Proton Mail discloses user data leading to arrest in Spain

https://restoreprivacy.com/protonmail-discloses-user-data-leading-to-arrest-in-spain/

by gulced • 2 years ago

416 262 2 years ago

restoreprivacy.com

lolmao• 2 years ago

Switzerland has laws? Did Proton lie to us?

Havoc• 2 years ago

Lawless wasteland!

pas• 2 years ago

Switzerland famously known for anarchism, utter chaos, irresponsible tinkering with time, space (disregarding mountains, tunnels everywhere) and spacetime (at CERN)!

RachelF2• 2 years ago

Swiss laws protect Swiss banks and their clients. No big money, no privacy laws.

BobFromEnzyte2• 2 years ago

This is something that I never understood with their "oh you are safe in Switzerland" bs. If the court presents them w/ a warrant they have to comply. There is no magically safe data haven and it isn't honest to pretend that they are one.

WhyNotHugo• 2 years ago

Switzerland does have strict laws on the topic. Data requests are only honoured for cases which are a crime both under the foreign country's law and under Swiss law.

If you live in a country where homosexuality is illegal, and your local government is chasing you because of this, a Swiss company won't comply with data requests, and a Swiss judge has no reason to honour any data request.

If your local government is chasing you because of something that is recognised as a crime in Switzerland, then they will disclose data to foreign authorities.

barbariangrunge• 2 years ago

Never thought of a recovery email as a risk before in this way

kylebenzle• 2 years ago

Why not, seems pretty obvious. If you need an email address and phone number not associated with your real identity it's pretty important the two are totally separate.

RedComet• 2 years ago

Protonmail gave up the recovery address. Apple gave up the name, physical address, and phone number associated with it.

politelemon• 2 years ago

Yes it's a strangely skewed article focusing on proton, when:

Once he got it, he asked Apple for information about this second email address, and got its name, home address, and phone number. Afterwards, the Civil Guard also asked the telephone company responsible for the telephone number who was the owner of the line, which matches the name provided by Apple. Also, they say they have found that this person is registered at the same address provided by Apple.

denton-scratch4• 2 years ago

It focuses on Proton because Proton is the link that purports to be secure. Nobody expects Apple or telcos to guard your identity.

gertop• 2 years ago

Proton provided us with an explanation that inbox contents remain secure.

Yup, until they receive a court order asking them to mitm an inbox, if they haven't already...

This entire system of "receive email in clear text but store it encrypted at rest" is smokes and shadows, really.

upofadown• 2 years ago

It depends on the local laws. Not all places can demand that a service provider do an active attack on a user. Of course many countries have passed such laws and others are planning to

It wouldn't technically be a MITM attack, they would just capture the incoming email. Tuta was famously forced to do that once by the German authorities.

makeitdouble2• 2 years ago

I think this is the same distinction as a phone operator providing the metadata (when, between who, for how long did phone calls happen) but not wiretapping the call itself.

The former has distinctly less legal requirements than the latter, and authorities might be OK with keeping it that way, as metadata is already good enough in most cases.

amatecha• 2 years ago

Yeah, they can just deliver an alternate version of the web client (assuming the target user uses the web interface) -- probably the easiest (or least-detectable) way for ProtonMail to read a user's encrypted email contents.

binary1324• 2 years ago

This is where the security stuff starts going down the rabbit-hole into Wonderland. I’m still trying to figure out how to write a compiler that won’t be subject to the “what if my ur-compiler was infected with a virus that only infects compilers” problem....

mynameisnoone• 2 years ago

Better security theater through marketing.

hwbunny2• 2 years ago

You can use pgp to send mail to your protonmail acc :D.

protonmail6• 2 years ago

This is actually not permitted by the Swiss law, so it's not going to happen.

lordofgibbons2• 2 years ago

The heart of the issue is this:

Under Swiss law, Proton Mail was compelled to collect and provide information on the individual’s IP address to Swiss authorities, who then shared it with French police.

