ProtonMail voluntarily provides real-time surveillance to authorities?

[Alan James]

ProtonMail, a provider of encrypted email, has denied claims that it voluntarily provides real-time surveillance to authorities.

ProtonMail filters this into its junk folder: New claim it goes out of its way to help cops spy

Secure comms biz says it simply follows the law – plus, there's always Tor

www.theregister.co.uk

Looks like they just drove all pedophiles, terrorists, drug barons and arms dealers into one pen and try to explore their connections. The case is probably almost impossible, but it would be even more impossible if the pedoterrorists were sitting on a pile of little pens or making their own means of communication.

 

[Darkhaven]

Interesting...
Definately keep us updated if you hear more of this.
This can really change things around...

 

[crimea_river]

There's been quite a lot of claims made about Protonmail over the past few months, particularly on privacy related subreddits. Hard to tell whether or not it's just a sustained campaign to deter people from using it, obviously that could be from either law enforcement, or competitors.

 

[TiredHorse]

Wow. That's not so good, if true. A lot of journalists are going to be scrambling to find new secure communications.

 

[LaBrava]

It probably is whistleblowers and those deemed to be subversives that government agencies will be interested in, not poor souls looking for means to kill themselves.

 

[Antinous]

Response to false statements on surveillance made by Martin Steiger
https://protonmail.com/blog/martin-steiger-false-statements/

 

[LaBrava]

Anyone know anything about Protonmail's free VPN? Is it worth using?

 

[TiredHorse]

So the short version is that if the Swiss decide you have broken Swiss law they --and only they-- can request metadata from ProtonMail, which may show that you communicated with someone (depending on whether you or the other fellow used a VPN), but the encrypted body of the text will remain encrypted. Not ideal, but not especially disastrous, especially if you use a VPN.

Somehow I doubt this will be especially damaging to the ss community, but it's good information nonetheless.

It is an interesting question whether this is an attempt to undermine ProtonMail's reputation, thus sending its subscribers running or driving them into silence.

 

[Soul]

Anyone know anything about Protonmail's free VPN? Is it worth using?

I hope so!

 

[crimea_river]

So the short version is that if the Swiss decide you have broken Swiss law they --and only they-- can request metadata from ProtonMail, which may show that you communicated with someone (depending on whether you or the other fellow used a VPN), but the encrypted body of the text will remain encrypted. Not ideal, but not especially disastrous, especially if you use a VPN.

Somehow I doubt this will be especially damaging to the ss community, but it's good information nonetheless.

It is an interesting question whether this is an attempt to undermine ProtonMail's reputation, thus sending its subscribers running or driving them into silence.

It is an interesting question. One that nobody seems to have the answer to, as I said, I've seen a few minor 'campaigns' questioning Protonmail this year, particularly on reddit and then Protonmail are forced to repond with their side of the story.

I don't use Protonmail personally, I did have an account with them, which I think I obtained by invite. I think they now require a phone number to acquire an account? If that's true, I have an issue with that. I use a VPN 99% of the time, which I pay for.

End to end encryption can of course be achieved simply by using thunderbird, for example anyway and there are competitors to Protonmail, who I shan't name, as I don't want to appear like a reddit 'privacy' fanboy

 

[Antinous]

FWIW
https://www.privacytools.io/

 

[omoidarui]

i tried to make a ProtonMail account but couldn't because of the Captcha challenge at registration. for some reason they won't resolve when using Tor or a proxy, which means you have to use your real IP at registration, if that's logged then...