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Proton spam and the AI consent problem

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Re: Proton spam and the AI consent problem

#421

Post by vee-kay »

chrisjj wrote: post #395
vee-kay wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. That "Mark as Spam" facility not only moves the offending message into Jink/Spam folder, it also allows the Email Service provider to identify that type of email as spam, so future incoming messages that match that may criteria can be categorized as spam, so they'll go into spam folder automatically, rather than into the Inbox. You can find them in the Jink/Spam folder. However, if thousands of users report s…

> (Emails from known Contacts are auto-dumped into Spam folder) Oh?

My bad. I meant to say: "Emails from known Contacts are auto-dumped into Inbox (they won't go into Spam folder)" (even if you had marked earlier emails from that sender as spam, but later added that sender as a Contact, so thenceforth they'll get treated as legitimate emails, not spam). But if you have some filter for that Contact, that takes precedence.

Re: Proton spam and the AI consent problem

#422

Post by B1FIDO »

amatecha wrote: post #305
chc4 wrote: post #7

I saw a Mastodon tweet a while ago, which went something like: Do tech companies understand consent?: - [ ] Yes - [ ] Ask me again in a few days

I like to frame it like this: "ask me later" is rape culture. It promotes and reinforces a culture of never taking "no" for an answer, and pushing one's agenda/intent regardless of the preference/consent of the other party/parties.

I was visiting a girlfriend once, and she was in the process of moving in the same city. There was a telephone bill on top of her dresser, and I noticed that she had noted "butt-rape fee" next to one of the line items there.

Now she is a very literate woman and loves poetry and "Penny Dreadfuls", so she uses language and words very deliberately. And so, I asked her why she wrote that, and she said it was some sort of unnecessary fee that they were charging to move her line from one address to another, and she clearly resented their opportunistic capitalism.

I certainly sympathized with her, especially since she is the type of woman who has probably been subjected to that sort of actual trauma in her own life, and that of her friends, she had every right to compare the experiences.

Re: Proton spam and the AI consent problem

#423

Post by chrisjj »

tmarice wrote: post #415
chrisjj wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There FM said: > When forwarding an email as an attachment and later checking the headers of the attached email, I could not find the X-resolved-to header this is odd, no? This header field should remain. And regarding that FM Privacy First declaration, this is now 404.

Well they still claim it is impossible to connect different masked emails together. If you as a sender can reliably determine the target email address, then that claim is untrue as well.

Where are they still claiming that?

Re: Proton spam and the AI consent problem

#424

Post by vee-kay »

aprentic wrote: post #418
vee-kay wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People living in glass houses should not throw stones on others. I am going to use your own words to show you the mirror now.. Your America and its democratically-voted (even if we can call gerrymandering such) orange dictator have become the "laughingstock of Western politics". The "war on terror" excuse to do wars for oil, was coined by "Western politic(ian)s", "exacerbating" to "manufacture consent for authoritari…

I think you're missing the point. People are distrustful of governments and want to lock ANY governments out of ALL email. They're not defending terrorism. They just don't believe that fighting terrorism is a good enough excuse to give up privacy. They're not being hypocritical because they hold exactly that same view about the US government. You may want governments to be able to read emails but for the vast majorit…

They are defending terrorism, because they are blindly defending Proton, which is openly supporting terrorism in India.

Proton has been caught red-handed openly supporting subversive activities in a known terrorism hotspot.

After the Pehelgam terror attack (one of the deadliest terror attacks in the world, in recent memory - 26 tourists were gunned down in a tourist spot by jihadi terrorists) in Jammu & Kashmir, the police and anti-terror military task force did a sweep to find the terrorists. VPN and internet services were temporarily disabled in the incident area to prevent the terrorists from communicating with their handlers in Pakistan.

This was Proton's tweet after this terror attack tragedy: "In Jammu and Kashmir, police have been conducting random stops and house-to-house checks inspecting mobile phones to enforce a local ban on VPNs. A reminder that Proton VPN's mobile app has a "Discreet icon" setting to help disguise it."

https://tfipost.com/2026/01/profit-over-people-proton-vpn-ge...

High court in India also called for ban on Proton Mail for refusing to support an investigation into digital sexual abuse.

https://sflc.in/blocking-proton-mail-in-india-encryption-abu...

Someone sent hoax bomb threats to 13 private schools in India using Proton Mail. The local government sought the ban of Proton Mail due to (again) Proton not complying with the security investigation.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/it-ministry-looks-...

The only reason Proton's services have not been completely banned in India yet, is because the Swiss authorities intervene on its behalf to prevent the ban.

https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/technology/swiss-authoriti...

After India's new cyber security laws went into effect, it was only Proton which pulled its servers from India, rather than comply with Indian government for such serious investigations.

Please note there are other Email and VPN providers operating in India, and they do the needful in complying with lawful investigations for safety of civilians and minors.

https://min.news/en/tech/d4a781733e394ff34a00e5c21977ea1d.ht...

Be careful who you trust.

