The fact that the headers added by Bell to received emails do not indicate (as they should) that the senders used in-transit encryption.

I have based my conclusion on the ongoing failure of (1.3) and have wrongly assumed that (1.1) and (1.2) would also fail as a result.

It turns out that (1.1) and (1.2) now pass, although (1.3) continues to fail.

Because I have old backups of the data of (1.2), we can conclude that Bell has fixed the majority of the problem sometime between Feb. 24th and today. Problem (1.1) remains.

I cannot speak to the current state of (2) since I cannot reproduce it.

I confidently hope that Bell staff will pass my findings on to people who have the technical expertise to analyze and fix my remaining issues.

Thanks.

David.

[ZaneP]

Hi @jdabud-Davud 

Would you consider migrating away from ISP-based email, in the event that a solution to all of your outstanding issues won't be forthcoming? I assume problem-solving the issues is a high priority for you, but they might not have the same urgency for our ISP.

There are end-to-end encryption email solutions, that have been mentioned in the forum. I suggested Proton Mail a few months ago.

Cheers,

ZaneP