Proton Mail came under scrutiny for its role in a legal request by the Spanish authorities leading to the identification and arrest of a user.
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i fucking knew it.
And then I am the one exaggerating… I’ll say it again, Proton is just another company that managed to find clever ways to profit from a group of people who value things such as “privacy”.
They’re just a very large marketing effort with little to nothing to show but everyone is convinced they’re actually protecting users while they keep pushing proprietary / half open and non standard stuff as solutions for problems already solved with truly open tools, standards and protocols.
Proton did nothing wrong here; in fact, it is working as intended.
No email content or attachment was provided in this case because they (Proton) have nothing to give. Now, imagine if this user were using Gmail instead of Proton.
The article title is clickbait and is trying to incite outrage from the crowd. Don’t fall for it.
Now imagine if the user was using Gmail + PGP… same end result. Proton delivered no extra value whatsoever.
Are there any email solutions that are actually private?
only as private as you make it. they are required by law when mandated by a warrant to release IP & other (unencrypted) data they have on you. use a proxy to connect & take other opsec measures to conceal your online identity just like other sensitive web browsing activities if you want to use email “privately”.
this is really only helping anonymity though, as the email protocol has no built in encryption. unless you are using PGP it really isn’t apt for secure communication at all.
No, as email isn’t private
I used to use Protonmail and VPN, but one day my password just randomly stopped working and I lost access to everything. Switched over to Tutanota and Mullvad and have had zero issues since.
Bro this reads like an ad. You using VPN has nothing to do with YOU losing your password.
Edit: might add this is the classic bad user you see in tech support.
CAPS ON
types password
Login failed
tries the same password several times
gets locked out
blames the service
Lmao you’re right. Removed the first part. It came to look like an ad because I posted my first thought, then came back with my second one and appended it.
As far as the password goes, to this day I have no idea how it happened. I don’t want to admit I use the same password for everything, but ye know… it just stopped working for Proton one day.
Proton should look who was asking the disclosure. He’s a known far-right judge that opens cases like beer cans. And the “terrorist” group is marked as such because someone had a heart attack the same day there were protests in Catalonia.
Does it matter? He’s still a judge with a judge’s authority. If their policy is to obey the law then the political views of the judge don’t change the fact that his order was lawful.
So if a Russian judge had asked the same the outcome would be the same too? Or a Chinese one?
Depends on what you mean by that:
At any rate, my point is that the decision of whether you obey the law or protect your users should be about the country as a whole, not about any specific judge employed by it. Choosing to obey some judges of the country while ignoring the warrants signed by other judges of the same country is just stupid. The country will not trust you to respect their authority and will not permit you to do business there, while the users will not trust you to keep your promise to protect them and won’t use your service.
Was the heart attacked even in catalonia?
In Barcelona IIRC. Taking a flight (also IIRC)
Governments do the dumbest mental gymnastics to mark groups and individuals as undesireables.
All the commenters suggesting that Proton is just a company and would always give in to legal requests and all other companies and any email provider would do the same, here’s some more to add. Yesterday I saw a now invalid toot comment from ProtonPrivacy on Mastodon Social where they wrote that it was Apple who was to blame and that Proton gave the recovery email address only because this was a case of a terrorism suspect suggesting that if that (terrorism) was not the case they would not have given in to the request. Today their comment sadly gives a 404 error. Searching a bit further this article comes up mentioning Proton and Wire :
It’s amazing how people easily forget about lavabit and what a company that is committed to real privacy is about.
So proton will only give users’ information to governments if the government calls the user a terrorist. Good thing governments don’t just throw that word around willy-nilly!
@lemmyreader Yes, the name/address of the terrorism suspect was actually given to police by Apple, not Proton. The terror suspect added their real-life Apple email as an optional recovery address in Proton Mail. Proton can’t decrypt data, but in terror cases Swiss courts can obtain recovery email.
Proton is a service provider, not your confederate.
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Because proton put themselves into this position by making false advertising claims. Let’s not forget this isn’t the first time proton has given away the IP of an individual and last time was even worse because proton at the time was directly advertising they kept no IP logs which they had to quietly remove after giving the Swiss feds the IP.
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If you look though my comment history you’ll see I’m a huge advocate for tor/I2P instead of VPNs
That was a short honeymoon.
proton is untrustable
Email is untrustable
This is the second time, somehow people still defend them.
This isn’t the second time, Proton complies with Swiss law regularly.
Wow that makes it much better.
It remains standard operating procedure for any law abiding company, and it benefits no one to pretend that it isn’t.
Another case of a user with terrible opsec that proton will end up being blamed for.
Not really news. Proton follows the law. If they get a Swiss court order they will comply.
If you want to do illegal (under Swiss law) things, proton won’t cover you.
