ProtonMail deletes 'we don't log your IP' from website after activist arrested

https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/07/protonmail_hands_user_ip_address_police/

by angrymouse • 5 years ago

681 342 5 years ago

rvz• 5 years ago

It has been admitted. So they DO log your IP address when you use their service. So their customers have been lied to and have their privacy at risk. They cannot be trusted.

So how long have ProtonMail kept this massive lie from its users then?

jacquesm2• 5 years ago

Since day #1 would be a safe guess. I don't think the honor system is a good way to deal with companies so when a company writes something like that and I have no way of verifying it then I don't believe them. Worked pretty good so far.

drstewart• 5 years ago

Just to be clear, there's no reason to believe you aren't a Chinese bot trying to sow division among western countries with this comment. It's a pretty safe guess and we have no way of verifying otherwise, after all.

numpad0• 5 years ago

It’s not a lie; it said “By default, we do not…”. So under any non-default situations they always could. I guess.

aqsalose• 5 years ago

From the article:

The firm's privacy policy, which was updated yesterday, now says: "If you are breaking Swiss law, ProtonMail can be legally compelled to log your IP address as part of a Swiss criminal investigation."

That makes it sound like they normally do not / did not log the IP, but then got orders from the police the log these particular IPs.

craftinator• 5 years ago

If that is the case, why did they remove this statement? It seems to me that if the statement remained true even though this guy got arrested, it would be true under the "by default" clause. By removing it, they indicate it was never true; or, I suppose, they discovered just how fun it is to get people arrested, and decided to change their policy on the fly!

I was even considering switching to them...

warp2• 5 years ago

According to their statement:

under Swiss law, Proton can be forced to collect information on accounts belonging to users under Swiss criminal investigation. This is obviously not done by default, but only if Proton gets a legal order for a specific account.

So I assume normally IP addresses aren't logged. But they can enable IP address logging for specific accounts when ordered to do so.

There is very little practical difference in the protection that gives users, but seemingly the privacy policy was technically correct.

Sayrus• 5 years ago

It is probably worth reading the clarifications made by ProtonMail [1] and their Transparency Report [2]. As a company based in Switzerland, it was clear to they could be compelled to do so and they never hid that fact.

IMO a breach of trust would be actually logging IPs by default and before a legal request is made.

[1] https://protonmail.com/blog/climate-activist-arrest/

[2] https://protonmail.com/blog/transparency-report/

vmception2• 5 years ago

pretty much every comment section about protonmail has been pointing this out for years

their users were too fanatical over "Swiss laws" to pay attention, going as far to demand proof when observers were merely pointing out the fundamental flaw in the Protonmail concept and incongruent advertising

well, now there is proof

maxo1334• 5 years ago

Today, i read somewhere while watching protonmail case comments, that switzerland has quite extensive surivellance laws which include possiblity of logging whole country inbound and outbound traffic for period of 6 months.

avereveard• 5 years ago

Can't wait for the "sorry we got caught" statement

ajay-b• 5 years ago

This is just ridiculous.. If they receive a notice to log your IP address, they should notify you first. My trust in ProtonMail is gone.

zpeti• 5 years ago

I'm pretty sure in US law authorities can stop you from doing that, that's why these services have warrant canaries which are legally sound.

Not sure what swiss law is like, but I can imagine they might not be allowed to notify the user?

warp2• 5 years ago

According to their statement:

Under Swiss law, it is obligatory for a user to be notified if a third party makes a request for their private data and such data is to be used in a criminal proceeding.

But the timeline is unclear to me. If they notified you via e-mail, and then immediately turned on IP logging. So... you'd go and check your e-mail, learn about the third-party request, but by then it's too late as your IP address has already been logged?

dewey• 5 years ago

but by then it's too late as your IP address has already been logged?

If someone is so sensitive about leaking their IP address and they access some service with their real IP and relying on a service's promise to not log it they already are not very careful to begin with.

destitude4• 5 years ago

Techcrunch already went over this and the law allows you to delay notifying the person so it is in effect a worthless statement to make since all authorities would simply tell them not to notify the user.

ipaddr4• 5 years ago

They could notify the user after the username is entered to say the ip with this account is being logged are you sure you want to login?

krageon2• 5 years ago

they should notify you first.

Worst-case they are not allowed to do this while the investigation is ongoing. As such, it will not happen this way.

kepler1• 5 years ago

So, if someone is under investigation for criminal activity, you think they should be given advance warning of such?

0xdeadb00f• 5 years ago

This is not surprising to me. I will still continue to use ProtonMail. I never signed up because of the "no IP logging" thing. In fact, if I had seen it before I just plain wouldn't have believed it, and still used ProtonMail. But hindsight is 20/20

qwertox3• 5 years ago

I see it the same way. For me it always meant that the default mode is not to log. It's normal that they have to enable logging if a valid request to do so comes from the authorities.

Same goes for any of the German mail providers like mailbox.org or posteo.de ("We do not save your IP address when you visit or use our website. [...] To protect your privacy and for security reasons, we also delete any potential IP address entries made by local email programs from the email headers. Emails sent using our webmail interface or using email programs therefore contain neither your local nor your public IP address."). If the authorities can prove that they have a legitimate reason to expect them to log the IP addresses, then they must do it. They are all normal companies which need to abide by the law if they want to conduct business.

istingray16• 5 years ago

What's important for you about using Protonmail then?

eternalban2• 5 years ago

It’s not Google.

ddevault2• 5 years ago

ProtonMail has been fraught with problems for a long time, and it's good that serious issues are being brought to light. Their marketing is very good and critics of them have struggled to communicate to users for a while.

The most important thing a serious privacy-minded service provider can do is be forthright and honest with users about the limitations of their privacy guarantees, particularly with respect to what hinges on math and what hinges on trust. ProtonMail has failed in this respect. It has always been the case, for example, that they could log these IPs, or that any incoming plaintext emails can be recorded before being encrypted at rest - and the fact that they're encrypted at rest is another thing we have to take on faith. Their proprietary components have always been a problem, and we also trust that they won't silently add key exfiltration to their webmail UI on the demands of a court. They don't explain any of this, they just pose themselves as experts on privacy and let vulnerable users stumble into law enforcement's hands because they care about their money more than their security.

Good privacy systems do not rely on trust or faith, they rely on math. Where some trust is required, in the case of a commercial service provider, it is their solemn duty to be honest with users and explain to them what promises they can and cannot make, and to make sure users understand which of these claims are backed up by math, which are backed up by law, and which are backed up with thoughts and prayers, so that these users can make informed decisions about how they use a service they're relying on for their personal liberty.

EveYoung2• 5 years ago

In my opinion, email is the wrong medium for highly confidential communication. Especially, if someone's personal freedom or safety depends on it. Even if E2E works correctly, you still have to worry about meta data. Maybe Matrix over TOR would be a better alternative?

ddevault2• 5 years ago

I would not go so far as to day that email cannot be used privately, but I would say that it is very very difficult to use email privately. I agree that most people with highly confidential needs would be better served by another system, though I don't know what to recommend - Matrix over Tor seems viable, perhaps.

unyttigfjelltol2• 5 years ago

When someone's personal freedom or safety is at risk from their communications, said person should re-evaluate their career choices.

upofadown• 5 years ago

Encrypted email over an onion router (might even be TOR) would be no worse than Matrix over TOR for someone that needed anonymity on top of privacy. Since email can be done entirely offline, chances are that it would be better for the privacy:

* https://articles.59.ca/doku.php?id=em:emailvsim

maxo1334• 5 years ago

Nothing stops them from deploying malicious javascript code to comply with court orders.

