this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2026
548 points (97.1% liked)
Privacy
5325 readers
227 users here now
Welcome! This is a community for all those who are interested in protecting their privacy.
Rules
PS: Don't be a smartass and try to game the system, we'll know if you're breaking the rules when we see it!
- Be civil and no prejudice
- Don't promote big-tech software
- No apathy and defeatism for privacy (i.e. "They already have my data, why bother?")
- No reposting of news that was already posted
- No crypto, blockchain, NFTs
- No Xitter links (if absolutely necessary, use xcancel)
Related communities:
Some of these are only vaguely related, but great communities.
- !opensource@programming.dev
- !selfhosting@slrpnk.net / !selfhosted@lemmy.world
- !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !drm@lemmy.dbzer0.com
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That’s a misleading way to frame it. Proton doesn’t “unmask customers for the FBI.” They respond to legal requests through Swiss authorities, like any company operating under a jurisdiction.
And in the reported cases what was provided was account or payment metadata, not decrypted email content. If someone ties their real identity to an account through payments, no provider can magically make that anonymous.
A good comparison is Mullvad VPN. When Swedish police searched their offices in 2023, they left empty-handed because Mullvad doesn’t keep user identities and accounts aren’t tied to emails. If a user registers without identifiable payment, there simply isn’t much data to hand over.
The real issue isn’t “betrayal,” it’s what data exists in the first place.