They can claim all the privacy guarantees they want, but unless the privacy is guaranteed by cryptography, it's an empty gesture. Nobody is willing to do prison time to protect your privacy.

fbdab1033• 2 years ago

I think they should do like Mullvad claims and keep zero logs. You cannot share what you do not have.

srockets3• 2 years ago

This does not stop the host from being compelled to wiretap future communications.

Just don't try to make encrypted email happen. It can't, and we don't need it to be. We have better solutions for encrypted communications, for those that need it.

GGO• 2 years ago

you can be required to keep logs - they need to design a system that cannot collect logs - You cannot share what you cannot have.

kaliqt• 2 years ago

I mean it's clear, the governments of the world are colluding to ensure that all companies and users must incriminate themselves by collecting logs. They're trying to do the same with cryptography.

yieldcrv• 2 years ago

gullible vpn fans believe anything

or at least their favorite youtuber with the paid ads and zero domain knowledge of network topology

serious question I have is whether “internet reseller” is a compelling service. because that's all that VPNs are, and I dont mind paying to use them for that purpose.

TheCoelacanth2• 2 years ago

How would a recovery email feature be possible without them knowing what your recovery email is?

weikju• 2 years ago

The heart of the issue is this:

No, that was last year's issue.

This time it's:

The core of the controversy stems from Proton Mail providing the Spanish police with the recovery email address associated with the Proton Mail account of an individual using the pseudonym ‘Xuxo Rondinaire.’ This individual is suspected of being a member of the Mossos d’Esquadra (Catalonia’s police force) and of using their internal knowledge to assist the Democratic Tsunami movement.

and

Upon receiving the recovery email from Proton Mail, Spanish authorities further requested Apple to provide additional details linked to that email, leading to the identification of the individual.

kube-system5• 2 years ago

You could encrypt the source IP on all your outbound TCP packets, but it might not work very well.

mmcallister• 2 years ago

a minor point but you can't _encrypt_ source IPs, you can only obfuscate or more accurately, proxy.

blackeyeblitzar• 2 years ago

Is the implication that you should use a VPN from a different provider? Like so you’re not getting email and VPN and whatever from the same place?

tsimionescu• 2 years ago

Expeacting a lawful corporation to shield you from the law is absurd. The state has the right to obtain this information - so, if you want it hidden, you need to find a provider that doesn't operate under the bounds of the law. You'll soon find out that A LOT of niceties go away once you're not dealing with legal matters: you can't guarantee that you'll get the service you payed for, you can't re-gain access if you lost your main security, etc.

nabla92• 2 years ago

Proton Mail can't give email content, only things like email address, ip adressese etc.

Email content is encrypted and Proton Mail has no access

lolinder2• 2 years ago

Use a good VPN service to hide your IP address whenever possible. (Failure to do this is what compromised a Proton Mail user in France who was arrested after after police obtained IP logs.)

If your VPN is tied to a payment method then all you've done is give police one extra hop to follow to get at you, which wouldn't have saved this activist. Their list of VPNs only includes Mullvad in position 9 of 10, but as far as I'm aware it's the only one that offers payment methods that preserve your anonymity.

Dylan16807• 2 years ago

Let's say I buy Mullvad access with a credit card, then access my otherwise-unrelated Proton Mail account via Mullvad.

How are police going to find me behind that hop?

2OEH8eoCRo0• 2 years ago

I assume they won't bother unless you're a pedo or terrorist. In that case, what you are you using the email address for? Request your info from all of those sites. Wait for you to get sloppy once.

lolinder2• 2 years ago

I don't know one way or the other how easy it is, but if I were an activist in an oppressive regime I wouldn't want to use a VPN that is connected to my identity in any way. I wouldn't trust zero-log policies to keep me safe, there are too many unknowns about the way they run these services and what metadata they have to turn over.

timeon• 2 years ago

They can find you if they are lucky with choosing your ISP, and there are not many people connecting to VPN you have used at specific time.

detlef64• 2 years ago

You are totally wrong. You are assuming that every single VPN is logging everything you do online, every IP address, and every website, and then saving this information for every user. Completely false. Show me a single reputable VPN that does. Show me the real life cases where this has happened. Any good VPN, including Mullvad, is a no-logs VPN, which means activity through the VPN is not recorded and cannot be connected with users. There have been numerous VPNs that have not only been audited to verify this, they have been proven correct in court or real-life tests. Mullvad is a perfect example of this:

https://restoreprivacy.com/mullvad-vpn-says-customer-data-is...

