51–60 of 352 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, ProtonVPN isn't subject to the same problem (according to the CEO).
Care to share more information about this?
> Under current Swiss law, email and VPN are treated differently, and ProtonVPN cannot be compelled to log user data.
It has been admitted. So they DO log your IP address when you use their service. So their customers have been lied to and have their privacy at risk. They cannot be trusted. So how long have ProtonMail kept this massive lie from its users then?
their rabid sycophants were too busy creaming themselves over "Swiss laws" to pay attention, going as far to demand proof when observers were merely pointing out the fundamental flaw in the Protonmail concept and incongruent advertising
well, now there is proof
ProtonMail has been fraught with problems for a long time, and it's good that serious issues are being brought to light. Their marketing is very good and critics of them have struggled to communicate to users for a while. The most important thing a serious privacy-minded service provider can do is be forthright and honest with users about the limitations of their privacy guarantees, particularly with respect to what…
In my opinion, email is the wrong medium for highly confidential communication. Especially, if someone's personal freedom or safety depends on it. Even if E2E works correctly, you still have to worry about meta data. Maybe Matrix over TOR would be a better alternative?
The line is thin between privacy and anonymizing criminal activity.
The ProtonMail guys always said that unless they were 20 miles from the littoral, in the sea side, they had to abide by national laws. So it was bound to happen. What makes me sad is how flimsy their entire premise (not necessarily "promise") turned out to be: all it took was some minor rascal in France to hug the wrong tree (so to speak), and ProtonMail is in the open saying they can't even protect the IP address of…
- Local law enforcement can force the to do so.
- Locals laws can change.
- Guys with guns might barge in and demand it.
Mostly, you can understand that they don't _intend_ to log IPs, and aren't in the business of collecting and redistributing data. But that doesn't mean you can count on absolute and unconditional secrecy.
The ProtonMail guys always said that unless they were 20 miles from the littoral, in the sea side, they had to abide by national laws. So it was bound to happen. What makes me sad is how flimsy their entire premise (not necessarily "promise") turned out to be: all it took was some minor rascal in France to hug the wrong tree (so to speak), and ProtonMail is in the open saying they can't even protect the IP address of…
Or you protect your own IP, I wonder if ProtonVPN could have done that? Would have been a nice test of those claims as well. All in all, I still trust ProtonMail, they are handling this quite well and transparently. Their original messaging was probably a compromise between getting the message out there and leaving some room for things like this. Arguably that was a mistake, or maybe with the whole truth in bold on t…
They are only required to provide the IP Addresses from ProtonMail but ProtonVPN gets different treatment legally speaking, were they cannot (currently) force logging [0][1].
[0] https://protonvpn.com/support/no-logs-vpn/ [1] checked with Andy Yen (CEO/Founder)
This is not surprising to me. I will still continue to use ProtonMail. I never signed up because of the "no IP logging" thing. In fact, if I had seen it before I just plain wouldn't have believed it, and still used ProtonMail. But hindsight is 20/20
Same goes for any of the German mail providers like mailbox.org or posteo.de ("We do not save your IP address when you visit or use our website. [...] To protect your privacy and for security reasons, we also delete any potential IP address entries made by local email programs from the email headers. Emails sent using our webmail interface or using email programs therefore contain neither your local nor your public IP address."). If the authorities can prove that they have a legitimate reason to expect them to log the IP addresses, then they must do it. They are all normal companies which need to abide by the law if they want to conduct business.
The ProtonMail guys always said that unless they were 20 miles from the littoral, in the sea side, they had to abide by national laws. So it was bound to happen. What makes me sad is how flimsy their entire premise (not necessarily "promise") turned out to be: all it took was some minor rascal in France to hug the wrong tree (so to speak), and ProtonMail is in the open saying they can't even protect the IP address of…
I was thinking you could have some sort of satellite service with data stored on the satellite. Allow multiple authorised ground stations to connect and store/retrieve emails for users. But again, the person that controls the software and operation would be a target.
For such a stupid thing too. I'm surprised Switzerland provided a warrant for a climate activist.
From the blog posting I read yesterday, the individual was not arrested for his political convictions. He was not only a climate activist, but also a squatter. Apparently there were several police officers hurt during a legally mandated eviction of the building that he squatted. Saying "omg they arrested a climate activist" is like saying "omg, they arrested filesystem developer Hans Reiser!"
But is the actual crime any better, though?
If squatting and resisting arrest were the crimes, then I don’t see what justification there could be for wanting to probe into his emails.
They already know the extent of what he did, and where he did it, by nature of the crimes themselves… no?
The ProtonMail guys always said that unless they were 20 miles from the littoral, in the sea side, they had to abide by national laws. So it was bound to happen. What makes me sad is how flimsy their entire premise (not necessarily "promise") turned out to be: all it took was some minor rascal in France to hug the wrong tree (so to speak), and ProtonMail is in the open saying they can't even protect the IP address of…
The idea of having a isolated sovereign floating platform in the ocean doesn't doesn't really solve the problem of escaping the rules of national governments because it still needs network connections into those countries.
Whether it's underseas fiber optic cables or bouncing signals off of satellites, the datacenter will be rendered useless if nations' citizens get a "This site can’t be reached. [...] ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT"
It addition to the physical network topology challenges, the ip address space allocation is controlled by IANA ... which is a government entity.