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Proton Mail suspended journalist accounts at request of cybersecurity agency

theintercept.com

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Re: Proton Mail suspended journalist accounts at request of cybersecurity agency

#131

Post by Yoric »

crossroadsguy wrote: post #107
immibis wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their controls are buffed up: all of those accounts are linked due to having been created with the same IP address. If one is blocked, they all are. If you try to circumvent this with a well-known proxy (such as Tor or a V"P""N") you will find that captcha activation will not exist as an option.

That definitely doesn't look good for privacy POV. If they do not want abuse, they ought to use other means. They should not associate IPs with account creation. That is kind of scary. In fact, if what you have said is true, then one's account can be blocked by someone else's mischief on the same IP, which is not very uncommon at all i.e sharing the IP.

How else?

Re: Proton Mail suspended journalist accounts at request of cybersecurity agency

#132

Post by crossroadsguy »

8cvor6j844qw_d6 wrote: post #87
nsagent wrote: post #18

I've need a paying subscriber to Proton since 2018, but I recently canceled my subscription (which ends in November). I just got fed up with the constant bugginess and jankiness of their offerings. Any suggestions for mail hosting and VPN? I hear good things about Fastmail and mailbox.org (I see they very recently rebranded to just mailbox and revamped their offering). Also, I've been a heavy user of the SimpleLogin…

Similar case, I recently migrated from @mozmail to SimpleLogin and wondered if I made the right choice. I heard using your own domains solves the migration issue but that makes your email pretty identifiable just by looking at your domain. I wonder whats a suitable replacement candidate after Mozmail and Simple Login? One of the reasons I migrated away from Mozmail to Simple Login was that you can't initiate a email…

You mean Firefox Replay right? It has been in beta for a long time (I mean anything other than the basic free plan). Did you get in via some invite or so?

https://relay.firefox.com right? Or there's another service?

> that makes your email pretty identifiable

Agreed. I have also stopped abusing the catch-all of my domains. It became a pain very soon. Not only privacy issues but I couldn't possibly block those emails/spam that were coming on usernames like sales and many more.

Re: Proton Mail suspended journalist accounts at request of cybersecurity agency

#133

Post by thr0w4w4y1337 »

jegp wrote: post #92
johnklos wrote: post #80

The true value of a company can be measured by our ability to communicate with them. If we can't communicate except after public outrage, then what does that say about the company? Here's a genuine question: is Proton Mail the least shitty of companies that provide email services? I self-host email and will continue until I die. But for others who need a company to do this for them, is Proton Mail the least shitty of…

What's your stack? After reading this, self hosting suddenly appeals to me.

So, now you have to worry about your VPS/Internet provider deplatforming you. Or about your domain name being seized. And spam filtration, backups, redundancy...

I'm not saying email self hosting should not be done, I just say a bit of planning should be done.

DNS seems like the most annoying part, it is SPoF by design. The problem can be mitigated, but seems like cannot be solved. For example, owning multiple domain names in multiple jurisdictions. And round-robin them. You cannot eliminate SPoF for any one specific service you want to login using email. But you won't lose access to everything at once.

Edit: P.s. At the same time, owning your domain for mail seems to be one of the most impactful things to do to reduce digital serfdom. Banned at *mail? Just switch those MX records and go on.

Re: Proton Mail suspended journalist accounts at request of cybersecurity agency

#134

Post by crossroadsguy »

drnick1 wrote: post #91
abnercoimbre wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Common folklore is that this is extremely onerous to self-host (and have it work successfully.) How did you go about it?

The common folklore is just FUD. The main issue is deliverability to the likes of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc. You need a clean fixed IP in non-residential block and a sufficiently aged domain or your mail will be flagged as spam or rejected. Alternatively, you can use a relay service for outbound email. Besides the deliverability issue, hosting email is fairly trivial from a technical standpoint; on Linux, the sta…

If I may say so, did you not just show in this very comment that that common folklore about self-hosting email "successfully" is not really FUD? :D

Re: Proton Mail suspended journalist accounts at request of cybersecurity agency

#135

Post by _kidlike »

jegp wrote: post #92
johnklos wrote: post #80

The true value of a company can be measured by our ability to communicate with them. If we can't communicate except after public outrage, then what does that say about the company? Here's a genuine question: is Proton Mail the least shitty of companies that provide email services? I self-host email and will continue until I die. But for others who need a company to do this for them, is Proton Mail the least shitty of…

What's your stack? After reading this, self hosting suddenly appeals to me.

forget about self hosting email... I tried it for years, and even if you get it working (needs months), it will eventually stop working again. The problem is that in order to get the big boys to accept you as an email provider, you have to jump through infinite hoops, and be treated like a criminal and/or scammer in the meantime (or at best a business that is trying to send newsletters). You will never get a human to talk to, it's just an infinite loop of automated processes.