Paying for a VPN account does not mean the VPN is going to start logging user activity. Keeping payment records does not equal logging user activity through VPN servers. And most of the big name VPNs allow for crypto payments.

ApolloFortyNine• 2 years ago

Only if the vpn provider had logs.

Most claim they don't, PIA even was subpoenad at least once and responded they don't have logs.

ThrowawayTestr• 2 years ago

Keep in mind that was years and at least one owner ago.

red_admiral• 2 years ago

If you're doing low-bandwidth stuff like sending e-mails, TOR (which is of course free) should be your first choice.

But you have to absolutely "air-gap" that from the rest of your identity, such as not making a proton e-mail address over TOR and then using your usual email address as the recovery one.

SomeoneFromCA• 2 years ago

nah tor is not trustworthy, as it also exposes you as a tor user; in a less developed countries, where not many people know how to use Tor, you'll stick out real bad. It is much better to use shady random proxy servers you'll find online, before connecting to Tor; it is extremely slow, but much safer, as the authoritarian state monitors won't be able to see that subpoenaed ip adresses come from tor exit nodes, conveniently at the same time period you (and basically no one else) were using Tor.

makeitdouble2• 2 years ago

Proton Mail is in the title because it's where they went first, but the actual identification (real name, phone number etc.) seems to come from Apple on request for info related to the address.

In this case the email address was the lead, but I wonder what other info would be enough to get the phone provider to spill the beans. For instance would an IP address used at a specific time be uniquely identifying if it was VPNed by Apple at that moment ?

Or a Google Ad cookie that could get correlated to other devices showing similar behavior (the same way Google tracks households or related accounts) ?

fbdab1033• 2 years ago

While an IP address is not an identity, it can still zero in on a location. I suspect governments and ISPs all keep historical logs of who was assigned what address.

srockets3• 2 years ago

An IP address in itself is not an identity, but it can be easily resolved to one. This is why IP address are considered PII, and are handled like such by any competent security organization.

matheusmoreira12• 2 years ago

I suspect governments and ISPs all keep historical logs of who was assigned what address.

They do. It's often required by law.

refurb• 2 years ago

It can be used to identify a location, but not an individual.

I assume it could be easily challenged in court (network was compromised, “i give out my WiFi to anyone who visits my home”) without other supporting evidence.

RachelF2• 2 years ago

Why are ProtonMail keeping this IP and email information in their logs?

samjmck• 2 years ago

The identification came from the recovery email.

datadeft• 2 years ago

Because of legal requirements?

tephra• 2 years ago

They say quite clearly why in their privacy policy: https://proton.me/legal/privacy (section 2.5: IP Logging).

2.5 IP logging: By default, we do not keep permanent IP logs in relation with your Account. However, IP logs may be kept temporarily to combat abuse and fraud, and your IP address may be retained permanently if you are engaged in activities that breach our terms and conditions (e.g. spamming, DDoS attacks against our infrastructure, brute force attacks). The legal basis of this processing is our legitimate interest to protect our service against nefarious activities. If you enable authentication logging for your Account or voluntarily participate in Proton's advanced security program, the record of your login IP addresses is kept for as long as the feature is enabled. This feature is off by default, and all the records are deleted upon deactivation of the feature. The legal basis of this processing is consent, and you are free to opt in or opt out of that processing at any time in the security panel of your Account. The authentication logs feature records login attempts to your Account and does not track product-specific activity, such as VPN activity.

lkdfjlkdfjlg2• 2 years ago

Proton Mail is in the title because it's where they went first, but the actual identification (real name, phone number etc.) seems to come from Apple on request for info related to the address.

Irrelevant to the point. Proton Mail provided authorities with user data.

pc862• 2 years ago

Please quote from the linked article where it says that (it doesn't).

