It’s also worth clarifying that ProtonMail doesn’t collect IP addresses by default. Instead, the monitoring/ logging starts after ProtonMail gets a legal request.
They still have to adhere to legal requests.
It’s also worth clarifying that ProtonMail doesn’t collect IP addresses by default. Instead, the monitoring/ logging starts after ProtonMail gets a legal request.
They still have to adhere to legal requests.
The lesson here is despite what a service says, don't trust it and take the appropriate measures to cover your tracks.
You can create an access the inbox through Tor at protonmailrmez3lotccipshtkleegetolb73fuirgj7r4o4vfu7ozyd.onion
The important thing is to always access it through Tor.
Also pay attention to what the service says and what it doesn’t. We get into this spot regularly because of things people assumed about Protonmail without being told.
You can create an access the inbox through Tor at protonmailrmez3lotccipshtkleegetolb73fuirgj7r4o4vfu7ozyd.onion
That's just such an easy link to memorise, isn't it? Just like the New Emergency Number
Onion TLDs are inherently not human readable for many well documented reasons of varying levels of legitimacy.
The idea is that you write it down ahead of time (bookmarks and password managers are a thing) and paste it into your TOR browser or bake it into your privacy oriented live USB.
That’s just such an easy link to memorise, isn’t it?
You memorize your links & type them out like a boomer?
There seems to be no suggestion yet that any crime was committed on/using ProtonMail itself. Just that it was a tool to track someone accused of offline crimes. So this comment feels like misdirection because there are probably options between being liable and effectively telling the cops where users are.
They have to abide by court orders.
Do Swiss courts not allow any defence to be presented?
The IP isn't even that important. They straight gave up that person's phone number and identified them.
Apart from it's an old story, discussed already back and forth, Proton's claims regarding privacy are really weak. Especially when it comes to presenting Switzerlamd as a privacy safehaven. Switzerland is a tax evasion savehaven, not a privacy safehaven, Proton. How Proton puts it: we provide world class privacy (but have to break our claims and comply with Swiss law immediately once there is a legitimate or not request from law enforcement, oepsie sorreyy!)
Why is this a surprise? IP Logging is pretty normal for any service.
2.5 IP logging: by default, we do not keep permanent IP logs in relation with your Account. However, IP logs may be kept temporarily to combat abuse and fraud, and your IP address may be retained permanently if you are engaged in activities that breach our Terms of Service (e.g. spamming, DDoS attacks against our infrastructure, brute force attacks). The legal basis of this processing is our legitimate interest to protect our service against non-compliant or fraudulent activities. If you enable authentication logging for your Account or voluntarily participate in Proton's advanced security program, the record of your login IP addresses is kept for as long as the feature is enabled. This feature is off by default, and all the records are deleted upon deactivation of the feature. The legal basis of this processing is consent, and you are free to opt in or opt out of that processing at any time in the security panel of your Account. The authentication logs feature records login attempts to your Account and does not track product-specific activity, such as VPN activity.
Source: Their privacy policy.
That’s some funny language around “May be obtained permanently” though. Is this minority report? Do they know ahead of time that someone is going to violate their TOS?
That said, I’m not totally against proton mail. It’s a lot better than other free alternatives. Of which there are few left. I’m sure Gmail tracks the IP of your rectum.
This seems necessary if they're to maintain an IP ban list. You shouldn't just be able to unban yourself by submitting an information deletion request.
This is stupid though. IP addresses in many homes rotate, so IP ban lists are utterly ineffective and could very well ban the wrong people.
I would rather they have funny language in their privacy policy opposed to mandatory logging, they have to cover themselves legally as well so they got to utilize legal-ise so they aren’t sued into the dirt.
I’m sure Gmail tracks the IP of your rectum.
I bet Google predicted you would say that!
So Protonmail was required to log the IP of the user after being ordered to via the proper international Swiss legal channeks, per Swiss/Europol law. And at some point recently, Protonmail thus removed the copy from their frontpage that advertised never tracking IPs.
What the article doesn't really explain, is what exactly changed about Swiss or euro law? And when? What rules or acts have sprung up that made this possible? Or, was this always something that was possible that has only just now made precedent?
It's important to hold accountable the named individuals who are harming individual security, safety, and trust in this manner so that they can be prevented from continuing to do so.
Then what makes a privacy oriented service different from others when they can open a backdoor for government? The thing is government wants control and they will change laws for exactly that. What Proton should have done was to eliminate the chance of this happening in the first place. Why are they having a logging mechanism? Why don't they use RAM only servers or something like that? Privacy services should have the infrastructure and legal power to say "No", or they are lying.
Just switch over to a privacy focused mail service like... uh... like... well shit.
Proton are very open about what they do and don't provide.
They're not going to protect you and they will turn on you the second they get a letter in the mail or a text from the cops.
