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Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

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Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#51
post #50
post #37

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…

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

>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.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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.

They absolutely keep who used which IP at what time. And they do not allow anonymous purchases.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#53
post #50
post #37

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…

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

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.)

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#54
post #51
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

>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.

Wouldn't "any" include authority compelled logging?

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#55
post #51
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

>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.

The end result is the same either way

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#57
post #54
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Wouldn't "any" include authority compelled logging?

Perhaps, but I'd imagine that semantically, "by default" negates that since this is clearly not a default situation.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#58

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…

Tor is a State Dept/DARPA project, so at best a sidegrade from Proton if your concern is being surveilled by Western governments.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#59
post #55
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

The end result is the same either way

No, if they were not collecting logs by default, then it is clearly not false advertising.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#60
post #53
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.)

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

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