[HN Gopher] Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided ...
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Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address
 
Author : kdunglas
Score  : 383 points
Date   : 2021-09-05 19:59 UTC (3 hours ago)
 
web link (twitter.com)
w3m dump (twitter.com)
 
| S_A_P wrote:
| Also a ProtonMail user. While I would prefer that ProtonMail
| never captures or divulged my ip and or logged my access I pay
| because I was a long time gmail user and am trying to ween myself
| off of alphabet in general. I don't want my mail skimmed for ads
| or worse.
 
| leipert wrote:
| Happy user of posteo here which claims to strip IP addresses and
| there IS no relation between accounts and payments. All
| government requests are transparently documented.
| 
| The web interface is roundcube, but if you just use IMAP, it
| could work for you.
| 
| No custom domains though for sending stuff, catch all redirects
| obviously work.
| 
| https://posteo.de/en/site/transparency_report
 
| elmo2you wrote:
| I don't think that ProtonMail complying with the law here is in
| any way the problem. They simply have to.
| 
| However, in this case just as in a few other ones before this
| one, it has become pretty clear to me that ProtonMail's marketing
| is deceptive at best an in a few cases some of their claims just
| blatantly not true.
| 
| What surprised me most is that when I pointed this out in the
| past, I was immediately attacked by what appeared to be like
| Apple-style fanboys, whole would not stand by anyone criticizing
| ProtonMail.
| 
| To this day I'm not so sure if that was just the genuinely
| zealous behavior of a few deranged individuals, or if it might
| have been a concerted commercial effort at damage control.
| 
| Either way, to me ProtonMail certainly is not what it claims to
| be (if not explicitly than at least implied). To me it's just
| another commercial entity trying to make a profit by tapping a
| relative niche market while convincing gullible people they are
| something they actually are not, in any way that will make them a
| bigger profit. Nothing really shocking about that, and mostly
| just standard behavior for any other modern commercial entity
| operating within a capitalistic economy.
 
| istingray wrote:
| Disclaimer: Paying Protonmail customer
| 
| I wanted to test how Protonmail is doing for new users I created
| an account from scratch just now over Tor.
| 
| 1. Am asked to verify new account by entering a cell phone
| (bogus)
| 
| 2. Upon login, "Basic" logs are selected which do not display IP.
| You can enable "Advanced" logs to log IP. I would suggest
| Protonmail make it crystal clear that these "Basic" logs do not
| store IP. In 2021, lies by omission are not good enough. Get rid
| of the soft language.
| 
| 3. Their help page [1] says that "Advanced" (IP stored) logs are
| enabled by default. However, I created the account and it's just
| the Basic (no IP) logs. https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-
| base/authentication...
 
  | chrononaut wrote:
  | > 1. Am asked to verify new account by entering a cell phone
  | (bogus)
  | 
  | Interestingly the sentence on their front page, right before
  | the most commonly quoted snippet in this thread, is:
  | 
  | > No personal information is required to create your secure
  | email account.
  | 
  | A phone number is quite a personal, unique identifier.
 
| gtsop wrote:
| Paying customer
| 
| I do not trust protonmail with my privacy. I only use them to
| sign up for various services, trying to escape the data mining
| google does.
| 
| Not sure I want to support a company that is dishonest however.
| I'm reaching the bye-bye point myself slowly but surely.
 
| [deleted]
 
| gigel82 wrote:
| So with FastMail under Australian privacy-bashing laws and now
| this, what are our options for secure, private e-mail?
 
  | Youden wrote:
  | Honest question, because I've been asking it of myself: what do
  | you expect from such a service?
  | 
  | I basically decided to just give up. Email is an insecure
  | protocol and there's not much that can be done about it.
  | Choosing a "secure" email provider feels like choosing a
  | "secure" VPN provider: it's impossible to verify the provider's
  | claims so it's a kind of security theatre.
 
    | cartoonworld wrote:
    | It's impossible to choose a "secure" email provider,
    | unfortunately.
    | 
    | Email can't guarantee E2EE without a block cipher tool like
    | GPG. Even if your provider stores and transmits _only_
    | encrypted email data, once sent it does not maintain that
    | guarantee while being passed by another entity 's MTA.
    | 
    | If you email google, google gets to do whatever googly stuff
    | it would like to do with its algorithm. If you email
    | exchange, roundcube, ISP, hotmail, it could wind up being
    | archived to tape, or simply be sitting for a long time in
    | some unencrypted mail spool, maybe in a public cloud. If you
    | selfhost, you would be forgiven if you find you have made a
    | mistake or simply got pwned.
    | 
    | I've never selfhosted email, but I understand it is a lot of
    | work to set up if you aren't familiar, and while maintenance
    | is okay once you get rolling, there are occasional
    | emergencies or hiccups that require intervention.
    | 
    | Aside from being _much_ slower, regular mail is quite better
    | since you can easily inspect the envelope for evidence of
    | tampering, while email will be imperceptibly copied.
 
    | chrononaut wrote:
    | > I basically decided to just give up. Email is an insecure
    | protocol and there's not much that can be done about it.
    | Choosing a "secure" email provider feels like choosing a
    | "secure" VPN provider: it's impossible to verify the
    | provider's claims so it's a kind of security theatre.
    | 
    | Notionally, I would imagine something that looks like "email"
    | and acts like "e-mail" (to the end user) could eventually
    | exist that provides the same (conceptual) security that the
    | Signal protocol provides (and perhaps a hosting provider
    | option that's the same level of user confidentiality that we
    | get the Signal foundation), although you're correct that
    | foundationally it would be a different protocol. Backwards-
    | compatibility would be required, at least for seamless
    | transition (perhaps represented as "secure" and "plaintext")
    | 
    | Wasn't Ladar Levison (the individual behind Lavabit) working
    | on something like this? https://darkmail.info/
 
  | skitter wrote:
  | One option not mentioned yet is Posteo. They don't keep your IP
  | and strip it in case your mail client sets it in the headers.
  | They also don't take any personal identification for signup or
  | billing (you can even send them letters with money to pay for a
  | mailbox).
 
    | luckylion wrote:
    | I don't know what came of it, but they've been told by the
    | German constitutional court that their approach ("we're using
    | NAT, we don't know the IP on the actual server") doesn't fly
    | and does not protect them from complying with a court order.
 
      | kazen44 wrote:
      | This is correct.
      | 
      | This also applies to ISP's and wiretaps. They need to
      | provide NAT mappings when doing a wiretap if i remember
      | correctly.
 
  | Saris wrote:
  | I say don't use email, it's not a good choice for private
  | communications.
 
  | uuidgen wrote:
  | Anything that you access using thunderbird with GPG configured?
  | 
  | It gives no worse privacy guarantees than protonmail and
  | possibly way better - because if you use protonmail through a
  | web client and they get a court order to serve you a "special"
  | client that forwards your certificate you won't notice it.
 
