22
news media claims Proton mail helped FBI unmask anonymous stop cop city protestors:
(www.404media.co)
this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2026
22 points (72.9% liked)
Proton
9015 readers
114 users here now
Empowering you to choose a better internet where privacy is the default. Protect yourself online with Proton Mail, Proton VPN, Proton Calendar, Proton Drive. Proton Pass and SimpleLogin.
Proton Mail is the world's largest secure email provider. Swiss, end-to-end encrypted, private, and free.
Proton VPN is the world’s only open-source, publicly audited, unlimited and free VPN. Swiss-based, no-ads, and no-logs.
Proton Calendar is the world's first end-to-end encrypted calendar that allows you to keep your life private.
Proton Drive is a free end-to-end encrypted cloud storage that allows you to securely backup and share your files. It's open source, publicly audited, and Swiss-based.
Proton Pass Proton Pass is a free and open-source password manager which brings a higher level of security with rigorous end-to-end encryption of all data (including usernames, URLs, notes, and more) and email alias support.
SimpleLogin lets you send and receive emails anonymously via easily-generated unique email aliases.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Proton chooses to retain data associating accounts with personal information from credit card payments, and they choose to advertise Swiss legal jurisdiction as a privacy feature.
if you stick a privacy fence up around your house, does it make you anonymous? of course not, because privacy does not mean anonymous. you should not blame someone else because you are confused on the difference between privacy and anonymity.
given that Swiss law means complying with MLAT requests from many countries including the US, why do you think Proton chooses to retain data linking user accounts with payment identities?
i am not confused at all about "the difference between privacy and anonymity"; the former is a broader concept which includes the latter. Privacy regarding one's identity (or avoiding revealing the link between related identities, which is what is usually meant by "anonymity") is one of many types of privacy.
Proton mail advertises that their service is designed for "privacy", not "privacy except not with regards to your legal identity which we decided to needlessly retain information about and which you should obviously expect us to give to the authorities upon request".
where did you get the notion that "privacy" excludes "anonymity"? this is not a rhetorical question, i am interested to know because I see these "difference between privacy and anonymity" comments frequently lately and i wonder where this meme originated.
fraud prevention and account security, which they specify on their website. especially if you opt into their increased security protocols, your payment information can used to validate your identity to protect your account from being stolen.
the dictionary. proton does not advertise themselves as anonymous email. since the two words have wholly different meanings, where did you get the notion that someone advertising apples was selling oranges? idk if you're trying to be argumentative for the sake of it, but your position is ridiculous because anonymity was never advertised, and you're trying to infer it is to justify your position that proton has done something wrong. you've already reached your conclusion and are trying to twist the literal meaning of words to justify your biases.
So, i just checked, and they actually do (albeit with caveats, including not using your name when signing up, but no mention of when paying) here and here among other places.
I see also that those pages are promulgating exactly the "anonymity vs. privacy" false dichotomy that you are. Proton writes (emphasis mine):
Their very narrowly-scoped definition of the word privacy is inconsistent with how most of the world uses the word. Proton is defining email privacy to mean solely the confidentiality of the body of the message (which they also provide a trivial-for-them-to-circumvent protection of, incidentally) but the word "privacy" elsewhere (eg, in law, technology, academia, and colloquially) has a much broader meaning.
Or, to put it more simply: Category:Anonymity is (literally) a subcategory of Category:Privacy.
Proton isn't even consistent in their own usage of their absurdly-narrow definition of privacy: in their How to send an anonymous email guide they write:
Do you think by "privacy" and "sensitive user data" they're only talking about the body of email messages here, as per their earlier definition?
And, regardless of whether or not a company advertises its services for anonymity (as Proton does, it turns out): after clicking the above links and thinking about it a little more, do you still think that retaining and revealing links between users' pseudonyms and legal identities is really not a privacy issue?