IAmGraydon• 2 years ago

Go try to create a ProtonMail account with Tor. It will ask you to confirm your account with a phone number. It skips this if you’re using a non-proxy IP. They want to know who you are, and it’s been this way for years. I think they’ve long been a honeypot.

immibis4• 2 years ago

This is different each time you try it. They may use the exit node's country (I doubt they'd be so naive), some other fingerprinting, or just have a limited number of anonymous accounts to give out each day, which is what cockli does. Sometimes you need a phone number, other times an email address, other times just a CAPTCHA.

crtasm• 2 years ago

Yes, I just tested it and was able to register by giving a (disposable) email.

It did then prompt me to add an email and/or phone number as recovery methods, but that step was skippable.

dheera5• 2 years ago

It skips this if you’re using a non-proxy IP

Get one from your neighborhood coffee shop Wi-Fi, and pay cash for your coffee.

netsharc• 2 years ago

Terrible advice, being that "neighborhood" means you live close by. Go to a coffee shop in another city, state or country and do so! (Although flights leave paper trails too)

Also make sure to avoid CCTV...

tremarley• 2 years ago

They are a huge target for spam. The reason why they do this is to prevent spam.

Unfortunately, it can and has been abused.

arp242• 2 years ago

Try setting up an email service without these protections and report back to me how well that went. Oh no you can't, as you won't be able to email anyone as everyone will mark your emails as spam as you'll be a humongous source of it. Running an email service is like being flypaper for dickheads. Evidence-free accusations of being a "honeypot" is ridiculous.

BobFromEnzyte2• 2 years ago

You can create anonymous accounts with Tuta through Tor and they don't ask for a phone number or contact email address. They even made a tutorial video on YouTube a few weeks ago for how to do it: https://youtu.be/oXv3llPIfvo

If you continued using the account only through Tor, there wouldn't be any traceable info.

sintax• 2 years ago

I'm not a lawyer, but doesn't GDPR and No-Log contradict each other.

VelesDude3• 2 years ago

Not surprised at all. Even if it did not start with this intention, one has to suspect that with enough time it will become compromised.

About the only way to even vaguely keep your email private is to use a self hosted server with GPG keys. And any lapse on security updates for that thing and you could be compromised almost immediately.

Beyond that I cannot think of anything more one could do.

I have always treated email as something to travels in the clear. My current provider (Fastmail) is compromised by authority. The Australian Privacy Act 1988 by being based in Australia and it gets caught up by PRISM as the servers are run out of New York.

protonmail6• 2 years ago

This is not true - most of the time all you need to do is fill out the captcha. In some cases (when our systems detect something suspicious about your network), we would request an additional email address. Even in those cases, the email addresses are not tied to your account - we only save a cryptographic hash of your email. Due to the hash functions being one-way, we cannot derive your data back from the hash: https://proton.me/support/human-verification

While we did use phone verification in the past, this is not the case any longer. Phone numbers were stored in the same way as the email addresses, so, again, we have no way to derive them back from the hash.

Retr0id• 2 years ago

Due to the hash functions being one-way, we cannot derive your data back from the hash

This isn't true in practice. It's not hard to build a big list of ~every email address (give or take), and have a GPU churn through them all until you get a match.

If you've ever received a spam email, your email address is on such a list.

happypumpkin• 2 years ago

While we did use phone verification in the past, this is not the case any longer. Phone numbers were stored in the same way as the email addresses, so, again, we have no way to derive them back from the hash.

I've no reason to doubt this but brute-force cracking a hash known to be from a phone number would likely be pretty trivial.

Fwiw, I use protonmail and trust it more than most other services. But my threat model doesn't involve technically capable adversaries directly targeting me, certainly not ones that could compel protonmail to divulge phone number hashes.

moosemess2• 2 years ago

No shit. People actually do not apprend intelligence agencies have the capability, desire and resources to operate legitimate "privacy" services. Why not just roll out the red carpet and let all the sus people walk in?

oooyay2• 2 years ago

I dislike that a website with privacy in the name collides privacy and anonymity. Privacy does not protect you from the state. Privacy is good enough to protect you from the public.