  | CameronNemo wrote:
  | Protonmail and fastmail are different offerings. Proton offers
  | encryption features, while fastmail makes no effort to promote
  | encryption.
  | 
  | So tutanota would be a good alternative to protonmail. And
  | mailbox.org is a good alternative to fastmail. Both are based
  | in Germany.
 
    | superflit wrote:
    | Occupied Germany is worse[1]
    | 
    | Germany will handle your data as fast as you can order an
    | hans schnitzel.
    | 
    | [1] - https://militarybases.com/overseas/germany/
 
      | merb wrote:
      | well posteo didn't. they tried to fight it as long as
      | possible.
 
        | superflit wrote:
        | There is no fighting.
        | 
        | When you have 21 bases in your land.
 
  | krono wrote:
  | Email from any serviceprovider can be considered as secure and
  | private as public conversations.
 
  | keewee7 wrote:
  | If you're doing subversive activities against a Western country
  | you should probably use some Russian or Chinese state-owned
  | service.
 
    | glitcher wrote:
    | Part of the issue is that the bar for subversive activities
    | in the eyes of western law enforcement seems to be getting
    | lower and lower. I don't know the specifics of this case, but
    | it seems many authorities are also not shy about using these
    | methods to identify and track peaceful protesters as well.
 
      | kazen44 wrote:
      | while i agree this is a problem, this is something that
      | isn't to blame on protonmail (or any other company
      | following the law). This is something that should be
      | changed through politics/lawmaking.
 
  | rakoo wrote:
  | For this specific issue, find a provider that can be accessed
  | through Tor.
  | 
  | But if you want truly private and secure communication, you'll
  | have to forget about email. Even with encryption there's still
  | way too much metadata floating around that can identify you.
 
  | blacklion wrote:
  | Your own self-hosted service on rented server / cloud instance?
  | AFAIU (IANAL!!!) you can refuse to give evidences against
  | yourself in most jurisdictions.
  | 
  | I don't thinks that dedicated server provider (like Hetzner) or
  | cloud provider (like Digital Ocean or Vultr) stores traffic
  | logs with enough details to be useful in such case.
  | 
  | But payment will be a problem...
 
    | upbeat_general wrote:
    | It's certainly possible that they store IP addresses.
    | 
    | Even if they don't, as long as they have the email address
    | then they can probably find the mail server even if the
    | payment is anonymous.
 
      | ta988 wrote:
      | They absolutely keep who used which IP at what time. And
      | they do not allow anonymous purchases.
 
    | Sebb767 wrote:
    | You can't be compelled to incriminate yourself, but your
    | server provider can very much be compelled to give access to
    | the server. And once the server is physically compromised the
    | battle is lost, anyway, but in that case probably with a
    | larger papertrail leading to you.
    | 
    | One expensive but possible option would be to build a server
    | yourself with sufficient traps to shut off when it's tapered
    | with. Then set it up with full disk encryption and put it in
    | a shared rack.
 
| CraneWorm wrote:
| I read here ProtonMail were compelled to log the IP by the
| authorities... Could they have done anything else? Could any sort
| of malicious compliance have been an out? Like: "if we hear there
| is an investigation on you then we want nothing to do with your
| shit and we'll delete your account"?
| 
| I suppose this would land them in hot water, but there might be
| something else really clever?
 
| josephcsible wrote:
| Has ProtonMail done anything wrong themselves, or is this just a
| case of them existing in the wrong country? If they refused to
| cooperate, could the government have just seized their servers
| and collected the data they wanted themselves?
 
  | goldcd wrote:
  | Legally nothing wrong - but they've maybe been a bit
  | disingenuous to their users.
  | 
  | However, better than most (both by jurisdiction and their own
  | rules) than other email providers - and I'd have thought any of
  | their users who were serious about anonymity would have used
  | Tor/Tails etc to connect anyway and used pgp for their
  | messages.
  | 
  | Details of connections to the account (IP and connection
  | fingerprint) shouldn't matter if you were taking your privacy
  | seriously.
  | 
  | Basically just signing up for protonmail doesn't make you
  | secure and there's nothing they could do to help if you just
  | rely on that.
 
  | bawolff wrote:
  | I think the argument is that their advertising is misleading
  | (i.e. if they really didn't keep logs, there would be nothing
  | to hand over)
 
    | [deleted]
 
    | [deleted]
 
    | dogma1138 wrote:
    | They never advertised that they don't keep logs they just
    | said they aren't permanent, in fact you can view your own
    | connection logs if you enable it in which case they are
    | maintained forever.
    | 
    | https://protonmail.com/privacy-policy
    | 
    | They also provide a report of all warrants received
    | https://protonmail.com/blog/transparency-report/
 
      | tromp wrote:
      | That begs the question which of the warrants listed there
      | relates to this climate activist.
 
      | kdunglas wrote:
      | They claim that they don't keep logs on their French
      | homepage. The climate activist is French: https://twitter.c
      | om/onestlatech/status/1434596410977030155?s...
      | 
      | And even on their English website, the marketing is
      | misleading. They say that the service is "anonymous" and
      | also: "By default, we do not keep any IP logs which can be
      | linked to your anonymous email account".
 
        | kafkaIncarnate wrote:
        | REALLY misleading. They created this feature for Mr.
        | Robot, the TV show, too:
        | 
        | https://protonmail.com/blog/protonmail-mr-robot-secure-
        | email...
        | 
        | Scroll down to comment:
        | 
        | > Liam, October 14, 2015 at 10:30 PM
        | 
        | > But https://protonmail.com/security-details page says
        | "No tracking or logging of personally identifiable
        | information. Unlike competing services, we do not save
        | any tracking information. We do not record metadata such
        | as the IP addresses used to log into accounts." So, now
        | it turns to be that you introduced tracking and logging?
        | Is this data encrypted as well?
        | 
        | > Admin, October 17, 2015 at 9:14 PM
        | 
        | > We don't save any of this data by default, the user
        | must explicitly turn it on for us to save it.
        | 
        | There should be a reasonable assumption that given they
        | have end-to-end encryption for the service, they just
        | encrypt the logging for the user and store it encrypted
        | without the key themselves like they do the emails.
        | 
        | Also to note, they at least have an onion link to use
        | their email service.
 
        | gregsadetsky wrote:
        | The CEO's position on Twitter is that "by default" (from
        | the sentence you're quoting) means when there is no
        | criminal investigation, but when there is a legal order
        | in place, Protonmail will collect the IP...
        | 
        | https://twitter.com/andyyen/status/1434600373059297284
        | 
        | "As described in the link above, under Swiss law, we can
        | be forced to collect info on accounts belonging to users
        | under criminal investigation. This is obviously not done
        | by default, but only if we get a legal order."
        | 
        | Activists beware.
 