Nothing stops them from logging user password either, then the entire mailbox contents is compromised

Many good points + 1.

yaris7• 5 years ago

Well, if that matters, nothing stops _any_ email service provider from doing those things. And I would prefer a provider that at least tries to be clear about what to expect. One thing that PM failed to account for is how many people live in an imaginary world where it is possible to run a business that is stable, profitable on one hand, on the other hand fights for other people's freedom at own expense and is constantly in conflict with local authorities.

7demons• 5 years ago

I guess ProtonVPN also is not an exception to such "undeniable" requests. Bad day for company who bank on "no log" policy. Their marketing division will have a ton of work to fix reputation :)

aero-glide2• 5 years ago

No, ProtonVPN isn't subject to the same problem (according to the CEO).

krageon2• 5 years ago

That is of course not likely. If you get a police order you must comply, no matter what you have in your marketing.

qwertox3• 5 years ago

Care to share more information about this?

ur-whale4• 5 years ago

(according to the CEO).

and what's left of his credibility.

iforgotpassword• 5 years ago

Would you trust any VPN provider in that regard? I sure don't.

DynamicStatic• 5 years ago

Mullvad is definitely the ones I'd trust the most.

anothernewdude2• 5 years ago

For such a stupid thing too. I'm surprised Switzerland provided a warrant for a climate activist.

Sebb7675• 5 years ago

It seems the warrant went through Interpol; I'm not sure local authorities need to sign this off.

EDIT: They actually clarify this in their statement[0], the crime must be valid under Swiss law.

[0] https://protonmail.com/blog/climate-activist-arrest/

ArnoVW5• 5 years ago

From the blog posting I read yesterday, the individual was not arrested for his political convictions. He was not only a climate activist, but also a squatter. Apparently there were several police officers hurt during a legally mandated eviction of the building that he squatted.

Saying "omg they arrested a climate activist" is like saying "omg, they arrested filesystem developer Hans Reiser!"

kiawe_fire• 5 years ago

Your point is well taken that the headline is misleadingly conflating “who he was” with “what he did wrong”.

But is the actual crime any better, though?

If squatting and resisting arrest were the crimes, then I don’t see what justification there could be for wanting to probe into his emails.

They already know the extent of what he did, and where he did it, by nature of the crimes themselves… no?

tyingq2• 5 years ago

As far as I can tell, this was about squatting in an unused commercial space that was once a restaurant. The spot had been damaged prior to the squatting and no renovations to fix it had started.

So, yes, a crime, but comparing it to Hans Reiser seems a bit over the top.

marcyb5st• 5 years ago

It's an international request from Europol. Switzerland is somewhat forced to comply with these (and this one in particular) for two reasons. One political and one to serve its own interests.

The political one is that if Switzerland in the future will create an international request countries could rebuff that in lieu of this very event. And to be honest I am not sure if they can refuse such requests after the recent referendum about abiding the EU constitution.

The self-interest one is that those activists are/were prone to vandalizing banks which are a cornerstone of Swiss economy to this day (in smaller measure compared to the past since they now can pass information of account holders to other countries). Anyway, banks are still a big deal in the Swiss mentality and giving a literal "out of jail card" to someone that targets banks would set a bad precedent in Swiss public opinion.

batch12• 5 years ago

Are you sure he was arrested due to climate activism-- or is it possible that the irrelevant description has been added to manipulate people into a target reaction?

anothernewdude2• 5 years ago

Then the manipulation runs counter to the prevailing narrative.

Louno• 5 years ago

My trust in them had been broken as soon as they asked me to honour a bill when my vpn subscription ended, instead of notifying me to renew. Respectable companies don't use such asshole design/wording. They're a fraud.

notjes• 5 years ago

PM was a hoax from the start. Just talk to the Lavabit guy Ladar Levison or look up Crypto AG.

pixxel• 5 years ago

Surely the onus is on you to backup your statement calling PM a hoax.

JohnWhigham• 5 years ago

They marketed themselves as a safe, secure platform away from prying eyes. As a platform for dissidents. Turns out it was bullshit (as many already expected).

dsign2• 5 years ago

The ProtonMail guys always said that unless they were 20 miles from the littoral, in the sea side, they had to abide by national laws. So it was bound to happen.

What makes me sad is how flimsy their entire premise (not necessarily "promise") turned out to be: all it took was some minor rascal in France to hug the wrong tree (so to speak), and ProtonMail is in the open saying they can't even protect the IP address of their customers. From there, all it takes is for somebody to change a law in Switzerland and end-to-end encryption of the messages themselves will only be "by default."

I think there is a market for datacenters in open seas.

segfaultbuserr2• 5 years ago

I think there is a market for datacenters in open seas.

Sealand's HavenCo tried it back in the 2000s. As it turned out, it didn't work well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HavenCo

See: Death of a data haven: cypherpunks, WikiLeaks, and the world’s smallest nation https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/03/sealand-and-have...

vmception2• 5 years ago

one company in the cloud sector failed 20 years ago, before people were even using the word cloud in this context

nvarsj• 5 years ago

I find Sealand fascinating. Imagine founding an off-grid location as a data haven, and it got popular. What would happen? I can see covert operations from foreign governments happening for example, driven by copyright lobbyists. Would they then need to hire security forces or train their own armed forces? Would it eventually join global political organizations to influence and protect its position? It gets really interesting to think about.

There's no doubt in my mind there would be huge demand for such a thing. People hate that the government can spy on anything you do. The chilling effect is exhausting.

teekert3• 5 years ago

Or you protect your own IP, I wonder if ProtonVPN could have done that? Would have been a nice test of those claims as well.

All in all, I still trust ProtonMail, they are handling this quite well and transparently. Their original messaging was probably a compromise between getting the message out there and leaving some room for things like this. Arguably that was a mistake, or maybe with the whole truth in bold on the front page, people would have flocked less to ProtonMail? I still don't agree with that original messaging though, as they don't themselves anymore.

Still pretty great free service if you ask me. If a family plan was cheaper I'd have migrated everyone there a long time ago.

lindenstark• 5 years ago

ProtonVPN or a similar service would have helped that.

They are only required to provide the IP Addresses from ProtonMail but ProtonVPN gets different treatment legally speaking, were they cannot (currently) force logging [0][1].

[0] https://protonvpn.com/support/no-logs-vpn/ [1] checked with Andy Yen (CEO/Founder)

dsign2• 5 years ago

I agree that they are a great email provider, the lesser evil, and I myself use a paid plan. But I believe that, as a society, we are rolling down a slippery slope where digital privacy becomes more difficult everyday.

A couple of weeks ago, it was Apple announcing that they will spy by default in all of their customers via the iPhones because of child pornography. Apple has spent galleons of gold marketing itself as a privacy-first company and they are not a pushover; for them to do that, whatever is going on behind the curtains must be grim.

I thought it would be a few years before somebody wanted to use something like that technology for something less serious. Then yesterday the news broke that courts had forced ProtonMail to break their business just so the French police could find a climate activist.

In my view, we are heading to a world where our electronic devices and services will be used to prosecute petty crimes, like drinking alcohol in Arab countries or even parking over the line anywhere else.

TheOtherHobbes2• 5 years ago

Why would anyone trust ProtonMail? If you're not doing anything shady you don't need E2E. If you're doing something that attracts police attention - and relative triviality is clearly not a factor - what they're offering won't protect you.

