Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
They gave payment data to the authorities, because, guess what, they HAVE to provide whatever is subpoenaed. Did they provide emails, IP addresses? Doesn't say any of that. There's the option of paying with crypto, but the imbeciles that know they are going to be at risk of being found, paid with a credit or debit card.
404 media is more of the same sensationalism laden bullshit out there. Make a fucking Strom out of a drop of water.
Is there any private way to have emails forwarded from a service like GMail to Proton? I know you could forward to an alias on the Proton account, or alternatively forward through a third party (which you would then have to also trust), but I want to hear from people who know more on the topic than me.
just really sad to call yourself a privacy company and then feed your customer to the gestapo
people can end up as embarrassing footnotes in history a number of different ways, but being a dishonest coward company in the privacy sphere is basically speedrunning it
I never trusted ProtonMail. Right when you sign up, you're constantly bombarded with advertisements to upgrade to pro. They're plastered everywhere with obnoxious banners.
I get that they're a business and they need money to operate, but the ads are so obnoxiously "in your face" that in my mind their priority isn't your privacy, it's your money.
Tutamail is the better service.
Long Live Tutamail and using a duckduckgo.com address as a backup!
This instance really wants to dislike Proton.
Proton did some PR for Trump a while ago that didn't get them on everyones good side.
Not this again...
For one, it was Andy Yen, posting on his personal rather than from Proton's account.
Second, if you follow the money, Andy Yen and Proton donates a lot of money to liberal organizations. They also campaign for Democrats actually.
The downfall of this is all because he thought Gail Slater would be a good pick and the entirety of the privacy community thought he undid all of his privacy advocacy and foundation overnight.
You really want to give your email provider your phone number. "Privacy" for instances that assemble botnets and block VPNs doesn't even include avoiding metadata collection. You guys are simply very salty and lazy that the best-advertised options are all connected to NATO intelligence agencies. Which really should be obvious to any person that hasn't thrown their intuition in the garbage due to its interference with their entertainment. You really bought the Swiss Nazi neutrality ploy, closing in on a century past its expiration date. Is this not bleak?
It’s an observation. Who’s salty? Source me every one of your claims as it pertains to Proton.
Proton was legally ordered by the Swiss justice department to hand over the (severely limited) information about a law breaking organization's account. They had paid for Proton using a credit card instead of the anonymous payment methods Proton offers, and that is what Proton was forced to hand over. It was the organization's bad OpSec, not Proton willingly deanonymizing users.
Yeah, I am no fan of proton and they have lied before (no log VPN logs magically finding logs for authorities and then later removing the no-log claim).
But this is literally just proton being legally compelled to hand over data the user willingly gave (not being harvested or de-encrypted). A nothing story.
Hopefully people like you will be able to nip this in the bud before yet another joke of a controversy starts...
You must be new here...
On the one hand, I really like how often Proton's shortcomings are highlighted. This SHOULD be a wake up call that you should never rely on a company to protect you and should instead focus on what you can do to ptorect yourself. And Proton... actually are pretty good in that regard. Connect from a burner/live image computer over public wifi using tor (or something similar) and their free accounts are STILL the gold standard for journalism and whistleblowers.
But the problem is that people are stupid and lazy (and many outlets actively benefit from "Eww, proton is bad. If only they had paid for NordVPN to really protect them from the FBI! ~Note, NordVPN provides no guarantees of protection~ ". So we just get stupidity.
Really, this headline should be "Organization so poorly organized that they messed up having relatively secure email."
Not at all. Proton doesn't require any personal info at all. But if you pay with a credit card... That has your personal info tied to it. It's their fuck up paying with a credit card. Proton accepts other payment methods that aren't tied to your identity.
Proton is required by law to provide information they have when the courts say so.
Are they required to keep the data?
Not sure about Swiss laws regarding merchant payment card data retention... But they aren't really going to matter with this situation either way. Even if Proton doesn't keep any identifying information directly, the payment processor for sure is going to keep identifying data. Proton will have a confirmation number for the payment being processed, which can be correlated via the payment processor anyway.
So I'm not a criminal organization as far as I know, but if I did pay with a credit card originally can that be rectified without deleting and starting over?
Proton uses Chargebee for payments, which has its own data retention policy of essentially "as long as we want to", but Proton does themselves keep limited data like the billing name, and last 4 digits.
Proton's privacy policy says nothing about a pre-set time delay after which they'd delete that data. They only claim that they "reserve our right" to remove your payment information if they think it's no longer valid. So theoretically, that might mean if your card's expiry date has passed, but that's not a confirmation.
The best way to reliably make sure Proton wouldn't have any info on you is to not have ever tied any real information about yourself or your payment info to that account.
B..But..Swiss evil?
Use monero.
Some people in the comment section are really dumb switching to other alternatives thinking that Proton isn't trustworthy because they gave the information despite the organisation not using anonymous currency. What's ironic is that some of these people are switching to those alternatives where you can't even use anonymous currency.
Also, kind of a clickbait title.
They have a .onion site. Use it always.
And don’t pay with a credit card if you’re committing crimes lmao
article in case you can't read it: ~~lemmy.ml/post/44086795~~ edit: better link in a reply.
proton coulda put up a fight, a loud one, for optics sake if nothing else. rolling over on any (and by implication, all) request should be the last straw in their long line of snafus; by way of "death by a thousand cuts", I would never entrust them with anything of importance.
signal demonstrated that you could decouple payment info from user data and a shop that touts the privacy part of their offerings coulda at least mimic such a thing.
edit 2: fuck any and all pay-with-crypto shills and the horse they rode in on.
You cannot put up a fight when ordered to do something by a judge who has jurisdiction over you. You either comply or you’re committing a crime.
I imagine they got courts and lawyers and motions and hearings and stuff over there, even if the fight is doomed you need to show your teeth once in a while. and what's with the proton employee reviewing whether there were "explosives" and "guns" involved, naturally based on super-reliable evidence, what the fuck is that?!
and alla that aside, why do they have payment and user info on file, for what fucking purpose? there's either user privacy or there ain't. and them folks are in the "ain't" camp.
I imagine they got courts and lawyers and motions and hearings and stuff over there, even if the fight is doomed you need to show your teeth once in a while.
That’s not how it works. They can’t just refuse to comply with a lawful order from a judge. They could be put in actual jail. This affects all email providers.
what is this take based on? there's a direct line between "we want this shit done" and "judge rubberstamps order"? no process, no interview, no hearing, no nothings? medieval courts maybe worked that way, no system of government I know of nowadays does.
Every single government works this way. Court orders are not optional.
article in case you can’t read it: https://lemmy.ml/post/44086795
that link only has two paragraphs of the article; there are 8 more in the full article here on archive.org