        | civilized wrote:
        | "We won't keep logs on you, except if you're in trouble
        | with The Authorities, then we'll definitely keep logs on
        | you and rat you out"
        | 
        | Weird definition of privacy we've got going these days
 
        | istingray wrote:
        | "We don't keep IP addresses. (we keep PI addresses which
        | are tooooootally different and you didn't ask about
        | those)"
 
        | rossdavidh wrote:
        | If you thought that Protonmail (or any other company) was
        | going to go to break the law in order to avoid keeping
        | logs on you despite a Swiss-backed warrant saying they
        | had to do so, then you had the wrong impression. But I
        | never got the impression Protonmail was saying that.
 
        | civilized wrote:
        | I have never used the service and don't know or care a
        | thing about it. But their advertising is laughably
        | inconsistent with the reality of the service provided.
        | 
        | If it's illegal to provide a completely anonymous email
        | service, then you should not claim to provide a
        | completely anonymous email service.
 
        | freshhawk wrote:
        | I think everyone has gotten used to this particular lie,
        | because it's so widespread and all the "privacy" email
        | providers say things like this.
        | 
        | Except maybe Lavabit, that guy apparently shut everything
        | down to avoid doing something along these lines. So maybe
        | he wasn't actually lying.
 
        | salawat wrote:
        | Once again: if you can't see their server software, you
        | should assume they are FOS, and are capable of recording
        | anything.
        | 
        | Also: One more reason NAT was a good thing over IPv6. The
        | closer we get to the platonic ideal of "UUID per person"
        | the more likely justice systems will use it that way.
        | 
        | The day everyone learns how to self-host mail on
        | ephemeral compute instances is the day law enforcement
        | starts requiring MX domain logs to be maintained in a
        | historical manner. Work around that magically, and some
        | law'll go on the books to try to tame the super spooky
        | criminal communicators hiding from law enforcement.
        | 
        | This is why we can't have nice things.
 
        | CraneWorm wrote:
        | doesn't the amount of available IPv6 mean you can get a
        | new one every time?
 
        | kemotep wrote:
        | Theoretically yes but if your ISP assigns your home a /64
        | you can use 2^64 different addresses to access the
        | internet.
        | 
        | This still doesn't protect your privacy because your ISP
        | knows what prefix they gave you and will likely provide
        | that to the authorities if you broke the law while using
        | that address. Just like they would even if you used NAT
        | and ipv4 so I don't get where the parent comment thinks
        | that is protecting their privacy at all.
 
        | jrochkind1 wrote:
        | "obviously"?
 
      | u_r_dumb wrote:
      | Literally on their front page:
      | 
      | > 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.
 
        | bombcar wrote:
        | Privacy comes first. Then comes the warrant. Then comes
        | the IP in the report printout.
 
        | chrononaut wrote:
        | > No personal information is required to create your
        | secure email account.
        | 
        | Except your phone number? That's highly personal.
        | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28428092
        | 
        | (I recall encountering this too when creating an account
        | a few months ago.)
 
        | feu wrote:
        | I've created around 10 accounts in the last fews months,
        | and a few more previously. I have never once given (or
        | been asked to give) my phone number.
 
    | ramesh31 wrote:
    | Anyone who ever says "we don't log" is _definitely_ logging,
    | and that statement alone should tell you that they are
    | untrustworthy. No one is stupid enough to take on that kind
    | of liability. The same applies for VPNs.
    | 
    | If you need trust, theres no way around rolling your own
    | service.
 
      | drexlspivey wrote:
      | Logging is the liability not the other way around. You
      | can't be forced to hand over something you don't have
 
        | kazen44 wrote:
        | expect you need to have the infrastructure in place to
        | gather data for police investigations in many countries.
        | If you don't have this infrastructure in place, you are
        | breaking the law as a company which could have enourmous
        | consequences.
        | 
        | This does not mean you need to log everything all the
        | time. (usually that is actually quite illegal too) but
        | you need to have infrastructure in place to allow for
        | police investigations.
        | 
        | I don't get how people don't understand this. companies
        | need to operate according to the law of the land, this
        | being one of them.
 
        | Raed667 wrote:
        | You can be forced to log though.
        | 
        | I'm not sure how your tech-stack has to look like for you
        | to claim that you can't log IP addresses and user-agents
        | etc...
 
        | drexlspivey wrote:
        | Some VPN providers run their servers without hard drives.
 
        | luckylion wrote:
        | Thank god their servers aren't on a network where they
        | could simply send the log entries to a different server.
        | 
        | That's a cute idea, but it won't get them out of
        | complying with a warrant.
 
        | chrononaut wrote:
        | Yeah, that seems more a mechanism to prevent forensics
        | analysis of a hard disk to retrieve transient logs that
        | might've been briefly written to disk (?). I hope it
        | isn't being as a means to prevent the means to log for
        | future connections, for the reasons you state.
 
| kazen44 wrote:
| for those who are curious,
| 
| this seems to be the reply from protonmail on reddit[0]
| 
| >Hi everyone, Proton team here. We are also deeply concerned
| about this case. In the interest of transparency, here's some
| more context.
| 
| In this case, Proton received a legally binding order from the
| Swiss Federal Department of Justice which we are obligated to
| comply with. Details about how we handle Swiss law enforcement
| requests can found in our transparency report:
| 
| https://protonmail.com/blog/transparency-report/
| 
| Transparency with the user community is extremely important to us
| and we have been publishing a transparency report since 2015.
| 
| As detailed in our transparency report, our published threat
| model, and also our privacy policy, under Swiss law, Proton can
| be forced to collect info on accounts belonging to users under
| Swiss criminal investigation. This is obviously not done by
| default, but only if Proton gets a legal order for a specific
| account. Under no circumstances however, can our encryption be
| bypassed.
| 
| Our legal team does in fact screen all requests that we receive
| but in this case, it appears that an act contrary to Swiss law
| did in fact take place (and this was also the determination of
| the Federal Department of Justice which does a legal review of
| each case). This means we did not have grounds to refuse the
| request. Thus Swiss law gives us no possibility to appeal this
| particular request.
| 
| The prosecution in this case seems quite aggressive.
| Unfortunately, this is a pattern we have increasingly seen in
| recent years around the world (for example in France where terror
| laws are inappropriately used). We will continue to campaign
| against such laws and abuses.
| 
| to me this seems like they did all the could in regards to
| handling this request.
| 
| [0]https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/pil6xi/climate_..
| .
 
| Kenji wrote:
| If you're a criminal and use email, especially email paid for in
| your name, you're an idiot. Switzerland has been tightening its
| laws just like every other country, all of them are fascist.
 
| m-p-3 wrote:
| For those using Tor, the Onion v3 address is
| protonmailrmez3lotccipshtkleegetolb73fuirgj7r4o4vfu7ozyd.onion
 
| blondin wrote:
| okay.
| 
| so today we are redefining what "not logging data" means. it
| changes meaning when used in the same sentence as the expression
| "by default". so by default, not logging data is not really not
| logging data.
| 
| we've redefined quite a few things in the past few months. will
| be interesting to see where we go from here.
 
  | throwawayswede wrote:
  | It has not really changed meaning. Asshole companies blatantly
  | lying and using dark patterns only means one thing: that the
  | company is a piece of trash and does not respect their
  | customers.
 