Saying "Well, you could also use our VPN as well" is more marketing. Of course they'll have to comply with legal requests for that too.

This is a political issue. What's missing is the legal oversight which prevents overreach. Demanding logs to catch a mass murderer is one thing. Demanding logs to catch someone who is being financially and politically irritating is on a completely different level and much harder to justify.

WhyNotHugo• 5 years ago

The premise of "we'll never log your IPs" is something that no company can hold.

- Local law enforcement can force the to do so.

- Locals laws can change.

- Guys with guns might barge in and demand it.

Mostly, you can understand that they don't _intend_ to log IPs, and aren't in the business of collecting and redistributing data. But that doesn't mean you can count on absolute and unconditional secrecy.

indymike• 5 years ago

Add to your list:

- engineer troubleshooting might do so temporarily.

rossmohax• 5 years ago

Same for end to end encryption, no? Law enforcement can force them to serve backdoored JS client payload.

NmAmDa• 5 years ago

I think signal approach is the best. You can't be forced to turn in something you don't have.

dexen3• 5 years ago

"we'll never log your IPs" is something that no company can hold.

Four words: The Intercept, Secure Drop. A one-way mail (content submission) system that runs exclusively on Tor, and thus can't be supboenated for users' IP address.

While I get your premise due to concerns of law, I think it is entirely feasible - and hinges on execution, marketing ability. We already have IP-hiding technology, whether Tor or Freenet or other such. The concern is "are we good enough yet to make it a sustainable business?"

For sake of example: if a hypothetical competitor to ProtonMail was to offer sign-up and email access only over Tor protocol, it would effectively be safe from police's demands to start logging IPs - thanks to technical measures. The actual difficulty is in the business side: getting enough paying customers to install & enable relevant browser or browser plugin.

Granted, the police could try to force the hypothetical competitor to install malicious JavaScript that would try to gather & leak users' IP address or other identifying information through other means, but that's solvable in the longer run just as well.

denton-scratch3• 5 years ago

Indymedia UK didn't log the IPs of website visitors. They used an Apache module that stripped IPs from Apache log messages. I know this, because I had root on the server.

Indymedia was widely infiltrated, I think; certainly there were some infiltrators, and they often trolled that Indymedia loggeed IP addresses.

There was a tool we could use to capture addresses; they were captured to memory only, and the tool could only be switched on for a limited time; it usually got switched on for less than an hour - long enough to find and block the addresses of particularly egregious spammers and trolls.

An SMTP server could be run without address logging; but a commercial SMTP server would be damned hard to administer without IP addresses in the logs.

[Edit] Indymedia had two servers seized in the UK; one was the property of Bristol Indymedia, and didn't run Apache. The other was run by Indy UK, and didn't log addresses. There was therefore no fallout from the seizure, except that the cops hung onto it for about 5 years. When we finally got it back, we retired it - we couldn't trust it, and it was by then obsolete kit anyway.

asdfasgasdgasdg• 5 years ago

Not just no company: no person can make such a promise. There is no one who is outside the reach of government power, should a government develop sufficient interest in that person's doings. The only way to really avoid this is to remain completely anonymous throughout the development process, and that's a tall order.

samstave• 5 years ago

Whats the corollary with brick-and-mortar:

Assume you're an all cash business - can governments require that you take and log every customer's ID?

indigomm• 5 years ago

The problem is that someone always controls that service. So they can always go after that person (irrespective of where the service is) and force them to modify it.

I was thinking you could have some sort of satellite service with data stored on the satellite. Allow multiple authorised ground stations to connect and store/retrieve emails for users. But again, the person that controls the software and operation would be a target.

_wldu• 5 years ago

One would need to operate the service as a Tor Location Hidden service and have no presence on the Clear Net. They would also need, very good operational security and careful configuration in order to stay hidden.

jasode• 5 years ago

I think there is a market for datacenters in open seas.

The idea of having a isolated sovereign floating platform in the ocean doesn't doesn't really solve the problem of escaping the rules of national governments because it still needs network connections into those countries.

Whether it's underseas fiber optic cables or bouncing signals off of satellites, the datacenter will be rendered useless if nations' citizens get a "This site can’t be reached. [...] ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT"

It addition to the physical network topology challenges, the ip address space allocation is controlled by IANA ... which is a government entity.

ghaff2• 5 years ago

Exactly. Sealand/HavenCo could Play their micronation thing right up until the UK cut their supply and comms links.

Does it raise the bar for bothering to do that? Sure. But it’s certainly not absolute protection.

dexen3• 5 years ago

Whether it's underseas fiber optic cables or bouncing signals off of satellites, the datacenter will be rendered useless if nations' citizens get a "This site can’t be reached. [...] ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT"

Not if Elon succeeds with Starlink:

>@thesheetztweetz: How does transmitting into a country without a local downlink work on the regulatory side?
@elonmusk: They can shake their fist at the sky [0]

For context, certain countries like India have quite strict regulation of satellite comms, requiring special permission[1] even to use plain consumer tech like Iridium. I presume EU would also try to tightly regulate consumer satellite comms, just like it requires real (government issued) ID to use cell phones - specifically to register locally purchased SIM cards, again for national security reasons.

[0] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1433123220643717120

[1] https://www.osac.gov/Content/Report/9db45731-1eec-477a-a7af-... >There are multiple instances of authorities confiscating undeclared satellite phones from foreign travelers upon arrival in India. The official notice states: "All foreigners travelling to India are hereby informed that it is illegal to use/carry Thuraya or other such satellite phones in India. Custom authorities in India may seize such phones and legal action may be taken against the passenger concerned."

Sebb7675• 5 years ago

So it was bound to happen.

And this was quite obvious for someone who actually looked into staying anonymous (or gave the Protonmail threat model page a deeper read).

What makes me sad is how flimsy their entire premise (not necessarily "promise") turned out to be: all it took was some minor rascal in France to hug the wrong tree (so to speak), and ProtonMail is in the open saying they can't even protect the IP address of their customers.

That's a big simplification. It took quite a few authorities to wave through a very draconian request for (what appears to be) a minor crime. As Protonmail themselves pointed out, they never promised to protect the IPs and they could explicitly not promise that. In fact, they even stated very clearly that they could not. Expecting them to print that on the frontpage is quite unreasonable when their marketing has to compete with shady VPNs that promise the sky.

From there, all it takes is for somebody to change a law in Switzerland and end-to-end encryption of the messages themselves will only be "by default."

While this is a reasonable threat, it's not like one could do this in an afternoon.

ur-whale4• 5 years ago

I think there is a market for datacenters in open seas.

That's what the Sealand [1] dudes thought.

Until a bunch of boats showed up loaded with men carrying rifles who simply took over the country.

And when that happens, who/where do you turn to to whine that someone took your thing?

That's what sovereignty means: you're on your effing own. For real this time.

One thing most people tend to forget about governments: they have the monopoly on physical violence.

That's the first, most important and probably only useful thing you pay taxes to your government for: physical security.

If you want to run a DC in open seas:

    - buy a bunch of gunboats
    - hire a small army to provide physical security
    - try and not piss off any of the real countries lest they be the one showing up with many more gunboats than you may muster and take over the "open sea DC".
    - your services won't be cheap: gunboats must be maintained, armies paid and fed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand

dathinab3• 5 years ago

can't even protect the IP address of their customers.