Logically, any service, whether private or not, is required by law to reveal the user data they have, if there is a court order for a criminal investigation. Proton cannot refuse, if it does not want to face a complaint that could even lead to the closure of its service. That is, in this headline the “Proton Mail” can be replaced by any other email, host, chat, social network, VPN, Lemmy, it can occur in any of them. As said, read TOS and PP of what you use
except they told users in the past that they dont have this informaion
They don’t have information about the content of the mails, but same as any other mail provider the account data and the IP, this is the data which they can provide to the police. The rest are informations from the ISP and from own investigations of the police itself. Because of this the title that “Proton discloses user data leading to arrest in Spain” is somewhat sensationalist.
Out of curiosity, can you link where Proton said they don’t have the user’s recovery email, that the users themselves attached to their Proton account?
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Email is bad in general and nothing can fix that
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PGP doesn’t protect anything but message contents. Additionally, if you key it compromised all of your messages are compromised.
Indeed, be careful with choosing your email subject line when using GnuPG to encrypt.
Yes, maybe for some people it is. I once knew a person who created a new GnuPG key every few months. It is also recommended in some howtos that making your key never expire is a bad idea.
By the way, for all readers interested in using GnuPG, FSF updated their Email Self-Defense guide this week. https://hostux.social/@fsf/112405348416810419
Not sure how they’re better than proton is terms of compliance and anonymity
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Source: trust me bro
It’s just that more people use proton so more of them have their identity leaked. I don’t see how the terms of these 2 companies are better
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I’ve never heard of those 2 providers and they don’t seem to be any better. I’m just looking for facts to back that and so far I haven’t seen any
Being skeptical doesn’t mean being a troll or a fed, wtf. I don’t know what you’re on but it seems cool
As for the « are you trying to discredit … without evidence » I want to answer « what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence »
You never heard of the other two providers but yet you already draw the conclusion that they don’t seem to be better. What does “better” mean to you in this context ?
Their privacy policy. They log IP addresses and are not immune to legal actions, and as such, are not really better than Proton in terms of legal actions
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Disroot is in Europe.
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Maybe also just consider any email insecure by default ? Like it’s fcking email, having privacy, let alone security or anonymity is just like trying to mod a skateboard into a secure highway vehicule imho
Its more secure to use physical mail
I’m not sure how I feel about this news story.
On the one side, it’s good to make sure people are aware of the limitations of secure email providers. However on the other the article almost reads as of this should be a surprise to people?
I use Proton mail and pay for my account. I don’t pay for anonyminity - I pay for privacy. They are two very different things.
The article talks about Opsec (operational security) and they’re right - if you need anonyminity then don’t use your personal apple email as a recovery address. That is a flaw in the user approach and expectations that unencrypted data held by Proton is also “secure”. Your basic details and your IP address are going to be recorded and available to law enforcement. Use a VPN or Tor to access the service and use another untraceable email for recovery, and pay via crypto if you want true anonymity. And even then there are other methods of anonymous or untraceable secure email that may be better than Proton mail (such as self hosted).
But for most users like myself, if you’re not looking for anonyminity then Proton is fine as is. My email address is my name and I use it to keep my emails secure and not snooped on by Google etc.
Proton advertises itself as private, secure and encrypted. It does not claim to offer anonymity.
All valid points made in an academic setting. I think the general consensus, and the points other users are trying to make, involve more transparency and proper presenting of the facts in their statements. I have parroted the “oh you should try proton, they’re more private and secure” to other people. This is a factual but misleading statement without the nuance of higher OPSEC fundamentals.
Just look at their main landing page for proton mail.
Proton Mail’s end-to-end encryption and zero-access encryption ensure only you can see your emails. Not even Proton can view the content of your emails and attachments.
Proton Mail protects you from these digital spies and prevents companies from monitoring you.
your data is protected by some of the world’s strictest privacy laws.
From newsrooms, activists, and international organizations to academics, Nobel Prize winners, and movie characters, Proton Mail is the trusted choice for secure and private communication. Join over 100 million people worldwide who believe their online privacy is worth protecting.
A common user will look at this and believe that by just having this account, they will be protected. There is no asterisk* beside e-mail recovery explaining the dangers of linking to another e-mail. In fact, a lot of their services promote linking e-mail because you can’t use third party verification if you haven’t setup your recovery e-mail and/or cell phone verification. I ran into this trying to help an older relative who’s paranoid about online accounts, ended up being more hoops and they were dissuaded because it always come down to “enter more information to continue…privately ;)”
The front landing page should have a section explaining everything that’s being said here with vpn’s, alternative e-mails, and how to really protect yourself with anonymity. To a lot of people, Private+Secure=Anonymous. It’s not accurate, but unless you already know the things you have to do to protect your identity, it’s not very clear on what the average person should do.
Proton is the only one I know of who takes mailed cash.
This was all an opsec problem. And not even an “exposed my ip address because a software bug leaked it” it was an “here’s my usual email address in case I get locked out”.
The cops didn’t need to break into proton email. They just asked the backup email address for that stuff.
Proton accepts payments via postal mail you mean ? Posteo and mailbox.org do that.