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Question: is it possible they do not log any of the data but were
| required to capture it on the next login? All the talk here
| implicitly assumes ProtonMail provided historical information.
 
  | kazen44 wrote:
  | As far as i understand from the article, this is roughly what
  | happened. Protonmail got a warrant, and thus enabled logging
  | for the user (as is required by law).
 
| regnull wrote:
| The only good answer to this is end-to-end encryption, keys held
| by the individuals, and full decentralization. You must not put
| your private communications into the hands of any company, as
| great as they are.
 
| newbie789 wrote:
| I'm aware that this is a very silly sounding question, but I'm
| very confused about what's going on here.
| 
| If the subject of this investigation had been using ProtonVPN to
| connect to ProtonMail, would this have (in a marginal way)
| protected their anonymity? If Proton _Mail_ can be compelled to
| begin logging, surely the same must be said of Proton _VPN_
| right?
| 
| It's interesting how many "privacy focused" companies tout being
| based in Switzerland as some big badge of honor, which a layman
| consumer such as myself is supposed to be really impressed by due
| to the overall reputation of "Swiss privacy laws."
| 
| In practice, I've never been to Switzerland. I don't know any
| person that has had any legal issues there, let alone someone
| that's litigated a digital privacy case there. I do not speak
| German or French, and don't know where to start when it comes to
| looking up specific cases or court proceedings, so I'd be
| extremely slow on the uptake of the actual ins and outs of how
| the Swiss privacy model works from a practical standpoint.
| 
| The "based in Switzerland" thing strikes me as a bit of a black
| box bit of marketing speak. How much time, energy and money did
| ProtonMail expend fighting this surreptitious logging mandate?
| Does "Swiss privacy" actualy mean anything if ProtonMail is happy
| to hand over your IP address when spooked?
 
  | H8crilA wrote:
  | Shhh, the entire country runs on similar myths, most
  | prominently banking. But then, all that the common man is
  | capable of understanding is myths, sooo ...
 
  | llampx wrote:
  | > It's interesting how many "privacy focused" companies tout
  | being based in Switzerland as some big badge of honor, which a
  | layman consumer such as myself is supposed to be really
  | impressed by due to the overall reputation of "Swiss privacy
  | laws."
  | 
  | I believe it comes about due to the old trope of Swiss banks
  | being the most secure places to hide money, which of course is
  | not true and hasn't been for a long time. Even in that period,
  | I am sure they complied with Interpol/Europol requests to
  | divulge account details of evil masterminds with a beeellion
  | dollars hidden away in a Swiss vault.
 
  | shantara wrote:
  | I used to work for a now defunct Swiss company that had "Swiss
  | quality, security and privacy" plastered all over the website
  | and marketing materials. The number of actual Swiss people on
  | the team could be counted on one hand, the rest of developers
  | being from every European country out there, with the most
  | represented ones being Ukraine and Romania. And from talking
  | with my coworkers, the situation is the same across other Swiss
  | IT companies.
  | 
  | I would not pay any attention to the "Swiss X" marketing.
 
| FpUser wrote:
| Proble is not with ProtonMail. Problem is with the government
| arresting people for this type of action.
 
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Also mentioned in another submitted tweet:
| 
| https://nitter.eu/OnEstLaTech/status/1434575322465382404
| 
| Translation: "The company @ProtonMail delivered IPs of climate
| activists to the police, after which the activists were arrested
| and searched. ProtonMail claims on its website, however, that it
| does not store the IP addresses of its users."
| 
| Source (in French): https://secoursrouge.org/france-suisse-
| securite-it-protonmai...
| 
| Translation (via Google Translate):
| 
|  _The year 2020 and 2021 was marked by the establishment and
| repression of a series of occupations in the district of Place
| Sainte Marthe, in Paris, in order to fight against its
| gentrification. Some 20 people were arrested, three searches were
| carried out and several people were sentenced to suspended prison
| sentences or to fines of several thousand euros (more info here
| and here). In addition, seven people are on trial in early 2022
| for "theft and degradation in assembly and home invasion"
| following the occupation of a with a file of more than 1000
| pages. During the investigation, the police focused on the
| collective "Youth For Climate". In particular, they were able to
| use photos published on Instagram, even if they were blurred
| because of the clothes._
| 
|  _The police also noticed that the collective communicated via a
| protonmail email address. They therefore sent a requisition (via
| EUROPOL) to the Swiss company managing the messaging system in
| order to find out the identity of the creator of the address.
| Protonmail responded to this request by providing the IP address
| and the fingerprint of the browser used by the collective. It is
| therefore imperative to go through the tor network (or at least a
| VPN) when using a Protonmail mailbox (or another secure mailbox)
| if you want to guarantee sufficient security._
| 
| (Disclaimer, Protonmail user.)
 
| throwawayswede wrote:
| This is seriously messed up. Purely because their marketing has
| been very aggressive to promote total and complete anonymity,
| directly sometimes and mostly indirectly. If it's true that the
| French wording makes it seem like they don't keep logs at all
| whatsoever, then I believe the person arrested has grounds to sue
| them, and I would hope they do. But even if not, I consider their
| marketing is a total and complete dark pattern from now on imo.
| 
| Tremendously disappointed.
| 
| What's next? Is ddg selling search data to google?
 
| skarz wrote:
| We know that PM saves all kind of metadata and happily provides
| it to any kind of agency. You have to use an anonymous VPN
| service (obviously not ProtonVPN) in combination with ProtonMail,
| if you want to avoid exposure by PM.
| 
| ProtonMail lost it's essence to be honest. As soon as my
| subscription runs out I'm gonna host my own mailserver instead.
| There are no advantages in using ProtonMail snymore.
 
| londons_explore wrote:
| Cryptographers and developers need to step up their game...
| 
| There needs to be a messaging service where as well as the
| messages being encrypted, the graph of who is talking to who and
| when must be encrypted.
| 
| I'm imagining a system where your device forwards hundreds of
| messages for _other people_ , hiding your own message flow.
| 
| I perhaps send a few hundred messages per day, and even
| multiplying that by 1000, and the typical message length of a few
| words, it's still a tiny amount of data transfer.
 
  | bickeringyokel wrote:
  | Interesting idea, but is that not a liability to yourself if
  | nefarious or illegal messages are passing through your device?
 
| dlvktrsh wrote:
| I knew they were snitch
 
| doc_gunthrop wrote:
| It seems the lesson here is to always use a VPN (or Tor) if
| you're under such threat.
 