Why even the IP address is both technically and law-wise on of the hardest thinks to protect. The only way to get anywhere close to it is by using a VPN, Tor or similar additionally to whatever protection the service provides, and surprise, they do have a onion site (I think).

simonsaidit• 5 years ago

Their Tor have issues as i understand it.. eg redirecting to clearnet anf Old version and requiring phone number. But they say vpn would have solved it…

To quote

“ There's an important distinction here. Under Swiss law, email providers fall into a category which requires us to comply with certain legal requests. Swiss law does not have a provision which could force a VPN provider to log.”

“ With VPN the legal principle is different. Thousands of users might be using the same server, logging them all would be assuming everybody is guilty until proven innocent. This is considered to be disproportionate. In the email case, it is possible to request information on a specific user, and that is considered to be proportionate.”

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/pil6xi/climate_...

arpanetus2• 5 years ago

Some men with guns can easily change the case of sealand.

Technology itself has to be law-prone && gun-prone.

dathinab3• 5 years ago

I think there is a market for datacenters in open seas

You might escape the laws constraining you, but you will also escape the laws protecting you.

So if there is a datacenter in the open seas either:

- It's operated by some government, potentially indirectly through some straw mans.

- It's undermined by some goverment using it as a honypot or similar.

- It's so small that no-one cares about it.

- It's gone.

So IMHO, realistically speaking there is no such marked, if you want to escape the law it's properly easier to do so inside of an country instead of escaping onto the sea and then trying to somehow connect internet.

shapefrog• 5 years ago

all it took was some minor rascal in France to hug the wrong tree (so to speak), and ProtonMail is in the open

We must be living on alternate time lines - try reading their transparency report. This is not even the first time this week, let alone the first time ever.

https://protonmail.com/blog/transparency-report/

dylan6043• 5 years ago

I think there is a market for datacenters in open seas.

This will never happen. There are too many clandestine ways for this to suddenly no longer be there in ways that would be totally deniable for anyone doing the deed. Whether it's just "cut a cable" supplying the data streams or physical destruction of the vessel housing the data center.

bengale• 5 years ago

I would assume you'd also need to have some sort of armed forces too, otherwise whichever country wants you data can sail over with their Navy and take it.

after_care• 5 years ago

If you have a navy capable causing halt to EU, CN, US, AU, etc you should go ahead and claim an entire island. Maybe collect some taxes, try to get UN recognition…

Operating outside of national protection requires either extremely small scale and high risk or it requires becoming a quasi-nation.

collaborative• 5 years ago

If quantum communication becomes a possibility you could imagine an invisible network that provides a type of ultimate privacy

ohgodplsno5• 5 years ago

The homepage has always been misleading, since their TOS does mention that they can keep your IP address, for law-related purposes or spam prevention. Additionally, once they receive a request from Swiss police, they _have_ to comply and log those addresses. You can fight tooth and nail and pretend that your entire service is built to never see any IP, but in the end, you will still be made to log it.

Welcome to reality.

nickthemagicman2• 5 years ago

They can force you to implement functionality if it doesn't exist? Like logging?

ohgodplsno5• 5 years ago

Your service is connected to the internet, isn't it ? An IP is a fundamental component of it. It's impossible for you to say that you cannot have the IP. Even if it involves you going to your edge server and reading everything with Wireshark to find out the IP, you will still have to comply.

EDIT: To add to this, this is why ProtonMail recommends using a TOR node to protect your address.

raverbashing2• 5 years ago

If people are unhappy about Protonmail I suggest they try find an email provider that is impervious to any judicial requests. Of any country.

It is naive to imagine companies that have an address and take payments can ignore judicial decisions.

Yes there's a point about fighting decisions, but as people say "we live in a society".

dskloet• 5 years ago

Some companies try harder to fight the decision than others and it makes a difference.

raverbashing2• 5 years ago

Protonmail fought 700 actions the past year as per the twitter thread. I think that's very above average. https://twitter.com/andyyen/status/1434665937203077120

rawbot• 5 years ago

So they "don't log your IP", until the first time someone challenged that statement. Talk is cheap.

ohgodplsno5• 5 years ago

ProtonMail has always said that they would comply with Swiss law. Your IP will not be logged unless you commit a crime in Switzerland and the swiss police hands in a request.

maxo1334• 5 years ago

So... if they receive valid swiss court order they can be forced to log user passwords on demand and their entire service is then useless? As when you have password you can decrypt entire mailbox content.

They market their service to journalists and activists, which are often targetted by their own governments. Seems that they cannot protect any of them.

dtparr2• 5 years ago

Note that the recent case involved a crime in France.

So really, it's more like 'unless you commit a crime in a country that cooperates with Switzerland and the Swiss legal system decides to hand in a request'

baobabKoodaa• 5 years ago

unless you commit a crime

Right, because the police would never persecute someone who didn't commit a crime, is that right?

istingray16• 5 years ago

Until yesterday their homepage said "By default, we do not keep any IP logs".

That was unclear and has now been removed.

plater4• 5 years ago

Be careful when companies market themselves as Swiss or that due to them being located in Switzerland means there is some extra layer of security or privacy.

Sure, it's a more stable country than many other countries in the world, but not much different from most EU countries for example. And privacy wise there is no difference.

Be also aware of the fact that many companies market themselves as Swiss, but all it means is they have a head office in Switzerland due to tax reasons. In one example, it's a cloud storage company, they say on their marketing page and their about page that they are based in Switzerland and under Swiss law, but if you look at the legal pages the company you sign up with are actually based in Bulgaria. Their servers are based in Texas, USA and Luxemburg, Europe and their development team in Bulgaria.

kylehotchkiss• 5 years ago

The company you’re mentioning in the end is Tresorit, right? If so, they still do get some kudos for running a pretty solid end to end encrypted storage service. Their whitepaper checked out to me and their heavy focus on business users instead of consumer seems to attract less of the advocate types of users that ended ProtonMail in this weeks situation to begin with

plater4• 5 years ago

No, I'm referring to pcloud. I'm not saying they are necessarily a bad service or anything, just that their marketing is false.

cf_4• 5 years ago

As far as I know Tresorit has actual offices and staff in Zurich, Switzerland. They also appeared clear to me in the past that they have multiple offices around the world (I listened to a presentation from them recently at a conference).

vanilla-almond• 5 years ago

I also dislike companies that use the label 'Made in [country]' as a prominent hook to promise users they will get enhanced privacy - which may or may not be true. I'd rather they be honest and say: these are the examples when we must comply with the law and must hand over the following details.

We all need to make our own evaluation of the privacy promises of those services and whether they actually provide privacy above and beyond what other companies offer. We shouldn't rely on vague impressions that privacy is strong in company X merely because of their presence in a particular country (and which the company uses heavily for promotion).

sen• 5 years ago

As an Australian, I absolutely appreciate knowing an online company is located somewhere that isn’t here.

sschueller• 5 years ago

Made in Switzerland has strict rules as to what percentage (at least 50% for most items, 80% for certain food items) is actually made here. Unlike "based" which just means there is an office or mailbox.