If you are doing battle with or an enemy of the state, much less an agent of the state acting in bad faith simple privacy will do nothing for you. Worse your misunderstanding of it is actually a vector, like in this case. The measures for anonymity you require will not incorporate fancy UIs, nice features, or even reasonable reliability at times because they will be sacrificed in the name of leaving no trace.

betaby• 2 years ago

Privacy does not protect you from the state. Privacy is good enough to protect you from the public.

Public doesn't care mostly. Governments on the other hand...

dheera5• 2 years ago

The public might care if you are rich, influential, or conventionally highly attractive, in which case privacy is a good thing to have.

littlestymaar• 2 years ago

The “public” also means the private industrial sector, and nowadays they are by far the biggest threat for people living in the Western world.

habitue• 2 years ago

The public includes online mobs who send you death threats. It definitely matters to protect your identity from the public

dathinab2• 2 years ago

Privacy is also meant to protect you from the state, or more specifically state abuse. It's an essential aspect of privacy.

Like privacy is also meant to e.g. not disclose topics you have communicated about so that it can't be abused against you. For example there is a long history of states persecuting people for idk. being gay, believing in a certain religion or being a journalist which was involved in a unpleasant disclosure.

Still privacy and anonymity are two tightly related but different things. Mainly privacy of communication doesn't always imply anonymity, through sometimes does (and has too!).

Anyway it is foolish and somewhat strange to believe that a legally operating email service will protect you against judge backed lawful orders (no matter if it should be lawful or not).

Handing out metadata isn't even the worst which can happen, e.g. a judge might order them to make copies of unencrypted mails you receive or make copies of unencrypted mails you write or even undermine your encryption the next time you login.

They can try to dispute it and that alone does reduce abuse potential (if they operate in a place which still can be called a state of law) in the end especially for mail there is just no true privacy and even less anonymity.

Which doesn't mean their service is useless.

Just if you worry about political prosecution by EU countries, or do crime it's not protecting you.

matheusmoreira12• 2 years ago

Some interesting facts about Proton Mail. It generates OpenPGP keys on their own servers, and if you want to use your own keys their instructions show users how to upload upload their entire OpenPGP secret keychain to Proton Mail. Not just encryption/signing subkeys, the master key also needs to be included.

I've emailed them to ask that they fix this. I also created a post on their user voice thing about it.

https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/284483-proton-mail/s...

TLDR; Proton Mail tells users to do this:

  gpg --armor --export-secret-keys "${USER_ID}" | import-into-proton-mail

They should support this instead:

  gpg --armor --export-secret-subkeys "${PROTON_ENCR_SUBKEY_ID}!" | import-into-proton-mail
  gpg --armor --export-secret-subkeys "${PROTON_SIGN_SUBKEY_ID}!" | import-into-proton-mail

First one leaks the user's master key to them.

happymellon2• 2 years ago

Mainly privacy of communication doesn't always imply anonymity, through sometimes does (and has too!).

Anonymity is simply people not knowing who you are, not necessarily what you say. It's not privacy of communication, but privacy of identity.

I can post on the internet as Anonymous Coward, and those posts are public even though my identity is private.

I can encrypt an email and send it, and it will be picked up by all the relays. They can look up the source and identify me, but hopefully not read the email contents.

kube-system5• 2 years ago

Privacy protects some things from the state, which is why the western world has the concepts of warrants and such.

But the concept certainly doesn't mean that a business is going to help you cover your tracks in regards to data you've already shared. (in this case, the recovery email address)

If you give out your personal information, commit a crime, and ask that person to help you hide, you're not asking for anonymity, you're asking for an accomplice.

_heimdall2• 2 years ago

I think that is the GP's point. Privacy means the data is reasonably hidden, though it still exists somewhere in a readable state. Anonymity means the information of who did what really doesn't exist anywhere.

In the case of governments, private data is only hidden until the government decides that it needs to look for it (or ask for it). Anonymity means the data isn't there, regardless of whether the government decides it needs to, and has legal justification to, demand access to the data.