  | vmception wrote:
  | and the lesson here is that everyone who called out Protonmail
  | for being sus (suspect) on signup was correct.
  | 
  | try using Tor to create a protonmail account and they require
  | both javascript and a phone number.
  | 
  | yeh yeh client side encryption requires javascript, but seems
  | better to just have an unlinked email that can be read server
  | side and there are plenty of Tor-only email providers for that.
  | 
  | phone number under an "anti-spam" guise is just suspect.
 
| istingray wrote:
| Protonmail customer here. Sigh. This is why I keep my own domain
| and can point it wherever I need. Dear Protonmail, email is
| fucking cheap and easy, I pay you $58 a year to solve stupid shit
| like this.
| 
| Vendors really need to figure out how to thread the needle of "No
| don't trust us" but still encourage customers to buy. Protonmail
| failed here. Apple's still very much in the "trust no one but
| us!" vibe, and it's just not sustainable.
| 
| I'll be switching my Protonmail use to default to Tor now. Open
| to Tor-first vendors...are there any?
| 
| I like how Brave has "open in Tor" displayed on Tor-mirrored
| sites. There's even an option for "Automatically redirect .onion"
| sites too. Makes it easy to switch over.
| 
| What if Protonmail pushed their Tor services more? "Guide to
| using Protonmail as privately as possible", have a switch for
| "Private Mode" that kicks you over to Tor/download Tor.
 
  | pphysch wrote:
  | Tor is a State Dept/DARPA project, so at best a sidegrade from
  | Proton if your concern is being surveilled by Western
  | governments.
 
    | sneak wrote:
    | Tor is open source. Point to the vulnerability you are
    | claiming, or stop spreading FUD.
 
      | arglebarglegar wrote:
      | it's been known for a while that the NSA runs tor nodes,
      | right?
 
      | cortesoft wrote:
      | https://nusenu.medium.com/tracking-one-year-of-malicious-
      | tor...
 
  | acheron wrote:
  | Where "this" in "solve stupid shit like this" is "hide you from
  | police with a legally authorized warrant"?
  | 
  | If you were relying on Protonmail to conceal evidence of
  | criminal activity for you, you may not have thought that all
  | the way through.
 
    | istingray wrote:
    | Where "this" is using soft language like "by default" to hide
    | shortcomings. I expect Protonmail to do more to educate users
    | to be aware of how surveillance happens, whether a rogue
    | employee enables the function on their end, warrant, etc.
 
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Is Javascript required to sign up or use ProtonMail.
| 
| https://www.wired.com/2015/10/mr-robot-uses-protonmail-still...
 
  | codetrotter wrote:
  | No, you can use any SMTP/IMAP/POP3 capable client instead of
  | using their web interface.
  | 
  | https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/imap-smtp-and-...
  | 
  | But you are still making an IP connection. JS/no JS is not
  | relevant to this discussion.
 
    | [deleted]
 
| [deleted]
 
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Do we still like Runbox? Based in Norway. They claim to be the
| most secure email provider due to Norwegian laws:
| 
| https://runbox.com/why-runbox/privacy-protection/email-priva...
 
| mikl wrote:
| I guess there isn't much Protonmail can do if the prosecutor
| shows up with an ~Interpol~ Europol warrant.
| 
| I wonder what this "activist" did to earn himself Europol
| attention. At least before the world went insane, that would only
| happen for serious crimes.
 
  | ficklepickle wrote:
  | The terrible crime of squatting, according to some comments in
  | that thread
 
    | BrandoElFollito wrote:
    | Has your home in France been squatted? No? Or maybe you do
    | not own a house in France?
    | 
    | If so, on which basis do you ironically call squatting a
    | "terrible crime"?
    | 
    | Squatters in your house in France means that you you have
    | zero rights on this place until a lengthy process gives it
    | back to you, ruined. You are then expected to be grateful and
    | can forget about any reimbursement from the poor people who
    | stole your property.
 
      | [deleted]
 
  | folmar wrote:
  | Interpol warrants are widely used for fighting political
  | opponents [https://stockholmcf.org/wp-
  | content/uploads/2017/09/Abuse-Of-...]
  | [http://www.opinione.it/societa/2017/08/29/claudia-
  | candelmo-e...]
 
  | [deleted]
 
  | keewee7 wrote:
  | The Climate Action youth movement is sometimes explicitly anti-
  | capitalist in a very "direct action" way.
  | 
  | Vandalising banks is stupid and also an efficient way to make
  | powerful people dislike you.
 
    | mytailorisrich wrote:
    | They do seem to be a far left group using the "climate"
    | umbrella. This squatting 'action' has nothing to do with the
    | environment, it's class struggle.
    | 
    | Unfortunately this sort of extremist group is harmful to
    | people and organisations genuinely trying to do something for
    | the environment.
 
    | freshhawk wrote:
    | Probably the movement to squat in empty buildings and
    | organize more of the same in response to pandemic evictions,
    | that's been getting the kind of attention its very dangerous
    | for left wing groups to get.
 
    | [deleted]
 
  | nicce wrote:
  | If you don't collect data, you can't give it even if you
  | wanted?
 
    | MattGaiser wrote:
    | I suspect that you can order to collect it going forward.
 
      | dheera wrote:
      | If they order to collect someone's data, can't ProtonMail
      | just say "we've been ordered to collect data for a user" on
      | the front page?
 
    | danuker wrote:
    | Certain organizations can compel you to start gathering data.
 
    | kazen44 wrote:
    | expect you are legally required to actually gather this data
    | if a warrant is issued.
 
| vmoore wrote:
| You can disable the recording of login sessions in Protonmail's
| settings dashboard. I do that, not only to avoid Protonmail
| learning of the logs, but by a hacker who, once upon breaching
| your account; also gets to learn the IP you use to login with.
 
  | istingray wrote:
  | Thanks, I had "Basic" on and turned it completely off. This
  | should be Disabled by default. I created a new account to see
  | what the default is (it's Basic):
  | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28428092
 
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| I'm looking forward to the day where email is not mistakenly used
| for clandestine communication.
| 
| Why hasn't there been made a Tor-only, store-and-forward, text-
| only communication app? You'd think this would be a no-brainer
| for communities that need _real_ private communications.
 
| blub wrote:
| If you think that's bad, Tutanota was forced by the court to
| change their SW, so that all incoming e-mails for a specific
| account would be intercepted before encryption:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27303712
 
  | freshhawk wrote:
  | Hushmail had a similar warrant, they changed their login form
  | so it would send the password in the clear to the server, which
  | they used to decrypt the mail and logged all the traffic to
  | help trace the user. If you get targeted these "anonymous"
  | email services aren't going to be good for much in practice.
 
| istingray wrote:
| Disclaimer: Paying Protonmail customer
| 
| Their homepage says "By default, we do not keep any IP logs"
| 
| In 2021, any soft language like this should be a red flag for
| anyone who is against surveillance. Maybe in 2018 it was good
| enough. But in 2021 it's not. Come on, Protonmail, you're
| supposed to be leading the way -- don't make me figure it out
| myself.
| 
| Replace immediately with "By default we don't log IP, but may be
| required to by local law enforcement. We recommend everyone
| connect through Protonmail through Tor. This month, 60% of our
| users connected through Tor".
 
