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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

#141

Post by neobrain »

chatmasta wrote: post #73

Proton dropped from the top spot on my list of “user-first email platforms” when they announced they’ll be deleting accounts that haven’t logged into their service in some arbitrary amount of time. If I can’t rely on my email / messaging / phone / communications provider to keep an open line for as long as I need it – whether that’s one year or two years or twenty years, then I’m not going to use it. And if they requ…

> Proton dropped from the top spot on my list of “user-first email platforms” when they announced they’ll be deleting accounts that haven’t logged into their service in some arbitrary amount of time.

... for free accounts only, after 12-24 months of not having logged in at all.

> And if they require payment in exchange for providing that service, then it better accept privacy-preserving payment, but even then, I’m probably not going to use it.

They allow you to physically send in cash.

> I’m not even asking for something unreasonable

I don't disagree in principle, but the way you're asking for these things does in fact make you come across as an unreasonable customer.

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

#143

Post by neobrain »

NullPrefix wrote: post #53
antonymoose wrote: post #19

PSA: Proton deletes “unused” accounts after one year, and defines unused in some opaque sense where receiving but not sending emails is “unused” so I’m in a nasty position of my iCloud account being unrecoverable. Going to have to spend nontrivial time off boarding my account.

Is this for paid accounts too? If you prepay for 5 years and get lost at sea for 3 years, should you expect your proton to still work?

It's for free accounts, only.

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

#145

Post by inferiorhuman »

esseph wrote: post #36
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…

> constant bugginess and jankiness of their offerings This is something I had not heard (also have been a paying user for a very long time). I've never encountered a bug, to my knowledge. I did dislike that when they released photo storage they didn't have a proper search feature.

  I've never encountered a bug
I've never hit any of the major bugs, but the iOS app is quite glitchy. The unread count never updates if the mailbox is externally modified (e.g. via the web app), sometimes it goes to zero or one. Sometimes my messages simply don't show up.

There was also that whole IMAP data loss issue. Unsure if that ever got resolved.

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

#146

Post by 0-_-0 »

Proton's response copied from a Reddit thread:

Hi everyone,

No, Proton did not knowingly block journalists’ email accounts. Our support for journalists and those working in the public interest has been demonstrated time and again through actions, not just words.

In this case, we were alerted by a CERT that certain accounts were being misused by hackers in violation of Proton’s Terms of Service. This led to a cluster of accounts being disabled.

Because of our zero-access architecture, we cannot see the content of accounts and therefore cannot always know when anti-abuse measures may inadvertently affect legitimate activism.

Our team has reviewed these cases individually to determine if any can be restored. We have now reinstated 2 accounts, but there are other accounts we cannot reinstate due to clear ToS violations.

Regarding Phrack’s claim on contacting our legal team 8 times: this is not true. We have only received two emails to our legal team inbox, last one on Sep 6 with a 48-hour deadline. This is unrealistic for a company the size of Proton, especially since the message was sent to our legal team inbox on a Saturday, rather than through the proper customer support channels.

The situation has unfortunately been blown out of proportion without giving us a fair chance to respond to the initial outreach.

Thank you for your understanding, The Proton Team

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

#147

Post by progbits »

_kidlike wrote: post #135
jegp wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Can't you just use a paid SMTP relay which will have good reputation. Sure not exactly selfhosted but trivial to switch.

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

#149

Post by Fethbita »

akshitgaur2005 wrote: post #138
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Not the parent but you can set up Dynamic DNS at home and Wireguard in your router and later use the Wireguard connection to connect to your home network and have a safe tunnel.

It’s quite easy to do with openwrt routers.

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

#150

Post by int_19h »

cedws wrote: post #126
crossroadsguy wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To answer your question, from my limited experience: no. There are better or less shitty companies like Fastmail, Runbox (tried them), even Purelymail (but 1 or 2 people setup), Mailbox (shitty support, solid setup; I am a customer), Migadu (good name, I have never used them), there's Tuta (but somehow they seem off to me; like Proton they also do not allow IMAP/POP - Proton allows with some circus), MXRoute has good…

Not allowing IMAP/POP isn’t just for the lulz, it’s not compatible with the encryption architecture Proton uses, which is kind of the selling point of the product. You can either have your emails encrypted at rest with your key OR you can have plain IMAP/POP without a bridge client, you can’t have both.

I never really understood the point of that. If you are exchanging emails with someone using one of the most popular email services that together make 99% of the marketshare, their server retains your email unencrypted anyway. So the only time that encryption will really matter is when emailing someone who is also using Proton.
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