Anyone providing anonymity is only an accomplice if they know your intent. Simply not collecting data doesn't make you an accomplice, not collecting data with the intent of hiding someone else's illegal behavior does.

newscracker2• 2 years ago

You seem to be confusing privacy with practicality. In practice, nothing is ever secure, nothing is ever private and nothing is ever safe.

What matters here is what Proton promises and advertises to users/potential users vs. what it can actually deliver. I don’t know if Proton is more open about this, but hopefully this isn’t just buried in some long Terms of Service that almost nobody reads.

behringer• 2 years ago

Proton is incorporated and headquartered in Switzerland, meaning your data is protected by some of the world's strictest privacy laws.

This is the main statement from Proton about their privacy protection. They say they obey Swiss privacy laws. So if one has a problem with Protonmail complying with Swiss law, maybe one should complain to Switzerland.

DEADMINCE3• 2 years ago

In practice, nothing is ever secure,

Well that's clearly not true.

VelesDude3• 2 years ago

Privacy does not protect you from the state. Privacy is good enough to protect you from the public.

While I get what you are saying, that is a little too black and white for the entire field. Privacy can be used to shield whistle blowers from the state.

lancebeet• 2 years ago

You state this distinction as if it's established, but it's not a definition I've personally heard explicitly stated before. If I read the introduction of the Wikipedia article on "privacy", I find the following:

The right not to be subjected to unsanctioned invasions of privacy by the government, corporations, or individuals is part of many countries' privacy laws, and in some cases, constitutions.

So according to Wikipedia, at least in some cases, privacy is protection against the state. Where does your definition come from?

Kbelicius• 2 years ago

unsanctioned invasions of privacy

GPs definition might as well come from wikipedia.

Klonoar• 2 years ago

Their breakdown is what’s parroted up and down comment chains on this site when it comes to privacy/anonymity, so I’m frankly not sure how you’ve missed it over the years.

rmbyrro2• 2 years ago

If there's a court order from due judicial process, isnt't it sanctioned invasion of privacy?

baby• 2 years ago

Thank you for making up a definition

carlosjobim• 2 years ago

Your take is just about the opposite of what anybody I know would mean by privacy, which is to protect your information from government actors primarily, for obvious reasons since the government is an actor that seeks out to harm the public.

deadbabe• 2 years ago

If you are a true enemy of the state, why communicate by digital means at all? You could pass written notes or swap USB sticks around.

mogiddy55• 2 years ago

Buying used phones and laptops with cash at a bazaar whilst wearing a wig, one at a time.

You got a few days of Tor on each device; then they need to burn.

I really don't know what more you can do beyond making your own chat client. Internet is not a place for revolution.

blacklion• 2 years ago

With all "security" cameras and face recognition software and big data mining, which links many sources together, real world in developed world is not a place for revolution too.

Welcome do dystopia and hope that governments in developed world will not become too nasty (CCP-level nasty) too soon due to inertia.

hwbunny2• 2 years ago

https://proton.me/blog/protonmail-threat-model

newscracker2• 2 years ago

That blog post was last updated in November 2022, and does not mention recovery email address as something Proton would disclose.

protonmail6• 2 years ago

The treatment of recovery address has been explained in our Privacy Policy: https://proton.me/legal/privacy. From a technical perspective, one can't end-to-end encrypt a recovery email as it needs to be accessible to send the recovery email, which is typically initiated by an unauthenticated user who has lost their password.

snvzz• 2 years ago

Still waiting for DIME[0].

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Mail_Alliance#DIME

mrmetanoia2• 2 years ago

I hope Princess has some mad computer skills.

0xmohit• 2 years ago

    This case is particularly noteworthy because it involves a series of
    requests across different jurisdictions and companies, highlighting the
    complex interplay between technology firms, user privacy, and law
    enforcement.  The requests were made under the guise of anti-terrorism
    laws, despite the primary activities of the Democratic Tsunami involving
    protests and roadblocks, which raises questions about the proportionality
    and justification of such measures.

mrmetanoia2• 2 years ago

Proton Mail is pretty good email. I use it since I decided to de-google as much as possible. That said, I don't consider it truly 'private.' Weird key handling in order to make pgp 'easy,' just email being what it is, and courts and governments being what they are.