[1] https://bestswiss.ch/swissness-gesetzgebung-marke-schweiz

istingray16• 5 years ago

Agreed, it's unsustainable for ProtonMail. They should operate out of China, and then build credibility from there. "Trust us" is not viable long term. In God we trust, for everyone else use math.

ducktective2• 5 years ago

What, you mean those landing pages with that majestic snowy mountain doesn't automatically mean robust security and unparalleled privacy? My life has been a lie...

teekert3• 5 years ago

I thought those impenetrable looking mountains were part of their datacenter defenses.

laurent1234562• 5 years ago

In one example, it's a cloud storage company, they say on their marketing page and their about page that they are based in Switzerland and under Swiss law, but if you look at the legal pages the company you sign up with are actually based in Bulgaria. Their servers are based in Texas, USA and Luxemburg, Europe and their development team in Bulgaria.

Just out of curiosity, in this kind of situation what laws actually apply? Wouldn't that be the Bulgarian laws?

IncRnd2• 5 years ago

If there are servers located on the US, they are absolutely covered by US law. In fact, all of the jurisdictions can apply in one way or another.

plater4• 5 years ago

In the pcloud Terms & Conditions they say this:

"If a European Union user of the Site or Services is located outside of Switzerland, then, for the purposes of any claim or action relating to these Terms, the Privacy Policy, the Site, or any Services, the applicable jurisdiction will be the courts that are located in the territory of residence of such European User. "

sbarre• 5 years ago

I think the physical location(s) of your stored data is probably the weakest link in the (legal) chain, so to speak.

mrtksn• 5 years ago

Their servers are based in Texas, USA and Luxemburg, Europe and their development team in Bulgaria

I don't believe it means anything. They form a company in Switzerland, which makes them compliant to the Swiss laws, they rent infrastructure from a provider where these services are most favourable for their business(which in this case could be USA and Luxembourg) and they do their tech dev work in Bulgaria(Which is in EU) because they get the most bang for their buck in this country.

What I see is simply business as usual. Are there even single origin tech companies? Even if everything is Swiss, if you have your app on the Apple App Stor or Google Play, you would be required to comply with US laws. You came up with an interesting encryption? Well, you will be asked to document it as part of you export compliance if you are going to make the app available outside of the US.

faeyanpiraat2• 5 years ago

You think you host your PI data in the EU, but in fact it is sitting on US soil.

nirui• 5 years ago

The funny thing is, while advertising all of that, they're not providing free SMTP service that actually allow you to send properly GPG encrypted emails to protect your privacy.

So for me, ProtonMail is basically a web email service, a nice web email service to be completely fair, but without perks. I will never call them an "encrypted email" service.

faeyanpiraat2• 5 years ago

Yes, they make registering burner addresses a breeze for potentially spammy sites, but thats basically their only USP for me.

simplyinfinity2• 5 years ago

their development team in Bulgaria.

I don't see them having offices in Bulgaria. However they have offices in North Macedonia.

bluetomcat• 5 years ago

The founder and CTO, Anton Titov, is a Russian who moved to Bulgaria at age 8:

https://cloudstorageinfo.org/interview-with-anton-titov-pclo...

_gohp• 5 years ago

True, the swiss government has bent over in all directions imaginable regarding the banking secret once a powerful enough entity pressured them. Forget hosting, VPNs or email providers from Switzerland.

It's exactly true, companies incorporate there due to tax laws, even Phillip Morris is there.

cbg02• 5 years ago

"Bent over in all directions" is a bit of an exaggeration, most countries nowadays abide by various conventions to prevent money laundering & terrorism funding, since the G7 founded the FATF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_Action_Task_Force

lnxg33k16• 5 years ago

Yeah I also bought a lifetime plan from that cloud storage company few years ago, scammed by the marketing page, only to find out somewhere in the settings page that my data were never in switzerland or even in EU but were physically in US, and had to pay to move them to EU, just deleted my account, I guess the swiss thing is just a marketing scam

tablespoon• 5 years ago

> In one example, it's a cloud storage company, they say on their marketing page and their about page that they are based in Switzerland and under Swiss law, but if you look at the legal pages the company you sign up with are actually based in Bulgaria. Their servers are based in Texas, USA and Luxemburg, Europe and their development team in Bulgaria.
Yeah I also bought a lifetime plan from that cloud storage company few years ago, scammed by the marketing page, only to find out somewhere in the settings page that my data were never in switzerland or even in EU but were physically in US

Anyone want to name names?

atok12• 5 years ago

You got played. Just remember to never trust marketing in the future and always read the fine print, no matter how long it may be.

rsync2• 5 years ago

Ironically, I am in Zurich right now supervising upgrades and capacity increases in ZH4.

Our terms of service[1] Explicitly state that your data will never leave the location you’ve chosen.

So if you’re still in the market for cloud storage in Zürich, email us. We’ll give you a “screwed by pcloud” discount.

[1] rsync.net/resources/notices/tos.html

ragnese• 5 years ago

I remember being fooled by the whole "We're Swiss, isn't that great?" marketing at the beginning. It was disappointing, to say the least, when I learned that Switzerland is part of the N-eyes agreement(s).

Truth is that Email is almost a dead protocol now, anyway. As much as that hurts me to say. It was never able to meet the moment- PGP is complicated and easy to mess up, it's pretty damn hard to host your own Email server and not end up in everyone's SPAM or blocked, and if they person on the other end is using GMail, your shit's being read, analyzed, and archived anyway.

Email is going to be a business-only (as in "companies"/"corporations"/etc) protocol soon.

unethical_ban2• 5 years ago

I agree in that, for me, e-mail is almost solely used for business communications and newsletters. However, I don't know of a "timeless", or otherwise decentralized, communication technology so ubiquitous that can be secured like e-mail. Signal seems to be the hip thing, but it's centralized. "Blockchain" communications, perhaps?

MeinBlutIstBlau• 5 years ago

The whole clarification they wrote was "As a Swiss company, they must comply with Swiss law when it relates to a Swiss citizen."

So if you're not a swiss citizen, you've got nothing to worry about. The only thing they did different was notify the person they were being investigated and then began tracking. That's the major difference.

It's not like some random company can just skirt all laws globally for the sake of privacy.

otikik• 5 years ago

The person whose IP they tracked was French.

racl101• 5 years ago

Yep.

We all saw the Wolf of Wallstreet.

audiometry• 5 years ago

Switzerland deserves no brand for secrecy. USA broke their back. They opened their private banking. Their Crypto AG was totally rooted.

SeanLuke• 5 years ago

USA broke their back. They opened their private banking.

This sounds like you think this was a bad thing. But a not insignificant amount of swiss bank holdings, and profit, stemmed directly from dormant accounts of holocaust victims, purposely withheld from their heirs under the guise of "privacy"; and from plunder deals with the Nazis.

OldHand2018• 5 years ago

USA broke their back. They opened their private banking

If you've ever been to a really large American city, you'll notice all the logos of the large Swiss banks on big tall shiny office towers. The USA said that if they want to keep doing that, then they have to follow American laws. The Swiss banks decided that running their businesses in America was more profitable than secrecy.

"Follow our laws or get out" is not even remotely controversial.

snuser• 5 years ago

Proton has always been as bad a hushmail

stjohnswarts7• 5 years ago

Got any proof of that? Can you decrypt my email that is sitting on their servers? If you are communicating something so precious that not even the sender/receiver and subject line shouldn't be seen then you best not be using ANY EMAIL at all without a couple more layers of security on top of it.

istingray16• 5 years ago

China-Email: Would be interesting to buy email hosting from a super secure email service based out of China. Basically a "trust in math" approach where they operate despite adversaries. With huge claims on the website:

- No physical security: our offices don't even have locks

- Pro-crime-CEO: our CEO is a known (and future) criminal

- Political: we seriously try to read your email for the cops but we cant :(

- None of that matters because our protocol is open source, blockchain enabled, and it doesn't matter if you trust us at all.

