cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/60387297
Proton Mail provided Swiss authorities with payment data for defendtheatlantaforest@protonmail.com — the account linked to Stop Cop City protests in Atlanta. The FBI obtained this information through a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty request on January 25, 2024, identifying the activist behind the anonymous account through their credit card identifier.
No, they responded to a legal request by the swiss government to provide banking details.
Sounds just like Proton in the article:
Proton AG clarified they shared no data directly with the FBI — technically accurate but missing the point.
The fuck is the point? That banking details are subpeonable?
The point is that the headline is true. Proton helped the FBI uncover that person’s identity, by revealing their banking information.
Yes, it was legal for the Swiss government to request that information and for Proton to release it when asked.
Those facts aren’t mutually exclusive.
I don’t understand why you’re responding so aggressively.
Because people are like “OMG proton is such a snitch time to switch to <other service that will do the exact same thing>”
I am pretty sure Mullvad couldn’t do it even if they wanted to.
They can do it up to 6 weeks or something.
Thanks for explaining. I’m not “people”.
I had a similar feeling about people leaving Discord for <other service that will do the exact same thing>.
Nah, discord has access to unencrypted chat logs and will happily give that up. Way way more of an impetus to leave.
not directly related but on top of this, wasnt it the massive campaining and political pressure from us and eu that forced swiss banks to lift the swiss bank secrecy? maybe people start to understand this law exist(ed) for other reasons than tax evasion.
Proton AG clarified they shared no data directly with the FBI
“I’m gonna put this data in this box right here, the one labeled ‘Private Data’. If the FBI takes that data and does something with it, I had nothing to do with it and didn’t give them the data directly”
They complied with Swiss law. Only the name on the credit card was given.
Could’ve paid with crypto, choose not to.
or even cash
Yeah using a public ledger would have saved the FBI having to get a warrant, especially given how in bed crypto-exchanges are with Trump
Proton is clear that they complie with legsl government requests and post stats about how many they fight and handover. They offer private ways to use the service and if you dont take them thats on you.
Europe bullied them out of their tax haven status a decade or so back. Germany and others made them hand over tax scofflaw account details. It was in the papers don’t remember the year.
We still blaming basic OpSec mistakes on Proton?
Switzerland is not a safe jurisdiction.
There is no safe jurisdiction.
I signed up for a proton account and they immediately suspended it for “suspicious activity.”
My IP is on some foreign blacklist I found out. No option to appeal or anything, no explanation, I would have to verify my account with personal information which defeats the purpose.
Garbage company, 100% handing information to the cia and israel I bet.
More and more I consider just self hosting. Does have obvious drawbacks though 😅
Even some commercial less well known mail providers are sometimes blocked by big players like gmail and outlook for anti-spam reasons.
Just set up dkim, SPF, and dmarc properly and you should be good.
Nope. Take for example Gmx.
Due to the heuristics some of the providers have, such as Microsoft, they will start classifying mail sent from gmx as spam and auto move it to people’s spam folder. They have developed their own internal trust metrics and these periodically just spambin low trust servers
I can’t say either way, I manage dozens of M365 tenants myself and usually what trips it is lack of SPF/dkim/dmarc or bulk senders. But again, not common to have independent mail providers these days but even Microsoft still makes Microsoft exchange server…
Self hosted my mail for decades, the only issue i’ve had is Hotmail/outlook, who have blacklisted my IP with no way to unblock it.
Gmail is pretty good
My mail provider isn’t that big. We got blocked by both outlook and gmail, but I duckduckwent a workaround which worked. Something about editing some mail record somewhere. Can’t remember what, I’m afraid.
Yeah you need a bunch of “optional” records SPF DMARC DKIM PTR (if possible)
proton mail and tutanota(?) are both walled garden faking it as if theyre super safe
Proton has a history of breaking the spirit of its promise to users. Does Tuta?
This marks Proton’s third known disclosure to authorities. They previously handed over a recovery email for a Catalan Democratic Tsunami activist and were forced to log a French climate activist’s IP address via Europol — despite claiming they don’t log IPs by default.
Each case followed the same script: foreign law enforcement pressure, Swiss legal compliance, user anonymity compromised. Like watching the same Netflix thriller where the plot twist stops being surprising.
The frustrating part is all the simps telling you that E2EE makes it safe, nah the same way they can log the IP of a user when asked, they can use the JavaScript they send you when you open protonmail to upload whatever emails they want access to, or your to key.
If you want E2EE use GPG, otherwise you’re just pretending.