But what they DO provide is the ability to register an email address (with a domain that isn't blocked by most services) without providing any other information. And, from there, you can encrypt it yourself if it is a particularly sensitive message.
As for IP logging? if only there were tools like VPNs and Tor to negate that.
IMO if proton can change their stance and their policies (like their website no longer says emails are anonymous), then I don't think they are a good private service provider. The only thing going for proton now is that their emails are encrypted and can't be read by them.
Who knows if a request came from a specific channel of the government that deals with crime, may be they will decrypt the content for them?
No.
The "only thing going for" them is the ability to sign up with zero personal information. You can encrypt your emails with ANY service because it is you exchanging keys ahead of time and doing it locally before you even look up Job on usenet.
Do not trust a third party to encrypt your sensitive communications for you. Do not trust a third party to protect you. Instead, look at what the the third party actually offers you and figure out how you can take advantage of that.
Do not trust a third party to encrypt your sensitive communications for you. Do not trust a third party to protect you. Instead, look at what the the third party actually offers you and figure out how you can take advantage of that.
This is the kind of person that isn't worried about incognito market black mailing them.
In most cases, they fight tooth and nail and use their own lawyers if necessary
Proton needs to get its head out of its ass and fire Andy already, grow a pair and get off Reddit and back onto Mastodon and face the backlash like actual adults.
proton is arm in arm with the us government and republicans, so it should be expected that they'll track and sell you out.
Nothing unexpected from a company that openly espouses fascism.
I dont really blame Proton for this. Accessing anything on the internet on a clear connection and not through a VPN or TOR makes it your own damn fault when you get identified.
Victim blaming at its finest!
I mean, I understand where you're coming from, they absolutely shouldn't log IPs. BUT, if you're committing crimes or even doing legal things the government doesn't like, it would behoove you to put in the absolute bare minimum of OPSEC at least.
Like, some people know they have STDs and don't warn people and spread them, right? And while the spreader is obviously the problem there, some commonly accepted advice to the victim is "you should have worn a condom anyway." And they should have worn a condom to protect themselves (and also the spreader should be held liable.)
Like the previous example, anyone using any online service (for secrety things) should know to put a VPN condom on before they put their data inside that sexy, slutty server rack. And like how contraceptives were that knowledge needs to be spread.
Oh ffs. We have known for years that Proton is just a for profit company like any other. They dont give a fuck about you or your privacy. They never have and they never will.
They complied with laws. Where is the issue?
That’s the issue.
What data? Here it is the IP address and only under order by authorities.
Whatever they gather. It says as much in the article; they started recording IPs once a request by the Swiss government came through.
ProtonMail can’t directly share data with foreign governments. In fact, doing so is illegal under Article 271 of the Swiss Criminal code. The police gained access to the IP address because Swiss authorities chose to cooperate with the French government. ProtonMail also points out how Swiss authorities will only approve requests that meet Swiss legal standards.
Under Swiss law, ProtonMail should notify the user if a third party makes a request for their private data and if the data is for a criminal proceeding. However, there’s a big catch/ loophole here. On its law enforcement page, ProtonMail highlights that the notification can be delayed in the following cases:
That's based on the currently available laws. So if a law gets drafted that says "if we suspect someone to be complicit in criminal activity we want you to gather more data" we should just be fine with that because the authorities say so? Because the authorities are always infallible and incorruptible, right?
The details of this individual case isn't the problem, it's the precedent it sets that is. When Mullvad got raided for their logs there was nothing recovered because they don't store anything. Proton stores things based on if the authorities ask them to, and when they find out that it wasn't a terrorist or child-trafficker they go "woops we had no idea the account belonged to a climate activist."
The authorities aren't infallible. Some years back here in Sweden we had police raid, physically abuse, and kidnap a guy they suspected was a pedophile because he'd sent images of him and his 30 year old boyfriend having sex via Yahoo Mail. There's no reality where this man should've been fucking beaten up and traumatised the way he was, but it happened, and there was no recourse for him. Nowhere down the chain of responsibility did anyone get reprimanded or investigated for misconduct.
Complying with the law is such a bullshit fucking excuse.
ProtonMail does not log things by default, but they can still be court ordered to do so by swiss authorities - if you want to run any business at all, you have to submit to a jurisdiction, you can only choose which one to run under. And even if your chosen authority is alright by itself, it can still be misled by other jurisdictions like the French did, using the terror-cudgel against climate activists.
I can also recall that in this case Proton said that had their user actually bothered to use any VPN, even Proton's, there wouldn't have been anything to give to authorities except for an exit node IP.
Proton said that had their user actually bothered to use any VPN, even Proton’s, there wouldn’t have been anything to give to authorities except for an exit node IP.
"She shouldn't have dressed that way."
Proton could do better, and it's ridiculous that there are people out here okay with them not doing better.
