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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

#81

Post by freshhawk »

civilized wrote: post #49
rossdavidh wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you thought that Protonmail (or any other company) was going to go to break the law in order to avoid keeping logs on you despite a Swiss-backed warrant saying they had to do so, then you had the wrong impression. But I never got the impression Protonmail was saying that.

I have never used the service and don't know or care a thing about it. But their advertising is laughably inconsistent with the reality of the service provided. If it's illegal to provide a completely anonymous email service, then you should not claim to provide a completely anonymous email service.

I think everyone has gotten used to this particular lie, because it's so widespread and all the "privacy" email providers say things like this.

Except maybe Lavabit, that guy apparently shut everything down to avoid doing something along these lines. So maybe he wasn't actually lying.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#82

Post by istingray »

vmoore wrote: post #72

You can disable the recording of login sessions in Protonmail's settings dashboard. I do that, not only to avoid Protonmail learning of the logs, but by a hacker who, once upon breaching your account; also gets to learn the IP you use to login with.

Thanks, I had "Basic" on and turned it completely off. This should be Disabled by default. I created a new account to see what the default is (it's Basic): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28428092

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#83

Post by fsckboy »

polote wrote: post #55
COGlory wrote: 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, the end result is not the same either way.

I'm not taking sides on privacy or the threat of govt (or other sourced) tyranny, I'm just explaining the logic to answer your question:

Let's say you engaged in a long history of using protonmail innocently, then one day you decided to start commiting crimes for the first time and attract police interest. You would know that your historical logs were not kept, and it was only after you started attracting police attention that you would be at risk of incriminating yourself through proton mail. Maybe, on the run from the law, it would be safe for you to hide at your old friends house because there was no log to link you to him.

Yes, it is also the case that you may not have realized that ordinary behavior had been criminalized by an evil govt all along blah blah blah... I'm just pointing out that there is a difference where you saw none.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#84

Post by pgalvin »

aborsy wrote: post #62
COGlory wrote: 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…

>> What the authorities can't do, is read that person's email. What if authorities ask, serve this user this malicious JacaScript code to obtain their encryption key? PM has to obey and the result is the same.

They claim this is not possible under Swiss law, fwiw. We’ve recently seen that it is possible under German law, with a competitor (Tutanota) building a server-side backdoor for one user.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#85

Post by hh3k0 »

COGlory wrote: post #57
bdibs wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Stop trying to defend indefensible behavior by getting hung up on semantics.

I, for one, will not renew my ProtonMail account if that's their status quo.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#86

Post by S_A_P »

Also a ProtonMail user. While I would prefer that ProtonMail never captures or divulged my ip and or logged my access I pay because I was a long time gmail user and am trying to ween myself off of alphabet in general. I don’t want my mail skimmed for ads or worse.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#87

Post by Sebb767 »

polote wrote: post #55
COGlory wrote: 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. With on-demand logging, they can find the owner of the account (assuming he doesn't take further measures), but you can't retroactively prove someone used that account to do something at a specific time. For example, you could not prove that the individual was logged in at internet cafe xy near the time of the crime. Also, an opsec mishap (such as logging in without protection) will not be fatal unless you're already under surveillance.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#88

Post by skitter »

gigel82 wrote: post #18

So with FastMail under Australian privacy-bashing laws and now this, what are our options for secure, private e-mail?

One option not mentioned yet is Posteo. They don't keep your IP and strip it in case your mail client sets it in the headers. They also don't take any personal identification for signup or billing (you can even send them letters with money to pay for a mailbox).

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#89

Post by polote »

fsckboy wrote: post #83
polote wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The end result is the same either way

no, the end result is not the same either way. I'm not taking sides on privacy or the threat of govt (or other sourced) tyranny, I'm just explaining the logic to answer your question: Let's say you engaged in a long history of using protonmail innocently, then one day you decided to start commiting crimes for the first time and attract police interest. You would know that your historical logs were not kept, and it wa…

I said the end result is the same. Not that it is the same. In both case they give the IP when the police ask for it

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#90

Post by Sebb767 »

polote wrote: post #66
COGlory wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So the default is when nobody ask for the logs? What the point of not collecting IP unless for the time it is useful?

No history of when you logged in from where and, possibly, plausible deniability about about you being the only user of that account (through you'd probably need to prepare for this to be believable).
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