The guy went on a lobbying trip to DC and was heard by GOP folks and not dems. So what? That's all we know. Were dems busy that day? Did he try a different approach when he talked to the right. Anyone can go to DC and be heard or ignored on a lobbying trip.
Also, the content creator of the video was not vetted for sponsorship because they don't usually do that. They admitted fault and are changing procedures to appropriately vet moving forward. I think their marketing team might even be external. Also, fascists never admit fault or accept accountability.
This sounds like big tech doesn't want competition. You've seen google prevent side loading, and do a ton of shady things at this point. Why not a smear campaign too?
Thus guy might be a raging fascist dickhead for all I know. I'm just pointing out that the supposed evidence falls short and proves nothing.
-
Concerns I see are that Proton encourages you to import spam from your last account
-
They were lobbying in the US (there are good reasons to do that though)
-
They send your gmail notifications that you have new Proton emails along with details of that email if you use your old gmail as a recovery while transitioning - just use a different recovery email
None of those actual concerns have anything to do with far right ideologies.
These cases are mostly because of legal limitations and user anonymity hygiene. One was about the person using their personally identifiable email as their recovery email, which is something Proton has to retain (for recovery purpses obvs) and is something they have to handover if the laws of the country they operate in allow the government to ask for it. The other was the person using a personally identifiable payment method, although I’m not familiar with Proton’s policies on retaining that data.
There is no circumstance under which Proton should have kept this data, assuming the account was old enough. Sure, you can say "credit" but I can just as well say that if Proton sells its business on the idea of keeping data secure or at as-low risk as possible, then they should offer lifetime / one-time payment options so that the payment information would have expired already or at least would not be renewed forever.
And don't tell me that doesn't exist. I'm a user of SDF. They offer such plan.
Businesses usually have to keep data connected to taxable transactions for 5-10 years depending on their jurisdiction. While this doesn't necessetate the full personal information of the payee, it does include the bank details of both sides. Meaning that if you pay via bank transfer or PayPal they legally have to keep that account number for however long swiss law requires.
As for your second point, while proton doesn't offer lifetime subscriptions (which is always hard to properly price when you offer an online service), they do offer the option to pay with bitcoin or cash. Both options can be fully anonymized if you care enough to do so.
It's not possible to really anonymize whichever option if it has to be used repeatedly enough that a pattern is formed, in particular for cash. That's why one-time options are so important: because, given enough time, the past is in the past.
Not to mention that the bitcoin option means having to buy into the scams and felonies that is crypto in the first place.
As for lifetime subscriptions being "hard to properly price", I don't see why Proton can't consult with SDF on the matter. SDF offers a multitude of services of noticeably high involvement – heck you get shell on their servers – so I don't see how routing a tun/tap interface goes much more difficult than that.
If Proton has legal limitations, they have a responsibility to disclose them. Instead, they promise Swiss law, and they themselves, will protect users.
https://protonvpn.com/features/swiss-based
https://proton.me/
https://proton.me/
And Proton doesn't need to store recovery email addresses unencrypted: they could hash them. Or at least warn about the danger of providing one.
Which does what exactly? They need to be able to use the unhashed email, otherwise it wouldn't work as a recovery tool. If swiss law enforment comes knocking with a warrant, then they simply would be forced to unhash the address either way.
also let's not pretend the recovery email is for the user - it's for proton to ensure they don't register spammers that can get their domain blocklisted
None of those are mutually exclusive from having to comply with the federal side of Swiss law. They are correct in that Swiss privacy laws are far better than that of the US. But any company operating in any locale is legally obligated to comply with the local laws.