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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

#371

Post by ksaj »

grappler wrote: post #361
testvox wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do https://protonmail.com/tor

Sad to say, Proton's onion service is for their old version. Proton has recently rolled out a new updated version of their service, and as far as I'm aware they don't offer a Tor onion service for that newer version. So Proton users who like to connect via Tor onion services have been faced with a choice of either staying on the old version of ProtonMail, or giving up on connecting via a Tor onion service. It definit…

I bet they initially configured it when Onion Routing was the new buzzword, and then lost interest when it wasn't the New Thang anymore.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#372

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

arvinsim wrote: post #324
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of "climate activist" draws this much heat?

Probably one that threatens corporate interests.

Probably? Do you know anything about why they were arrested?

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#373

Post by russianbandit »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #70
ficklepickle wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The terrible crime of squatting, according to some comments in that thread

Has your home in France been squatted? No? Or maybe you do not own a house in France? If so, on which basis do you ironically call squatting a "terrible crime"? Squatters in your house in France means that you you have zero rights on this place until a lengthy process gives it back to you, ruined. You are then expected to be grateful and can forget about any reimbursement from the poor people who stole your property.

Still, doesn’t seem like the best use of Europol catching squatters.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#374

Post by RealStickman_ »

Bellamy wrote: post #347
kazen44 wrote: post #154

for those who are curious, this seems to be the reply from protonmail on reddit[0] >Hi everyone, Proton team here. We are also deeply concerned about this case. In the interest of transparency, here's some more context. In this case, Proton received a legally binding order from the Swiss Federal Department of Justice which we are obligated to comply with. Details about how we handle Swiss law enforcement requests can…

All they could? Maybe not having the IP address in the first place like they advertise was that was needed.

From what I understood, they don't log ip addresses by default, but can be compelled to legally. They can only provide ip addresses for subsequent logins.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#375

Post by o8r3oFTZPE »

istingray wrote: post #302
o8r3oFTZPE wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing is even defined. There is nothing in this policy that obligates the company to do, or restricts the company from doing, anything. This is the way most tech company "Privacy Policies" are written. There is a significant difference between a statement such as "We (Company) do not do X" versus a promise such as "Company shall not do X" or a statement such as "We do Y. We may do Z" versus a promise such as "Compa…

Solid points. A report card for various privacy policies would be useful. Seen anything like that?

I wouldnt trust any of them to be honest. Privacy policies really arent worth anything.

I would look for websites that generally do not ask for data. Then send them the minimum data you can get away with. I would avoid "signing in" or "signing up" to any website. There is an immense amount of data and information available from free from the web, no "account" is necessary.

For example I dont send any extra HTTP headers like Cookies or User-Agent, I dont use Javascript. I dont request images, CSS. I dont automatically follow links in src tags. Yet I can still read and comment on HN and I can read every website posted to HN. Thats a lot of websites. I can read them just fine while not sending them any more data than is needed. Because I do not use a large, complex graphical browser sponsored by an online ad-supported vendor to make HTTP requests, I can easily control what I send. This is far better IMO than sending unknown amounts of data (letting the websites control what the browser sends via headers, Javascript and src tags) and then hoping the websites dont do things with the data that we dont like.

Privacy policies do not limit websites from collecting data nor do they limit how the data can be used. They are "policies" not agreements. If a website operator does things behind the scenes that violate privacy but that it does not disclose in a "privacy policy" what can a user do. How would the user even know. Or the website could clearly violate their own "privacy policy", but no one outside the website's operators would know. Even if users discover the violation, what would be the repurcussions. Its too late, because a violation means privacy has been blown.

Show me a case where a tech company got sued for violating a privacy policy. How can anyone prove a violation if the operations of the website are not open for public inspection.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#376

Post by blululu »

lavabiopsy wrote: post #259
jelling wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also ProtonMail's only reason for being is that they are supposed to provide some higher level of privacy. If they don't, how are they any different than a commodity grade SMTP/IMAP provider? I will withhold judgement until I know more about the case but the early context does not look good for ProtonMail's value proposition, which is the least of things.

Is it though? I don't know much about this company but their main selling point seems to be end to end encryption for mail messages. That's not a "privacy" feature by itself. Now it is a tool that you can use it to gain more privacy, but you could also have people who use it to cc all their emails to their entire facebook list. So it seems it all depends on how you use it and what type of privacy you try to achieve.

End to end encryption is a privacy feature by itself. The example of using an email service to send a mass email to a dislist is irrelevant to the possibility that it would also be able to preserve privacy in other communications. You could send an email directly to the local police chief if you wanted but that does not preclude wanting privacy elsewhere.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#377

Post by ezluckyfree »

georgyo wrote: post #214
anothernewdude wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Also, our VPNs are useless"

_all_ VPNs are useless. They are the biggest security theater and a massive success of marketing. But really, it's completely bazaar to trust a VPN provider. They provide protection from your local network, but you they can do all the same things and more.

That's just false though. If you're trying to hide from the CIA, then sure they are useless.

I just want to prevent my ISP from throttling my torrents.

You really can't talk about the "use" of any of these tools without a threat model.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#378

Post by Ansil849 »

I'm seeing a lot of comments along the lines of "there's nothing ProtonMail could have done in this case."

This is patently false. The first thing they could have done is not hosted their service in a jurisdiction susceptible to these kinds of logging requests, at least not openly. In other words, they could have concealed the location of their services.

Instead, ProtonMail is attempting to have their cake and eat it too: on the one hand, they repeatedly publicize the fact that they have 'Swiss privacy laws' as a selling point, but yet on the other hand when a privacy violation such as this occurs, they claim that their hands are tied because of....Swiss laws.

It's this two-faced behavior that is deplorable.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#379

Post by dbsmith83 »

vntok wrote: post #263
rileyphone wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last point very much not so - having my email provided as a free product by the world's largest ad company isn't a relationship I want to pursue.

Is the last point "that supposedly you cannot be served targeted ads because they cannot read the contents of your email"? Gmail Pro (paid G Suite) has never done that, and Gmail Perso (Free) hasn't done that since 2017.

Maybe they don't serve targeted ads, but they still read your gmail

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#380

Post by russianbandit »

estaseuropano wrote: post #365
bromuro wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Squatting is about occupying uninhabited places. It should be welcomed or at least tolerated.

I Don't know about France but in some places its near impossible to evict squatters, meaning if your property stands empty a month (e.g. waiting for new tenant or repairs) and some squatters move in you are basically screwed for years to come - they won't pay rent, you'll lose thousands and much lifetime evicting them, and for a few years they'll run down your property as they have no legal or other interest in maint…

But if someone just moves into your property why can’t police just kick them out? That’s an illegal action. If someone came into your house and started stealing your things and you call the cops on them you don’t go to court to prove those things are really yours.
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