Seems like a joke but you get my point. In God we trust, for everyone else use math.

emodendroket• 5 years ago

I kind of figure that since I don’t live in the Chinese sphere of influence I might be better off using a Chinese service if I had really sensitive communications.

giancarlostoro• 5 years ago

for everyone else use math.

Your code better be flawless.

annoyingnoob• 5 years ago

- Pro-crime-CEO: our CEO is a known (and future) criminal

Best to not have employees if they know the CEO is pro-crime. I mean why not eBay all of the company's equipment on my personal account? Just towing the company line.

jokoon• 5 years ago

The USA thus has authority over servers that are in Texas, iirc.

ev1• 5 years ago

The USA also has authority over servers that are anywhere in the world if there is a US company involved.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act

ibaikov• 5 years ago

Last time there was a protonmail discussion on HN I brought up the point that they save Metadata and of course got downvoted to the oblivion and had to remove my comment....

sizzle• 5 years ago

What’s the safest country originating IP address to use via vpn from prying eyes, Netherlands?

timdaub• 5 years ago

Well, at least they own their mistakes and change accordingly.

All email is shit. Nothing is encrypted and many company's simply try to sell you on better productivity (hey.com). Already having my email be encrypted so that the host can't read it is a step forward, in my opinion.

pluc2• 5 years ago

The line is thin between privacy and anonymizing criminal activity.

happybirds07• 5 years ago

Well yes, which is why we should always beware of outlawing things "because criminals". Criminals won't stop using VPNs or other tech because they're not legal, and as you say, most things have legitimate uses too.

pluc2• 5 years ago

I agree, but that's also why I don't think 100% anonymity is something we should strive for. I'm fine with anonymity until the provider is obligated to comply by law... but that's mostly because I'm in Canada and I have a relative trust in laws. Wouldn't feel safe with anonymity guaranteed by US law at all.

shafyy• 5 years ago

I see many comments here that seem to be uninformed. Please, make sure to ProtonMail's official statement first. It includes a lot of important background info: https://protonmail.com/blog/climate-activist-arrest/

For example, this paragraph is important:

Unlike other providers, we do fight on behalf of our users. Few people know this (it’s in our transparency report), but we actually fought over 700 cases in 2020 alone. Whenever possible, we will fight requests, but it is not always possible.

occamrazor• 5 years ago

They also say that they had no idea about the identity of the activist and the charges against them. That means that the information was not provided in the warrant/police request, and thus that they can’t or don’t want to look into the merits of any requests. My hypothesis is that the 700 cases they mention are requests from _foreign_ authorities, to whom they answer that they need the request to come through Swiss authorities. More like a template email than a “fight”

Sebb7675• 5 years ago

My hypothesis is that the 700 cases they mention are requests from _foreign_ authorities, to whom they answer that they need the request to come through Swiss authorities.

They can also fight against Swiss authorities, unless they come with a court+gag order.

Anyway, I believe them that the do their best to protect their customers, but it's simply not an option to break the law. And they never promised to do so; in fact, they quite clearly state that they don't.

luckylion3• 5 years ago

This comment should be at the top, half the comments here either haven't read the article or just don't have a technical understanding of how the internet and servers work.

livinginfear• 5 years ago

The expectation that Proton would be able to disobey the legal requests of their local authorities with impunity is unrealistic. Protonmail makes certain claims about privacy, particularly about encryption. They don't make any claims that they have the intention, or ability for that matter, to defy local authorities at their peril. Like Grugq said in one of his presentations (paraphrased): "Don't expect your VPN company to do your jail time for you". I'm neither for nor against Protonmail. I don't think they've been dishonest. I think people have an unrealistic expectation of the service they offer. They offer additional privacy, not legal indemnity.

edly3• 5 years ago

This is exactly what baffled me about people saying "I'm cancelling my PM subscription" as if they didn't make this abundantly clear. In their transparency report, they state very clearly that they "may also be obligated to monitor the IP addresses" being used to access accounts engaged in criminal activity.

Privacy activists, for some reason, don't take the time to read transparency reports.

destitude4• 5 years ago

What about the perception they gave that state if you were being monitored you would be notified? The part not made clear was that they could delay notifying you for months.

dwild3• 5 years ago

This is exactly what baffled me about people saying "I'm cancelling my PM subscription" as if they didn't make this abundantly clear.

We are on a thread talking about them removing claims on their marketing material... that's abundantly clear to you?

Have we reached that level of expectation? That it's abundantly clear when marketing material are not saying the same thing as reports?

In addition to the items listed in our privacy policy, in extreme criminal cases, ProtonMail may also be obligated to monitor the IP addresses which are being used to access the ProtonMail accounts which are engaged in criminal activities.

This is what the Transparency Report say too. In EXTREME criminal cases. Is it abundantly clear to you this case is an EXTREME criminal cases too? This was someone that manifested by squatting a building... is that extreme to you? My definition of extreme is a tiny bit higher, I would expect risk of life or at least a pretty large amount of money involved... not a bunch of kids manifesting gentrification.

rpadovani2• 5 years ago

This. If you pay ProtonMail, you don't have your emails automatically scanned by some company to show you advertisements, and you have encryption at rest. That's all.

Qub3d• 5 years ago

But if that is all we can realistically expect, there are objectively better providers.

That's ultimately why I cancelled my PM subscription and went elsewhere.

ur-whale4• 5 years ago

The expectation that Proton would be able to disobey the legal requests of their local authorities with impunity is unrealistic.

Untrue.

There are many way to resist authority without being seen as blatantly disobeying the law.

In this particular case, they could have gone with the standard: "can't technically do it, we don't have the infrastructure". Or: "the guys who manages the logs just quit, we can't recover the information". Or: "we don't have the budget to implement that, it'd bankrupt us" ... etc ... make as many lame excuses as the day is long.

Drag things into court and just bog the effing big brother machine down in technicalities long enough until they simply give up or the French activist has had ample time to skedaddle.

yaris7• 5 years ago

The ways you've listed would work only once (each). With several hundreds of requests per year PM would pretty quickly run out of plausible excuses to not start storing the requested info. Also - what is so precious about this particular request compared to 700 requests PM received last year (if we trust PM on that)? Also - the purpose of any commercial activity (which surely PM email service is) is to make money for their owners. How much money and for how long would come from PM if they constantly would be resisting authorities (or from authorities point of view - obstructing justice)?

tiahura• 5 years ago

You might want to read at least one of the many articles about this before posting so that you don’t look dumb.

janmo2• 5 years ago

There are 180 countries and not one will let you create a company that doesn't have to log IP addresses? Proton should change their description to: "We don't really care so much about your privacy and make fake marketing claims because we are just another tech company trying to make as much money as possible"

istingray16• 5 years ago

Disclaimer: Paying Protonmail customer here

Protonmail has been dishonest in their marketing.

1. Their homepage stated ""By default, we do not keep any IP logs...". Due to complaints about this being a lie, they have today removed this statement

2. Their website also stated "No personal information required to create an account". However, for creating an account through Tor a phone number is required. This has been an issue for 4 years [1]

How could I expect Proton to disobey legal requests? That's crazy.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/638ykr/phone_nu...

thrownaway561• 5 years ago

question... why did they have this information readily available for them? couldn't they not retain logs and delete this sort of information right away? is there some legal aspect that makes them have to retain it for a certain amount of time or something?