Anyway, the problem is "trust" which boils down to IP reputation. And since we are all still on ipv4, your IP was reused. Which means you need to spend months cleaning it. And you won't have a guarantee that you won't lose this IP in the future.

Re: Proton Mail suspended journalist accounts at request of cybersecurity agency

#136

Post by crossroadsguy »

bigiain wrote: post #105
lo_zamoyski wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is refusal realistic? It's nice in the abstract, but in practice, there are plenty of ways to coerce illegitimate compliance.

No company is gonna seriously refuse when their jurisdiction's equivalent of the FBI or NSA turn up with a court authorised order. As James Mikkens said: "YOU'RE STILL GONNA BE MOSSAD’ED UPON" But it'd be nice to be able to expect your email provider to not cave in to a request from some other counties CERT organisation without pushing back for evidence and some sort of proper judicial authority behind the request.

This article, right? https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1401_08-12_mickens.pdf

Re: Proton Mail suspended journalist accounts at request of cybersecurity agency

#137

Post by esseph »

nsagent wrote: post #103
dotnet00 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be useful if you pointed out bugs instead of just implying that anyone who doesn't share your experience is some sort of shill

The person I was responding to literally said they were "a paying user for a very long time" and "never encountered a bug". No software is bug free. I can't think of a single software service I've used for as long as Proton (7 years now) where I haven't encountered a single issue over that time. I take their statement to be so incredibly unlikely as to be facetious or intentionally duplicitous. So I responded in kind…

Idk what to tell you. Email is mostly a solved problem for most cases, and object storage is mostly the same. Password manager is one of the best I've found in any platform, at least for the individual-user use case.

The VPN has always just worked, too.

If you're using desktop apps for things, really can't help you there as I have no experience with any proton offerings for that piece.

Re: Proton Mail suspended journalist accounts at request of cybersecurity agency

#138

Post by akshitgaur2005 »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #50
nsagent wrote: post #18

I've need a paying subscriber to Proton since 2018, but I recently canceled my subscription (which ends in November). I just got fed up with the constant bugginess and jankiness of their offerings. Any suggestions for mail hosting and VPN? I hear good things about Fastmail and mailbox.org (I see they very recently rebranded to just mailbox and revamped their offering). Also, I've been a heavy user of the SimpleLogin…

Fastmail is fine. It's somewhat limited in its UX, but technically speaking, everything works, and it's snappy. Very few outages. I really like their integrations with calendars, contacts, and mail for 3rd party sites/services. Not a ton of features or deals re: custom domains or multiple users, but it's fine if it's just for yourself. edit They literally -JUST- turned on Offline support for their app and web interfa…

> get a WiFi access point with Wireguard and Dynamic DNS at your home

Could you elaborate more on this?

Re: Proton Mail suspended journalist accounts at request of cybersecurity agency

#139

Post by Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe »

I'm worried and surprised to see the many comments here that, contrary to what I'm used to reading here, nobody seems to have dug deeper, looked critically at the evidence. Quite a lot of just ad hominem and insinuations.

This looks like brigading to me. Which is the only way for govs to fight against protonmail: spreading doubt.

Hence I am reinforced to continue being a strong supporter of Proton.

Re: Proton Mail suspended journalist accounts at request of cybersecurity agency

#140

Post by neobrain »

overfeed wrote: post #81
fivefives55555 wrote: post #9

I've been following this on X/Twitter and I think one of the most egregious things that's important to point out is that folks from Phrack reached out to Proton in private multiple times, and Proton ghosted them. Proton only engaged with them and then reinstated the accounts after Phrack went public and their X/Twitter post went viral. It also looks like one of the writers filed an appeal with Proton and Proton denie…

I'll go out on a limb and say it: it's an American cybersecurity agency. Proton's CEO/Proton[1] loves the current US admin. I wouldn't be surprised if they comply now and ask questions later, if at all. 1. According to the now-deleted Reddit comment from the official Proton account glazing Republicans, so I assume they were speaking on behalf of all of Proton. https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-…

> Proton's CEO/Proton[1] loves the current US admin

The CEO once expressed support for Gail Slater as head of antitrust and subsequently criticized lack of effective work towards tech regulation on the Democratic side in the same social media thread.

Calling that "love for the current US admin" (which hadn't even taken office when those statements were made) is pure disinformation.

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