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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

#451

Post by blacklight »

I moved from Gmail to ProtonMail exactly because they were promising strong encryption, no logging of IPs and no data leaked outside for whatever reason.

I know that every IT company eventually turns into a bunch of creepy and greedy jerks that end up contradicting all of their initial "don't be evil" statements. But please, Proton, don't do this so early in the process. I'm tired of migrating from one jerk company to a we-are-not-jerks-yet company all the time. If it turns out that Proton really leaked the IP and device info of an activist to the authorities I'll just go back to setting up my own mail server like it's 1995 and f*ck all this madness.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#452

Post by istingray »

Bellamy wrote: post #343
istingray wrote: post #77

Disclaimer: Paying Protonmail customer Their homepage says "By default, we do not keep any IP logs" In 2021, any soft language like this should be a red flag for anyone who is against surveillance. Maybe in 2018 it was good enough. But in 2021 it's not. Come on, Protonmail, you're supposed to be leading the way -- don't make me figure it out myself. Replace immediately with "By default we don't log IP, but may be req…

I was a paying customer. I just cancelled. I can't understand what just happened. I truly believed it's all save and secure.

I hope you emailed them to say why. Share the email here if you don't mind.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#453

Post by CyanBird »

blacklight wrote: post #451

I moved from Gmail to ProtonMail exactly because they were promising strong encryption, no logging of IPs and no data leaked outside for whatever reason. I know that every IT company eventually turns into a bunch of creepy and greedy jerks that end up contradicting all of their initial "don't be evil" statements. But please, Proton, don't do this so early in the process. I'm tired of migrating from one jerk company t…

You should set up your own email server, they can't be trusted

If they are announcing this, think of the ones they are under gag orders to not announce /disclose

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#454

Post by istingray »

o8r3oFTZPE wrote: post #375
istingray wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 heade…

Wow neat how do you browse the web, Lynx?

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#455

Post by VBprogrammer »

monkey_552 wrote: post #253
istingray wrote: post #77

Disclaimer: Paying Protonmail customer Their homepage says "By default, we do not keep any IP logs" In 2021, any soft language like this should be a red flag for anyone who is against surveillance. Maybe in 2018 it was good enough. But in 2021 it's not. Come on, Protonmail, you're supposed to be leading the way -- don't make me figure it out myself. Replace immediately with "By default we don't log IP, but may be req…

Protonmail did not provide the authorities with the users IP address...they did allow the account to monitored which they are required by their laws to allow. It was the users sloppy OPSEC that allowed the authorities to eventually track them down. In the end, I believe, it was linking the user to a past Gmail account that finally did him in. Listen to this podcast episode, the presenter does a fairly good job summar…

I've worked with back end webservices for 10 years or so but I'm struggling to understand the concept of allowing a singular account to be monitored. What does this actually mean? An account in all of the systems I've dealt with is basically the collective understanding of a bunch of database queries. How does one allow an account to be monitored in any way which is less frightening than providing an IP address from a log?

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#456

Post by colechristensen »

nyolfen wrote: post #191
newbie789 wrote: post #107

I’m aware that this is a very silly sounding question, but I’m very confused about what’s going on here. If the subject of this investigation had been using ProtonVPN to connect to ProtonMail, would this have (in a marginal way) protected their anonymity? If Proton Mail can be compelled to begin logging, surely the same must be said of Proton VPN right? It’s interesting how many “privacy focused” companies tout being…

> The “based in Switzerland” thing strikes me as a bit of a black box bit of marketing speak. How much time, energy and money did ProtonMail expend fighting this surreptitious logging mandate? Does “Swiss privacy” actualy mean anything if ProtonMail is happy to hand over your IP address when spooked? it does not; witness the swiss banking system's capitulation to the US, crypto AG, etc

Swiss banking was doing business in the US on US soil, they didn’t capitulate, they greedily extended beyond swiss borders and got caught helping foreign people evade their taxes with employees outside swiss borders.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#457

Post by jraby3 »

istingray wrote: post #77

Disclaimer: Paying Protonmail customer Their homepage says "By default, we do not keep any IP logs" In 2021, any soft language like this should be a red flag for anyone who is against surveillance. Maybe in 2018 it was good enough. But in 2021 it's not. Come on, Protonmail, you're supposed to be leading the way -- don't make me figure it out myself. Replace immediately with "By default we don't log IP, but may be req…

I was COO of a vpn company for several years. It’s almost impossible not to keep any ip info. We had issues with fraud and one of the best ways to prevent or limit it was to track IP address and save it for several months.

I agree PM should be more forthright in their messaging but realistically I don’t believe any company that takes payments and doesn’t track any info at all.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#459

Post by truthwhisperer »

istingray wrote: post #102
sigmoid10 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People really don't seem to understand that Protonmail is a western company in a western country with pretty generous surveillance laws. Yes, your email text may be encrypted, but everything else is free game to the authorities unless you use additional protection.

Protonmail should be pushing more of this messaging in their branding. "Don't trust us further than you can throw us. We're doing our best, and here's what we recommend, use Tor, etc."

they should destroy the email box due to a technical error so the user knows something is wrong

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#460

Post by jmeister »

hyperman1 wrote: post #422
BrandoElFollito wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Someone had squatters after working 3 months outside the country. He basically had zero rights to throw them out, and the law considered him as a sort of landlord for non-paying tenants, with all relevant responsibilities. As his and their legal address where now identical, he was partially responsible/paying for their healthcare. But the law allowed him, as a good landlord, to work on the outside of the house, for t…

Truth is stranger than fiction. I cannot believe this happening in the first world.
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