I'll continue to use it despite some hyperbole on the site, but as long as my mail isn't being fed to an advertising engine it's a step up.

ementally• 2 years ago

This is not the first time they have provided recovery emails to the feds.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2023/08/08/proto...

Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20230814144638/https://www.forbe...

submeta• 2 years ago

Is there any real private email service? Honest question.

denton-scratch4• 2 years ago

Email is not private, and can't be made so. Email is my preferred communications channel, but I treat it as I would a mailing list or comment forum; it's almost completely unlike whispering to someone in the middle of an empty field.

contextnavidad• 2 years ago

Take a look at Posteo. Seem to have a similar philosophy as Mullvad.

onhacker2• 2 years ago

I hate when companies mislead, they claim email encryption. but the question is how they know the email is suspicious. it means they monitor emails and obviously, Proton Mail is (not) the trusted choice for secure and private communication.

NicuCalcea• 2 years ago

What email was suspicious? From what I can read. Proton provided the Spanish authorities with a recovery email address, which the latter then used to find an associated Apple account.

While I agree this makes Proton unreliable for many things, there's no indication they were reading any emails.

onhacker2• 2 years ago

No service can read all emails of a platform, but spying is still not good anyway, if someone is misleading it's a government problem to find and punish them, communication should be safe anyway, old face-to-face communication is good then internet.

jamesholden• 2 years ago

This situation is interesting, but the article mentions using a VPN for example, and also the recovery email.

What if my recovery email is to another proton mail account? What if my VPN used is Proton VPN?

obelus5• 2 years ago

A recovery email is optional, and Proton VPN is no logs.

XXxXr• 2 years ago

Qweu

felsokning• 2 years ago

This individual is suspected of being a member of the Mossos d’Esquadra (Catalonia’s police force) and of using their internal knowledge to assist the Democratic Tsunami movement.

...and...

The requests were made under the guise of anti-terrorism laws, despite the primary activities of the Democratic Tsunami involving protests and roadblocks, which raises questions about the proportionality and justification of such measures.

As I understand it, Catalonia has long desired for independence[1]. Is the Democratic Tsunami movement something different, entirely? If not, can someone fill-in the blanks of how vying for independence (in this case) gets umbrella'ed under terrorism?

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

Edit: Accidental caps-lock on a word. My bad.

yorwba• 2 years ago

Independence is a political goal. Terrorism is a means to achieve political goals. (Though I don't think it has a good track record of being successful at that.) It's not that unusual for people to combine the two and plan terrorist attacks against the state they want to be independent from. (In this case it appears the investigation concerns a suspected attack plot targeting the Spanish king.)

GardenLetter27• 2 years ago

They did extreme protests like road blockages, and some other stuff which the government considered sabotage and so pursued them with anti-terrorist legislation.

Also some members were arrested apparently planning even more extreme things.

The IRA and ETA were vying for independence too...

That said, I think it's crazy how much time the government wastes on this when the cities are full of petty criminals acting with impunity. Someone was stabbed to death outside my apartment just in a robbery and yet nothing changes.

wolfhumble• 2 years ago

The Democratic Tsunami was/is(?) more of a pure action based protest group lead by an anonymous leader structure. The leaders were/are probably certain leader figures within the independence seeking community; but that is just a speculation on my part.

Its biggest action was probably at the Barcelona Airport in October 2019, a protest a couple of years after the Catalan independence election in October 2017. The election itself was deemed unconstitutional by the Spanish government. The registered voters/turnout of this election was 43.03%; where 92.01% voted for separation from Spain and 7.99% voted to stay within Spain –– see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Catalan_independence_refe... –– but this was not a normal election by any means (read the link for more).