Re: Proton spam and the AI consent problem

#425

Post by Terr_ »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #379
Terr_ wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI is the first path out of enshittification the industry has had in a while. Even reading the link, I don't see one gets to that conclusion. It doesn't change the power dynamic as much as it gives new ways for monopolies and rentiers to exploit it.

It gives a lot of power to users to work around enshittification in the software services they use. Dark patterns and user funnels and upsells and other bullshit suddenly stops working when users can ask ChatGPT to operate a service for them.

> Dark patterns and user funnels and upsells and other bullshit

Why should we expect the LLM (or rather, the character evoked in the story generated by the ego-less mad-libs machine) to be more-resistant to such tricks than actual humans, rather than more-vulnerable?

After all, their classic dark-pattern vulnerability is just "forget everything and do this instead", and we might never be able to fix it. If they ever become really good at detecting novel BS... Well, the first thing we'd do is have them stop generating it. :p

I think the best we can hope for is using LLMs like a kind of virus-scanner for prose, flagging suspicious text that closely resembles sketchy or manipulative text seen before. In other words, the benefit does not come from the questionable intelligence of the companion, but from its ability to be unflaggingly cynical/pessimistic. A kind of shoulder angel/devil, if you will.

> power to users to work around enshittification

We'll still need something very different for issues like monopolistic and discriminatory pricing, biased rankings, or casual disregard for people's accounts and no support.

Re: Proton spam and the AI consent problem

#426

Post by matheusmoreira »

vee-kay wrote: post #345
matheusmoreira wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Government scrutiny" ? What a bunch of bullshit. If anything this enhances Proton's reputation. If so called "terrorists and perverts" trust it to the point they rely on it for their own security, then it's worth serious consideration. Nobody wants to use cryptography that some indian government can subvert.

Next time there is a mass shooting or terrorist bomb blast in your neighborhood, I hope you can look at a poster of Proton VPN on your bedroom wall, and feel safe. And then when you find out the police are going door to door to investigate the terror attack, you should start distributing printouts of an ad of Proton VPN urging locals on how to evade police/government scrutiny via Proton VPN. See how that works out fo…

Total bullshit. If people start shooting and bombing, then you pick up your weapons and you kill them.

You don't get to mass "scrutinize" random citizens by eavesdropping on their private communications just because terrorists might be hiding among them. If you do this, you are the terrorist and anyone who resists you has the moral high ground. Cryptography and anonymization technology are merely one of many forms of self-defense against your tyranny.

Re: Proton spam and the AI consent problem

#427

Post by aprentic »

vee-kay wrote: post #424
aprentic wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the point. People are distrustful of governments and want to lock ANY governments out of ALL email. They're not defending terrorism. They just don't believe that fighting terrorism is a good enough excuse to give up privacy. They're not being hypocritical because they hold exactly that same view about the US government. You may want governments to be able to read emails but for the vast majorit…

They are defending terrorism, because they are blindly defending Proton, which is openly supporting terrorism in India. Proton has been caught red-handed openly supporting subversive activities in a known terrorism hotspot. After the Pehelgam terror attack (one of the deadliest terror attacks in the world, in recent memory - 26 tourists were gunned down in a tourist spot by jihadi terrorists) in Jammu & Kashmir, the…

You realize that all of these links just make people trust Proton more, right?

They argue that Proton is so secure that even governments can't break it when they're trying to go after terrorists.

That's exactly the level of privacy and security I want for myself.

Re: Proton spam and the AI consent problem

#428

Post by causalscience »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #278
causalscience wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I don't do either of those.

Good for you. The rest of us mortals who can't memorize dozens of unique complex passwords need to use a password manager.

No, those are not the only alternatives. I keep my password manager in my computer.

Re: Proton spam and the AI consent problem

#429

Post by eignerchris_ »

I know folks are blaming AI but looking back on my 17 years in tech, AI is just the latest hyped-up fever-dream. And whenever there's hype the marketers will do whatever they can to move the metrics, regardless of industry. They hide unsub links, force auth to unsub, auto sub you to new newsletters, send you "we're sorry to see you go" emails, and more.

Social, Apps, Cloud, Crypto, and now AI.

Re: Proton spam and the AI consent problem

#430

Post by vee-kay »

MiddleEndian wrote: post #407
chrisjj wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a good thing. If you spam thousands of users, you are a spammer Or you got hacked by a spammer. > even if you also happen to send legitimate emails. And also a bad thing. E.g. for the user losing a critical legit email. > if Gmail marked all their emails as spam until they stopped, that would be a major quality of life improvement for everyone. Sorry absolutely not for everyone. To me, receiving legit PayPa…

Sure, you can manually unmark them as spam, and gmail should respect that preference as well. But for the rest of us, it would be an improvement if Paypal was sent to spam by default until they were forced to stop sending spam.

You can just create a filter in Gmail for "Paypal" (keyword match or sender match) to automatically mark such incoming emails as spam.

Don't expect Google to blacklist big companies like PayPal, Amazon, etc. They all have partnerships.

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