  | sigmoid10 wrote:
  | People really don't seem to understand that Protonmail is a
  | western company in a western country with pretty generous
  | surveillance laws. Yes, your email text may be encrypted, but
  | everything else is free game to the authorities unless you use
  | additional protection.
 
    | istingray wrote:
    | Protonmail should be pushing more of this messaging in their
    | branding. "Don't trust us further than you can throw us.
    | We're doing our best, and here's what we recommend, use Tor,
    | etc."
 
      | winrid wrote:
      | This is just not realistic, though.
 
        | pseudalopex wrote:
        | Why not?
 
        | umvi wrote:
        | "we aren't much better than Gmail from a privacy
        | standpoint, but please still give us money"
 
    | Barrin92 wrote:
    | I wonder how long the 'Swiss privacy' brand, which seems to
    | be fairly valuable will hold if these things keep happening,
    | I had to immediately think of Crypto AG
    | 
    | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG
 
  | znpy wrote:
  | In the US companies can make canary statement...
  | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary
 
    | dredmorbius wrote:
    | The canary is dead, and the fact is widely publiscised, if
    | not necessarily well known.
 
    | istingray wrote:
    | Those canary things seem so 2018.
    | 
    | In 2021 the most powerful canary statement should be "Don't
    | trust us. Seriously, treat us as an adversary. We still want
    | you to be our customer of course, but here's how we really
    | recommend you use our service, Tor, semi-anonymous payments,
    | etc. In God we trust, for everyone else use math."
 
  | cabalamat wrote:
  | I wonder how many TOR nodes are run by the NSA?
 
    | calvinmorrison wrote:
    | Doesn't matter if you are going to an internal onion address
 
  | ivan_gammel wrote:
  | TBH in 2021 people engaging in potentially dangerous activities
  | should be literate enough to understand, that no business will
  | guarantee them full security and decline all requests from
  | authorities to disclose their identity. The wording you suggest
  | is equivalent of ,,do not dry your cat in microwave"
  | instruction - a legal protection from dumb customers, that does
  | not contribute meaningfully to safety.
  | 
  | For the non-Swiss customers working with a Swiss provider can
  | be a good enough protection to avoid inconvenience of Tor.
  | After all, even in the mentioned case it required review and
  | approval of 3 agencies before request came to Proton - from
  | French police, from Europol, and then from Swiss authorities.
  | If this is not enough barriers to protect from politically
  | motivated prosecutions and corruption, then we have much bigger
  | problem in Europe.
 
    | Thorrez wrote:
    | Sure, the wording istingray suggested is a bit over the top.
    | But the existing wording "By default, we do not keep any IP
    | logs" is misleading. Why even say it? They should simply
    | delete it.
 
      | ivan_gammel wrote:
      | How do you understand ,,by default" and ,,keep" in this
      | phrase? Does it actually mean that they do not _collect_
      | the logs?
 
        | lelandfe wrote:
        | My first reading of "by default" here is that I can
        | optionally enable it through my account.
        | 
        | Really, it's a phrase that means 3 things: I can enable
        | it, ProtonMail can enable it[0], or the authorities can
        | compel ProtonMail to enable it.
        | 
        | Saying _any_ of that, or at least linking to a page that
        | does, would be a smart move.
        | 
        | [0] https://protonmail.com/privacy-policy - "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 and conditions"
 
    | akimball wrote:
    | It's not protection FROM your customers. It is protection FOR
    | your customers. Most customers are not technically astute
 
      | shadowgovt wrote:
      | A corporation is a power centralization, and government
      | authority can lean on power centralization.
      | 
      | In general, regardless of what their TOS say, never believe
      | that a corporation can't be compelled by the law to do
      | anything they could physically do. CEOs can be jailed;
      | when's the last time we heard of one _actually_ going to
      | jail over user privacy?
 
        | pessimizer wrote:
        | The point being made agrees with you, and is just saying
        | that since protonmail can't help but obey sometimes, they
        | should make the effort to educate their customers about
        | that fact and whatever their customers can personally do
        | to mitigate the risks of that fact.
 
      | ivan_gammel wrote:
      | A customer that specifically chooses Proton for privacy,
      | must read and agree to privacy policy, which explicitly
      | states, that Proton may in fact keep temporary IP logs and
      | that user may opt in for login IP logs. Requests from
      | authorities may ask for this kind of information and Proton
      | will have to provide it.
      | 
      | The ,,opt-in" part for login logs is particularly
      | interesting, because in fact Proton recommends this as a
      | security best practice. Whether it's in the best interest
      | of the customer or not, it's an open question. I would say,
      | in a risk model, where threat of human rights violation by
      | Swiss government is much lower than risks of unauthorized
      | party accessing the account, it makes sense. Tough luck for
      | the criminals that followed this advice.
      | 
      | https://protonmail.com/privacy-policy
 
| keewee7 wrote:
| Why is a "Climate activist" being arrested?
 
  | jokoon wrote:
  | I don't really know but eco terrorism is something that is more
  | than likely to increase, with all the floods, forest fires,
  | hurricanes, Greta thunberg, ipcc reports, and recently Biden
  | authorizing some oil contract thing.
  | 
  | Something is going to move.
 
  | mytailorisrich wrote:
  | In this case it seems that they are a far left group that has
  | decided to squat a restaurant for good old 'class struggle'
  | reasons and vowed not to back down...
  | 
  | It also seems that it is not any restaurant but one of the
  | 'victims' of the 2015 terrorist attacks [1]
  | 
  | Basically political extremists trying to disguise themselves as
  | environmental activists. Not interesting people, to say the
  | least.
  | 
  | [1] https://www.tellerreport.com/news/2021-01-04-%0A---
  | justice-o...
 
| [deleted]
 
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| "We won't store your IP, except when its sought by the
| government, which is the only reason you'd ever realistically pay
| for a service that doesn't store your IP."
| 
| Brilliant!
 
| COGlory wrote:
| Disclaimer: I have a ProtonMail account that I pay for.
| 
| I have seen a ton of disturbing pieces about ProtonMail. Every
| time I've looked into them, they seem to be maliciously motivated
| and usually not true, or otherwise twisting of the truth. This
| has been a confusing thing for me because why is there a small
| subset of people so vehemently against them?
| 
| In this case, I'm not surprised. They say quite clearly they can
| be compelled to collect IP addresses - including in the linked
| tweet. This seems like a pretty clear cut case of them being
| compelled to provide an IP address. What the authorities can't
| do, is read that person's email. And that's what I and others pay
| for.
| 
| I'm not sure what there is to be upset about here? Other than
| perhaps France prosecuting this individual to begin with? If we
| had faith that ProtonMail wouldn't hand over anything to the
| government, why would anyone even care about having encrypted
| emails?
 
