Live data from Hacker News

Is Protonmail logging my email content?

news.ycombinator.com

31–40 of 53 posts

Re: Is Protonmail logging my email content?

#31

Please be aware that we don't log email content (and we are also not vulnerable to Log4j). Our anti-spam systems do check for malicious links from third party email services so we can proactively warn users about phishing attempts.

If you are not vunerable to log4j, how did the screenshots come about?

Re: Is Protonmail logging my email content?

#32

Please be aware that we don't log email content (and we are also not vulnerable to Log4j). Our anti-spam systems do check for malicious links from third party email services so we can proactively warn users about phishing attempts.

If you are not vunerable to log4j, how did the screenshots come about?

I believe ProtonTeam's claim is that the spam filter visits the links in the email content. As a result, it's not the log4shell vulnerability making the connection, it's the spam filter.

Re: Is Protonmail logging my email content?

#33

Please be aware that we don't log email content (and we are also not vulnerable to Log4j). Our anti-spam systems do check for malicious links from third party email services so we can proactively warn users about phishing attempts.

If you are not vunerable to log4j, how did the screenshots come about?

Cum hoc ergo propter hoc

Re: Is Protonmail logging my email content?

#35
If I were you, I would not use any kind of non open source and non self-hosted email service pretending to be "secret", in the best (!) case it has some sort of silent metadata/access logging. While common shady services like Protonmail bluntly store plain text archives, and even if they claim they don't, there's no zero-knowledge proof on this highly sensitive topic.

Re: Is Protonmail logging my email content?

#38
It's good to be cautious, but this is sort of a silly test.

Protonmail doesn't have to "log" messages; they have them already. If I were Protonmail and I had to comply with lawful intercept requirements, I'd just:

a) make sure that message content isn't deleted from the mailbox when the user thinks it is

b) make sure I retain access to server-managed PGP keys (by logging key material and user-supplied passphrases)

But I sure as hell would not call some Java logger.trace() on every goddamn email! That's totally nonscalable and just silly.

Re: Is Protonmail logging my email content?

#39
I'm not sure they are a Java company, they are more Python, PHP, Golang, and Node. At least Java is not described in their job offers, which are usually a very nice way to know about the company stacks by the way.

https://careers.protonmail.com/o/devops-engineer-remote-euro...

Re: Is Protonmail logging my email content?

#40
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is always posted like some 'gotcha', despite it being right there in the transparency report. In case you trust any company blindly: any company that wants to keep playing the money game will follow the laws forced upon them by the government they are beholden to.

Isn't this what seasteading, and other jurisdiction avoidance schemes attempt to address? I wonder if anything like that has ever worked out.

I can't imagine seasteading is going to be able to avoid a nation's navy.
Post reply on HN