0-_-0• 5 years ago

They didn't. They were compelled to start logging the IP of a specific customer.

jcq3• 5 years ago

I think as an EU citizen you have more privacy on yandex.ru than PM. Russian authorities are unlikely to collaborate with French one for instance

yaris7• 5 years ago

If you can make sure you and your relatives and your friends never cross Russian (or for that matter Russia-friendly state) border and/or you never write anything remotely resembling criticism of Russian regime - then maybe yes.

hasmanean• 5 years ago

Why don’t they use surveillance in anti-corruption squads to make sure no back room deals are being made inside the government?

This tool is turned against the poor and marginalized and used to eliminate opposition but not for making the system work better as it was supposed to.

In a sense society is being hacked by those in power using surveillance.

antocv• 5 years ago

Honeypot always was a honeypot

SV_BubbleTime2• 5 years ago

You mean an EU funded email service that said “by default” we don’t log complied with EU requests and started logging!?

Better rabble on HN for a few hundred comments, this is outrageous.

maxo1334• 5 years ago

If they really cared about anonymity ProtonMail would ship their mobile app with bundled TOR. Especially the mobile version, since plenty of non-tech savy people use mobile only.

istingray16• 5 years ago

Yes 100% this. Their mobile apps need to have a switch for "All connections through Tor", and that switch should be enabled by default.

Tor too slow? Speed up the ecosystem by setting up your own Tor nodes, Proton.

bubblethink• 5 years ago

The obvious questions being a) Why do they sell vpn ?, and b) Why is the web-email client not routed over vpn if it has any value whatsoever?

If they route all email over vpn, do they have to disclose the enduser's ip ? If so, how do they avoid that with standalone vpn ?

cpach2• 5 years ago

For secure communications it’s much better to use Signal than e-mail. (Preferably with disappearing messages.)

I understand that people desire the UX of an e-mail client such as Thunderbird, Mail.app, Gmail or whatever. Nothing wrong with wanting that. But there is currently no good way to send e-mail securely.

ducktective2• 5 years ago

What about Matrix?

cpach2• 5 years ago

Good question. IMO it depends on the threat model. If I was a political activist I would not rely on Matrix.

Some previous threads worth reading:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23108750

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24123997

ashtonkem• 5 years ago

I’m not that surprised that ProtonMail folded; as someone else said they’re not going to do jail for you. What’s concerning is the nature of this warrant and arrest. As far as I can tell all the articles haven’t mentioned any actual crimes; is France just straight up arresting climate activists now?

eplanit• 5 years ago

I can't imagine running an internet based service and not logging IP addresses. How else do you debug issues or isolate malicious users, etc. Does anyone think it's realistic (or even responsible) to not log basic info?

I don't use PM, but it seems their product is end to end email encryption, not complete web anonymity. Maybe those wanting to add anonymity should access it via tor (if PM allows it).

Verdex2• 5 years ago

My day to day life is pretty boring, but occasionally I'll imagine what I would need to do if I ever had to get out a secret message out where it was important that it couldn't be traced back to me.

It always ends up being something like, "Well, I could buy a bunch of raspberry PIs with cash and then go to a coffee shop that I never go to and upload the message to a gmail account that I'll only ever use once. Throw the PI away afterwards in a random trash can in town and make sure to wear gloves every time I touch it. Finally use some sort of encryption scheme or something so I can identify myself for repeated correspondences because each time will be with a different one shot email account."

It turns out that this isn't some fanciful paranoia, but is in fact the bare minimum of what I should be doing if something like that ever came up.

snet0• 5 years ago

Coffee shops have CCTV, no?

laurent1234562• 5 years ago

Tor from a coffee shop should be sufficient shouldn't it? If the browser cannot be finger printed and the IP is not yours, it shouldn't be possible to identify you.

ArnoVW5• 5 years ago

You're making it too complicated. Find an open wifi somewhere.

eternalban2• 5 years ago

CCTV Cameras are everywhere. To get to point B, you will leave a nice trail. It should not be that difficult to assemble the necessary identifying data. And when the biosecurity state comes online in its robust form, your movements will be fully traced.

nicolas_t• 5 years ago

I think a distinction must be made between a service that will protect your privacy historically and a service that will continuously protect your privacy.

If I sign up with protonmail today using a vpn like mullwad, since I'm probably not currently be targeted, I can reasonably be sure that it will be difficult to track things back to me.

However, once I'm targeted and there's a warrant against me, any activity I have on such services is going to be logged going forward.

So, using the service once to receive some data or do something anonymously is reasonably secure... This is very different from services like gmail which will have kept any logs in the past about me and that will always be able to track me without any further logging.

It's imperfect but I think that given the current environment and the current laws, this might be the best we can have.

m-p-3• 5 years ago

Seems like another good reason to not trust anyone's words and protect yourself using good OPSEC.

CalChris2• 5 years ago

Wasn't this a form of fraud? I don't know what the Swiss law is but in the United States, fraud is both a civil tort and criminal wrong. The elements of a fraud are:

  1) the making of a statement
  2) the falsity of the statement
  3) an intent to deceive
  4) reasonable reliance on the statement by the injured party
  5) injury sustained as the result of the reliance

ProtonMail knowingly told this activist 'we don't log your IP' in order to attract their business. ProtonMail did log the IP address. The activist believed this and got arrested.

yaris7• 5 years ago

2. was missing when the activist started using PM. 3. also missing (unless there is strong evidence of presence). So no, no fraud. PM has to follow Swiss law and they have stated this long before the incident pretty clearly.

CalChris2• 5 years ago

They've been saying this since at least 2015.

https://web.archive.org/web/20151117172602/https://ProtonMai...

When did the activist start using ProtoMail? Also, if they say roughly, we will not follow Swiss law for you and they follow Swiss law, that is still lying.

SV_BubbleTime2• 5 years ago

“We don’t log your ip by default”

This is all very silly. They said right up front they can. Their TOS said they can.

It’s also very silly to assume PM would disobey EU requests. They were created with EU funding.

istingray16• 5 years ago

Maybe for you that's clear. But I use Protonmail to advocate for journalists, whistleblowers, and teachers, many of which are not security experts and not familiar with the twisted language used by Protonmail's marketing team.

If their marketing team can't come up with something better, just take text from the privacy policy verbatim.

tzs• 5 years ago

Reasonable people are assumed to know that the obligation of a service provider to obey the law of its jurisdiction has a higher legal priority than their obligation to oby contract terms with customers.

#2 likely fails because the statement was at worst ambiguous or incomplete, not false. The statement that they do not keep logs by default combined with what reasonable people are expected to know as mentioned above should have led a reasonable person to see through the ambiguousness.

And if not PM went in to more detail in the TOS. Yes, it is well known that most people don't read the TOS. Heck, I often do not read the TOS.

But when you are using a service as part of some criminal endeavor or for something for which there is a reasonable chance will be mistaken for a criminal endeavor you really do need to read the TOS. To not do so is unreasonable.

#3 probably fails because there is likely no way to prove intent to deceive.

#4 likely runs into problems similar to those of #2. A reasonable person using a service for furthering some illegal activity would be expected to put some care into checking out the service to see if it is safe for such activity, and in doing so should have discovered that PM is not safe against Swiss law enforcement obtaining some meta data.

jeffbee• 5 years ago

Privacy weenies are the most easily defrauded people I've ever come across.

lanevorockz• 5 years ago

So they lied ... not surprising companies promise things just to betray their customers in a second. I still remember when Facebook won the social media war by promising to never allow advertisement.

bawana• 5 years ago

How do you say 'honeytrap' in Swiss?

dathinab3• 5 years ago

stated: "No personal information is required to create your secure email account. By default, we do not keep any IP logs which can be linked to your anonymous email account. Your privacy comes first."