Our legal entity is in Sweden, where the law does not allow for any government to force us to spy on our users.
You'll agree that Proton doing better would require them to move to a different country, right?
Also Mullvad doesn't offer email accounts, does it? Seems that they couldn't have a 'no user data' policy if they did since the emails would be exactly that.
You’ll agree that Proton doing better would require them to move to a different country, right?
I'm okay with this. Sweden isn't exactly known as a bastion of freedom. Our current minister of equality (Liberals) is pushing for a porn ban. The EU proposal colloquially called "Chat Control" was originally put forth by the Swedish EU Commissioner Ylva Johansson who belongs to the Social Democrats.
Also Mullvad doesn’t offer email accounts, does it? Seems that they couldn’t have a ‘no user data’ policy if they did since the emails would be exactly that.
You'll forgive me if I don't feel like it's productive to repeat myself, but if you genuinely care for a response you can view it here: https://pawb.social/comment/18804733
Have a good one.
Right, because corporations are widely known for going to prison when they break the law. Where exactly did they imprison Facebook for interfering in elections? Running illegal experiments on people? Pirating books and pornography? Surveilling children and selling their data?
Look at Mullvad. They've denied access to their data multiple times, they got raided, and nothing of use was recoverable. That's what respect for privacy looks like. Proton could set their infrastructure up in this fashion, but instead they've chosen to just hand out user data freely.
So Proton's no-log policy is an apple and Mullvad's no-log policy is an orange, is what you're saying?
I'm comparing Mullvad (a company) to Proton (a company) not their products. They both have a no-log policy (that's a company policy) only one is actually no logs, and the other is "we sometimes log." I don't think you're stupid either, so I don't get what's not getting through.
But like Proton, their VPN is incapable of logging access.
Mullvad's VPN is incapable of doing so because their infrastructure is entirely built on volatile memory. This obviously doesn't work with email because the emails need to persist, but this is isn't a very big problem as that storage is encrypted.
My problem here is that access logs don't need to be stored permanently. That could definitely be stored on a volatile medium, and then authorities could come over and confiscate it as much as they want. That sort of software architecture is entirely possible to set up, but Proton has made a decision not to.
“No personal information is required to create your secure email account. By default, we do not keep any IP logs which can be linked to your anonymous email account. Your privacy comes first.” ~Protonmail.com
That is a choice. They could've chosen to not comply, they could've chosen to let the authorities raid their servers, and had their servers been set up in such a fashion that no data could be obtained, there wouldn't be a problem.
They've chosen instead to log and give up information on a climate activist; not a ring of traffickers, or a terrorist group, but some dude or dudette that thinks that climate change is a bit of a problem and that the people in charge aren't doing enough about it.
You’re being dishonest, is what’s not getting through.
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. Do I realise that this creates legal problems for Proton? Yeah. So what? They're a corporation, they get to deal with it. What this incident has shown is that their word doesn't mean a thing. What happens when the fascist American regime starts demanding information on dissenters? Are they just going to fold and serve up whatever they ask on a silver platter, too?
What's dishonest is saying "we don't log, except when we do, and only when they're serious criminals, or climate activists."
Legal entity that doesn't comply with the law is simply not possible. If you think otherwise, you're being really naive
They said things that led the unwary to trust they wouldn't. Remember, this isn't some terrorist mass-murderer they handed over, but apparently an anti-gentrification youth activist linked to Greta Thunberg's campaign groups.
Edit to add: in particular, Proton used to claim 'your privacy comes first' but this case suggests in reality, the Swiss government's help for French police comes first.
In fact, they frequently say that they'll comply with orders from the Swiss government.
I meant Proton is pretty open about complying with the Swiss government
Please tell me a mail client that doesn't comply with national laws.
I never said anything about complying with laws, people just interpreted it that way. Of course everyone will comply with local laws or secret government orders that come with threats of imprisonment. I dont know if Proton was required to log this data in the first place, but if they were then this specific situations is not their fault.
The issue with Proton isnt that they follow laws, but that they portray themselves like they are better or more private than others when they are just not. Bigger = worse in the tech world. Whenever too many people are using services of a single company, it becomes an attractive surveillance target.
What im also annoyed about is people being surprised by this and these headlines that make it look like its some sort of betrayal. You should always be worried about your privacy when you put data on a computer that isnt in your physical possession. Proton isnt trustworthy because nobody is trustworthy except yourself.
it's always disappointing when people all about FOSS and shit suggest Proton to people looking to switch from google. no, don't do that. use Tuta or self host or ANYTHING other than Proton. it's such a shit company that does not deserve the praise they receive.
Tuta are also a for-profit company, aren't they? Just one that currently has better published positions than most. Use them, but make sure you keep a path to the exit door in view.
Journalists, activists and even lawyers on the side of activists should always use something like Tails. No matter what companies like Proton promise or what the law in the country they operate in says.
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