[PATCH v1] Documentation: process: Document suitability of Proton Mail for kernel development

From: Conor Dooley
Date: Tue Dec 27 2022 - 19:04:21 EST


From: Conor Dooley <conor.dooley@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Proton Mail automatically picks up PGP keys for those with kernel.org
accounts (and other domains!) which provide WKD for their users & uses
them to encrypt emails, including patches.

Document the behaviour & Proton Mail's unsuitability for kernel
development.

Signed-off-by: Conor Dooley <conor.dooley@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
Documentation/process/email-clients.rst | 15 +++++++++++++++
1 file changed, 15 insertions(+)

diff --git a/Documentation/process/email-clients.rst b/Documentation/process/email-clients.rst
index fc2c46f3f82d..c448f2814b84 100644
--- a/Documentation/process/email-clients.rst
+++ b/Documentation/process/email-clients.rst
@@ -350,3 +350,18 @@ although tab2space problem can be solved with external editor.

Another problem is that Gmail will base64-encode any message that has a
non-ASCII character. That includes things like European names.
+
+Proton Mail
+***********
+
+Proton Mail has a "feature" where it looks up keys using Web Key Directory
+(WKD) and encrypts mail to any email recipients for which it finds a key.
+Kernel.org publishes the WKD for all developers who have kernel.org accounts.
+As a result, emails sent using Proton Mail to kernel.org addresses will be
+encrypted.
+Unfortunately, Proton Mail does not provide a mechanism to disable the
+automatic encryption, viewing it as a privacy feature.
+This affects mail sent from their web GUI, from other mail clients using their
+mail "bridge", as well as patches sent using ``git send-email``.
+Unless a way to disable this "feature" is introduced, Proton Mail is unsuited
+to kernel development.
--
2.38.1