And it still holds!!

What it didn't stat is that while _by default_ no such information is logged, but if they are legally compelled to they will log such the neseccary information for the email (account?) they are required to log them for.

Its honestly surprising for me that anyone though that a fully legally (in Swiss)operating service would protect their privacy beyond the point they are allowed to by Swiss law. But luckily for us Swiss law is pretty neat wrt. privacy, at least currently.

istingray16• 5 years ago

ProtonMail requires a phone number for account creation through Tor.

"no personal information"...does it still say that? Let me know where, will email them.

yaris7• 5 years ago

In Sweden you can get a prepaid phone number completely for free: Comviq literally gives away SIMs and to pre-pay you can still use cash. So from this point of view PM is not lying, not one bit.

janmo2• 5 years ago

I am no lawyer, but there are over 180 countries in the world, and there is not one that will let you open a company that don't have to log user IP addresses? I call this complete BS. Protonmail has just become one of those providers that is only about making money and is probably getting money kickbacks from law enforcement under the form of legal processing fees or even something else, who knows..., really sad...

1cvmask• 5 years ago

For those who love Swiss "privacy" and security they should read about the CIA front-company from Switzerland for secure encrypted communications:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG

And remember Mark Twain: “History Doesn't Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes”

qwerty4561272• 5 years ago

ProtonMail has an official TOR page, there hardly is a reason for those performing activities illegal under relevant jurisdictions (I support the notion of illegal non necessarily being evil - in many countries many good things like fighting corruption, loving a same-sex partner or responsibly using psychoactive substances for genuine medical reasons can be illegal) to use it the way exposing their actual IP address.

I also don't understand why does ProtonMail record the device type - I doubt there is a law requiring this.

NotEvil3• 5 years ago

Can be telemetry

qwerty4561272• 5 years ago

Telemetry is evil. No company respecting their users should use telemetry.

istingray16• 5 years ago

Agreed, that's why I've asked Protonmail to promote their Tor page. Before yesterday the only mention was in their footer under "Onion site" and in a single blog post from 2017. They need to do better at promoting and supporting users through Tor. Heck, add it to their transparency report "40% of users connected through Tor, our goal is 90%"

rarba786• 5 years ago

I don't see why it's AS big a scandal given what CEO stated and reading accounts from reputable news sources.

My quick take: France tells Switzerland who then compels PM to START tracking account holder(s) and prevented PM (by law from what I've read) from telling account holder. Per PM CEO this type of Swiss order could not be disputed with the way PM has disputed other claims.

To me, it's not logging of the IP; it's when did it start and from my reading they started after being compelled to do so over a period of time between compelled to and this coming to light.

To me, strong pushback (for those who feel passionate about it) should be directed to Switzerland for complying with France for what many think is not a high enough bar to compel all this tracking. Maybe they did scrutinize it and maybe they didn't.

Any meta-data saving isn't secure but sharing that after being compelled to track account holders isn't surprising.

There's a line in their agreement that says " If a request is made for encrypted message content that we do not possess the ability to decrypt, the fully encrypted message content may be turned over.".

Maybe I'm missing something in my logic.

a3n• 5 years ago

Oh, boy.

mark_l_watson2• 5 years ago

ProtonMail is my main e-mail, so I am positively biased in their favor.

I think their advertising copy about not logging IP addresses was poorly done, but their service is private enough for me. It probably doesn’t much matter or make much difference, but I feel OK with using their service, and tweaking my account settings for Google and Apple to the minimum amount of data retention.

I feel that people who let corporations easily have all of their data put themselves at a disadvantage when it comes to any interaction between yourself and any large company (insurance, retail, etc.). Governments will always have our private information so the real purpose of privacy is economic value.

Imagine playing poker with your friends and you had to have your cards face up on the table and they could keep their cards hidden from you. In this example, your friends are corporations.

EDIT: Carissa Véliz, author of Privacy is Power, was interviewed recently on the ProtonMail blog, and I think the interview does a good job of summarizing her excellent book: https://protonmail.com/blog/carissa-veliz-data-privacy/

istingray16• 5 years ago

What's important for you about using Protonmail? Would any non-Google non-Apple email account suffice?

mark_l_watson2• 5 years ago

Nothing special about ProtonMail, except it seemed like an "easy choice" after reading the Surviving Surveillance Capitalism book a couple of years ago.

Everyone just needs to make their own decisions on privacy. I feel fairly comfortable with my practices. For me, it is the economic motivation of wanting to reduce the advantage companies I deal with have over me that convinced me to take extra precautions.

dang• 5 years ago

Recent and related:

Clarifications regarding arrest of climate activist - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28433601 - Sept 2021 (273 comments)

ProtonMail logged IP address of French activist after order by Swiss authorities - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28433131 - Sept 2021 (155 comments)

Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28427259 - Sept 2021 (565 comments)

jd3• 5 years ago

it seems like ProtonMail should collaborate with Lavabit to see if it's feasible to implement darkmail (DMTP/DMAP protocols) in production

http://darkmail.info/

https://protonmail.com/blog/protonmail-beta-v1-13-release-no...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWzvXaxR6us

atok12• 5 years ago

I'm glad that they are at least removing that fallacy and people can't quote it any longer.

traspler• 5 years ago

It‘s really tiresome how it‘s become the normal to market all kind of fantasy interpretations of your value proposition and banish all nuance to legalese documents. ProtonMail has enough to justify itself, it doesn‘t need all the over the top claims of Swissness or blunt statements about privacy that are only half truths. They could also do without their spintastic, content marketing blog.

FirstLvR• 5 years ago

i know there are some Protonmail guys reading this thread... people choose your service exactly for this very same reason, good luck trying to regain people trust

istingray16• 5 years ago

Similar to Apple, Protonmail seems poised to redefine privacy as "privacy from advertisers" rather than "privacy from us too".

I for one am now only using Protonmail through Tor. Recommend Brave users enable "Automatically redirect .onion sites". If a site has an onion service, it will automatically redirect in case you forget.

eth0up• 5 years ago

Anyone have feedback on this https://ctemplar.com/ ?

I get a sense to move along, but it still seems interesting. It is, or was, based in Iceland.

Grimm665• 5 years ago

Maybe I missed it in all the kerfuffle, but what was the crime that was allegedly committed by the French climate activist that required ProtonVPN to comply with this request for IP information?

Ikatza• 5 years ago

Thanks for clarifying, Proton Mail. And also, good bye. I'll be canceling my accounts today.

throwawayswede• 5 years ago

What a douchebag company honestly. Their marketing is absolutely evil. Changing the headline does not cut it, they need to fire people responsible for that outright lie.

After a dude gets arrested, they’re like: oh, we were talking about advertisers! Who did you think?

What a trash team.

Proton mail ==

nrvn• 5 years ago

It is not the first time this company finds itself in the center of an international scandal.

It has proven multiple times that privacy and security are not something they really care about.

I wonder what else should happen for everyone to completely lose trust in this scam.

neycoda• 5 years ago

Listen, don't do crime through email.

Ginden• 5 years ago

Use TOR and onion services.

ProtonMail deletes 'we don't log your IP' from website after activist arrested

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