  | istingray wrote:
  | I'm also a Protonmail customer.
  | 
  | Tor solves this. Protonmail's Tor support is lukewarm. They
  | have a Tor based login without captchas. It's mentioned on
  | their homepage in the bottom menu under "Onion Site", (/tor).
  | And there's one blog post from 2017 that still promotes their
  | v2/shorter onion address.
  | 
  | I expect Protonmail to push its users to login through Tor.
  | "Don't trust us, trust math". Embed Tor support in their apps
  | as well. Rebuild their iOS app to offer to drive all
  | connections through Tor.
  | 
  | And frankly, for $50 a year for email, I expect Protonmail to
  | be thinking ahead about this, rather than me coming up with
  | dumb ideas on a forum. Protonmail was neat in 2018 but 3 years
  | later it's stagnant.
 
    | Aachen wrote:
    | How is that lukewarm? Sounds like first class support if they
    | have a dedicated onion address and not just let you connect
    | to the regular clearnet. Or is that address _only_ in that
    | old blog post and not mentioned in places you 'd usually
    | look? It's a bit unclear to me.
 
      | istingray wrote:
      | It's lukewarm because what _less_ could you do besides not
      | support Tor?
      | 
      | Tor is mentioned on their homepage in the bottom menu under
      | "Onion Site". However, this menu link redirects to their
      | Tor placeholder page, rather than directly to the Tor
      | service: https://protonmail.com/tor
      | 
      | There's one blog post from 2017 that still promotes their
      | old v2 onion address: https://protonmail.com/blog/tor-
      | encrypted-email/
      | 
      | Protonmail's Tor service is located at: https://protonmailr
      | mez3lotccipshtkleegetolb73fuirgj7r4o4vfu7...
 
    | cortesoft wrote:
    | What does using Tor have to do with trusting math?
 
      | istingray wrote:
      | "What makes Tor different from the usual thesaurus-full of
      | government projects is that Tor is essentially a very
      | elaborate math trick, using layers of math puzzles to
      | create a network-within-the-network. That math is being
      | implemented in front of a global audience of millions of
      | sophisticated watchers. It is likely the most examined
      | codebase in the world. It has been subjected to multiple
      | public audits. The math, well known and widely
      | standardized, will work for everyone, or it will not,
      | whoever pays the bills."
      | 
      | from https://pando.com/2014/12/09/clearing-the-air-around-
      | tor/
 
  | polote wrote:
  | One of the first sentence on their website is "By default, we
  | do not keep any IP logs". If as soon as police show up (Which
  | is almost the only case that people would want their IP hidden)
  | they give IP logs, it is clearly false advertising. The fact
  | that only the anonymous feature is important to you will not
  | change the fact that they do the opposite of what they
  | advertise regarding IP logs
 
    | COGlory wrote:
    | >If as soon as police show up (Which is almost the only case
    | that people would want their IP hidden) they give IP logs, it
    | is clearly false advertising
    | 
    | Is there any evidence this is what happened?
    | 
    | An alternate scenario is that they were not keeping logs, and
    | were then compelled by the authorities to start keeping them
    | on that user.
 
      | bdibs wrote:
      | Wouldn't "any" include authority compelled logging?
 
        | COGlory wrote:
        | Perhaps, but I'd imagine that semantically, "by default"
        | negates that since this is clearly not a default
        | situation.
 
        | hh3k0 wrote:
        | Stop trying to defend indefensible behavior by getting
        | hung up on semantics.
        | 
        | I, for one, will not renew my ProtonMail account if
        | that's their status quo.
 
        | kazen44 wrote:
        | what other status quo do you expect from them? Having to
        | provide IP logs after a warrant has been issued is the
        | law in switserland (and most if not all of the EU).
        | 
        | Sure, the law would (hopefully) be changed, but at the
        | moment, this is the best they can legally do?
 
        | ipaddr wrote:
        | Tell users you are being logged on website.
        | 
        | Put alert warning that account has logging enabled
        | 
        | Change the service so collecting logs is not possible
        | 
        | Stop adding captcha to tor users login because you want
        | to identify users
 
      | polote wrote:
      | The end result is the same either way
 
        | Sebb767 wrote:
        | No. With on-demand logging, they can find the owner of
        | the account (assuming he doesn't take further measures),
        | but you can't retroactively prove someone used that
        | account to do something at a specific time. For example,
        | you could not prove that the individual was logged in at
        | internet cafe xy near the time of the crime. Also, an
        | opsec mishap (such as logging in without protection) will
        | not be fatal unless you're already under surveillance.
 
        | COGlory wrote:
        | No, if they were not collecting logs by default, then it
        | is clearly not false advertising.
 
        | polote wrote:
        | So the default is when nobody ask for the logs? What the
        | point of not collecting IP unless for the time it is
        | useful?
 
        | Aachen wrote:
        | I mean it's either this or traffic analysis. If you use
        | your clearnet IP address to do illegal things, it's
        | nothing more than reasonable that you can get in trouble
        | for it.
        | 
        | This is also why I don't get protonmail in the first
        | place. Unless you use pgp or equivalent, you'll always be
        | subject to law enforcement. Just that protonmail cares
        | more and caters more to activists and so might not give
        | it out without checking that the asker is really legit
        | and then give the minimal amount possible. But they'll
        | always be able to turn over your emails and log IPs, it's
        | not protonmail's fault the laws were voted into action
        | like this.
 
        | Sebb767 wrote:
        | No history of when you logged in from where and,
        | possibly, plausible deniability about about you being the
        | only user of that account (through you'd probably need to
        | prepare for this to be believable).
 
        | lelandfe wrote:
        | Technically correct but misleading.
        | 
        | They tout that off-by-default statement on their
        | homepage, underneath the header of "Anonymous Email,"
        | with the closing sentence of "Your privacy comes first."
        | 
        | So why even market that? It provides no meaningful
        | security.
 
        | IlliOnato wrote:
        | Were _you_ mislead by this? Did you really expect a
        | Switzerland-based company not to comply with law of the
        | land?
        | 
        | There is a difference between "available to police, not
        | retroactively, and only with a valid warrant" and
        | "available to any government agency constantly and in
        | bulk, as well as to data-collecting commercial entities,
        | Russian and Chinese hackers, and their dogs". Don't you
        | agree?
 
        | lelandfe wrote:
        | Fair point. I still don't think they've worded that well
        | enough. I would probably not have read "By default" to
        | have the context of "Unless asked to do so by
        | authorities."
        | 
        | They're not being as transparent as possible in their
        | marketing, which is at odds with their allure of
        | security.
 
        | kylehotchkiss wrote:
        | Really solid explanation of what you're paying for as a
        | proton customer - and despite this unfortunate situation
        | for the French advocate is why myself and others will
        | continue their paid ProtonMail plans
 
        | fsckboy wrote:
        | no, the end result is not the same either way.
        | 
        | I'm not taking sides on privacy or the threat of govt (or
        | other sourced) tyranny, I'm just explaining the logic to
        | answer your question:
        | 
        | Let's say you engaged in a long history of using
        | protonmail innocently, then one day you decided to start
        | commiting crimes for the first time and attract police
        | interest. You would know that your historical logs were
        | not kept, and it was only after you started attracting
        | police attention that you would be at risk of
        | incriminating yourself through proton mail. Maybe, on the
        | run from the law, it would be safe for you to hide at
        | your old friends house because there was no log to link
        | you to him.
        | 
        | Yes, it is also the case that you may not have realized
        | that ordinary behavior had been criminalized by an evil
        | govt all along blah blah blah... I'm just pointing out
        | that there is a difference where you saw none.
 
        | polote wrote:
        | I said the end result is the same. Not that it is the
        | same. In both case they give the IP when the police ask
        | for it
 
        | fsckboy wrote:
        | In both cases they don't give the IP.
        | 
        | in the case where they receive a court order, they first
        | log your IP and then they give it.
        | 
        | but you know this from their terms of service.
        | 
        | if you stop using protonmail when you start your criminal
        | career, they will not give your IP because they didn't
        | save it.
        | 
        | it's different in the end, not the same.
 
        | ipaddr wrote:
        | If you knew this, couldn't you login from someone's ip
        | you want to frame the crime on?
 
    | tephra wrote:
    | So also a proton customer here. "By default we do not keep
    | any IP logs" and this case does not seem like the default?
    | Seems like they were required to by law to log and turn over
    | this specific IP? (Of course I haven't seen the actual case
    | but I would assume that meant a warrant.)
 
      | jonas21 wrote:
      | As a user, I'd take that to mean that they wouldn't keep
      | any IP logs unless _I_ turned logging on. I wouldn 't
      | expect that _they_ would enable logging on their own.
      | 
      | Interestingly, ProtonMail's privacy policy lists a number
      | of cases in which they may log your IP address permanently
      | (including if you breach their Terms and Conditions). But a
      | request from law enforcement is not one them.
 
      | polote wrote:
      | We do not kill people except the people we kill
      | 
      | I see that you want to protect Protonmail, but if they want
      | to stop being misleading they can just remove the IP log
      | sentence
 
        | istingray wrote:
        | Put "By default we don't keep IP, but may be required to
        | by local laws. We suggest you connect through Protonmail
        | through Tor".
        | 
        | I would much prefer this, as a Protonmail paying
        | customer.
 
        | dredmorbius wrote:
        | Tor helps, but is not especially robust against state-
        | level actors / APTs. An actor running a sufficient number
        | of entry/exit nodes could perform at least some traffic
        | analysis.
        | 
        | Tor is an improvement. It's still a limited tool.
 
        | s1artibartfast wrote:
        | It's not misleading in that many services do keep records
        | by default. If people don't understand what default
        | means, they should grow their understanding, not be
        | outraged that their uninformed opinion was wrong.
 
        | istingray wrote:
        | Default means "we do whatever the fuck we want, any
        | assumptions are your fault"
 
        | tephra wrote:
        | I mean they are misleading in so far you want them to...
        | 
        | I'm a privacy activist and certainly think that a company
        | should be able to not keep logs. If the law in the
        | country they are in (or area, see for example the data
        | retention directive in the EU) we should of course (and I
        | am) work to change those laws.
        | 
        | It should come as no surprise to anyone who is privacy
        | minded and actively seek out privacy focused services
        | that are located within the EU or Switzerland that your
        | IP (or other information) can be requested with a warrant
        | and that a company is required to hand that over.
 
      | istingray wrote:
      | If this doesn't matter, what's important for you about
      | being a Protonmail customer?
      | 
      | (also a paying Protonmail customer)
 
        | tephra wrote:
        | I never said it didn't matter. I think the data retention
        | laws and for what crimes the police are able to get
        | certain warrants in the EU and Switzerland can be better.
        | 
        | But that is not a proton issue that is an issue with our
        | current governments.
 
        | neltnerb wrote:
        | That your emails are supposedly stored encrypted, that if
        | other services support it end-to-end email encryption
        | supposedly can be enabled easily, and that supposedly you
        | cannot be served targeted ads because they cannot read
        | the contents of your email (not that they have ads
        | anyway).
        | 
        | Of course Protonmail is accessible via Tor. Not that you
        | should need to do that to remain private.
 
        | vntok wrote:
        | > That your emails are supposedly stored encrypted, that
        | if other services support it end-to-end email encryption
        | supposedly can be enabled easily, and that supposedly you
        | cannot be served targeted ads because they cannot read
        | the contents of your email (not that they have ads
        | anyway).
        | 
        | Gmail does all of this for free though, right?
 
        | rileyphone wrote:
        | The last point very much not so - having my email
        | provided as a free product by the world's largest ad
        | company isn't a relationship I want to pursue.
 
  | aborsy wrote:
  | >> What the authorities can't do, is read that person's email.
  | 
  | What if authorities ask, serve this user this malicious
  | JacaScript code to obtain their encryption key?
  | 
  | PM has to obey and the result is the same.
 
    | pgalvin wrote:
    | They claim this is not possible under Swiss law, fwiw. We've
    | recently seen that it is possible under German law, with a
    | competitor (Tutanota) building a server-side backdoor for one
    | user.
 
      | caeril wrote:
      | ...but we know it's possible under Swiss law, from this
      | case, for them to be compelled to _start_ logging specific
      | account accesses, that they by default _were not_
      | previously.
      | 
      | How is that any different from them being compelled to
      | disable or weaken clientside encryption?
      | 
      | In both cases they're being compelled to make changes to
      | their service.
      | 
      | The camel's nose is clearly already under the tent.
      | Everybody needs to start diffing javascript served by them.
 
        | feu wrote:
        | >...but we know it's possible under Swiss law, from this
        | case, for them to be compelled to start logging specific
        | account accesses, that they by default were not
        | previously.
        | 
        | You're claiming that we know X is possible under Swiss
        | law because they were compelled to start doing Y, there
        | is no connection between those two things. Unless you can
        | cite specific laws which do allow compelling injection of
        | malicious JavaScript this seems like the spreading of
        | FUD.
 
  | c7DJTLrn wrote:
  | I am also paying for ProtonMail.
  | 
  | They come off as a very dodgy company willing to twist the
  | truth themselves. They claim that they can provide E2EE for
  | email, being careful not to give away the fact that this is
  | impossible for regular emails to non-PM customers.
  | 
  | Frankly I only use them because they're the biggest "private"
  | email service and that provides a kind of safety in numbers.
 
    | Sebb767 wrote:
    | As a business in that space, you probably need to have dodgy
    | marketing in order to convince mainstream users. I'm not
    | disagreeing that it's bad, but it's probably necessary
    | business-wise.
 
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| What does Youth for Climate do that required arrest? I'm
| unfamiliar with them.
 
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