Typically the ANC –– see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assemblea_Nacional_Catalana –– has been the leading organization in the independence movement. They have been organizing big independence rallies etc. and the actions has been peaceful (from what I've read and seen). The Democratic Tsunami based protests were different in this regard, where more direct confrontation was more the norm. From what I have read Democratic Tsunami is not particularly active at the moment, but of course this might change.

BSDobelix4• 2 years ago

Just to make it clear. Proton is a Swiss Company and is not answering to any request from Spain, directly. Spanish authority's ask Swiss authority's and if everything is in order Proton HAS to give the data out (or contest it).

nabla92• 2 years ago

Proton Mail gives info only when the Swiss law mandates it and Swiss law enforcement requires it. Swiss privacy laws are quite good.

That's the strictest privacy policy any company can hope.

Proton Mail can't give email content, only things like email address, ip adressese etc.

blitzar• 2 years ago

Proton Mail can give email content, however, it is encrypted and they do not have the encryption keys.

Anything that is stored by anyone can be handed over. That information may be useful, may be useless or may be useless now and useful tomorrow when they have the key.

wepple6• 2 years ago

they do not have the encryption keys.

True, but they can trivially obtain them given they control everything in the browser.

The question then becomes, does the law allow compelling to that degree? Apple fought back in the San Bruno case, but they’re very well lawyered up

Shacklz2• 2 years ago

There are some serious anti-proton-vibes in this thread, so just my 2 cents as a paying customer: I'm rather happy with their service. I pay them money, they make sure that Joe in Marketing won't be able to harvest data from my emails. I'm also fairly optimistic that they take security serious enough that the blast radius of some dataleak is hopefully very limited.

I have zero delusions however that they can protect me from state agents, let alone state agents with malicious intent. And I don't think it's realistic to expect that for the amount of money they cost. But that's fine with me - it's Joe from Marketing I'm scared about, and so far they seem to do a good job keeping Joe at bay :)

sevagh2• 2 years ago

Seconded, happy Proton customer for years since de-Googling my life.

Par for the course at HN to have a "vaguely dislike-ish" relationship with Protonmail. Fastmail is the poster child of HN on the other hand.

I would guess the gist of it is that if you promise _any_ amount of security (or whatever feature), HN will nitpick you to death on not going 100% (despite the general improvement to your security). If you don't promise security at all, it doesn't matter that you're less secure than Proton. Something like that.

fifteen15062• 2 years ago

It's normal. Dropbox was derided on HN because it wasn't much more than a glorified FTP.

xinayder2• 2 years ago

I'm a free customer and I am always annoyed by ads in my inbox about other services provided by Proton. I signed up for an email box, I don't care about Proton Drive nor ProtonVPN. I chose Proton specifically because it supposedly had less or no ads at all, but it seems like Gmail continues to be the better choice.

Shacklz2• 2 years ago

Maybe this is disabled for free customers but at least for me there are settings to enable/disables what I kind of informations I'd like to receive from them.

Gmail in that regard I've always perceived as worse - every few months or so they update their policy, linking to some gargantuan document that I can't be bothered to read, each time wondering how much of my soul I've sold this time around...

quitit2• 2 years ago

It seems there is some mental conflict going in readers between the reality of what ProtonMail does for its customers and their expectations of what kinds of protections a legitimate business can provide.

Both ProtonMail and Apple will challenge subpoenas when they believe they are not valid, however neither company has the final say in the matter and can be compelled to provide access to data that they reasonably have access to. It is up to the user to plan what information they provide to service provides in order to not leave a trail of crumbs, and also evaluate what kind of man-in-the-middle weaknesses a service might have for the possibility of wiretapping. It should go without saying that linking a phone number or back-up email address can be a pretty large crumb.

The learning here is to recognise that these services can be compelled to provide whatever small information that they have reasonable access to, and that this information may be useful in unmasking an identity.

I suppose the second learning is to elect governments which respect democratic freedoms, even if that puts them on the back foot.

wepple6• 2 years ago

It is up to the user

And therein lies the problem. We on HN may have a few ideas about how to do this, but the typical user of a secure email/VPN/tor unfortunately doesn’t and realistically can’t understand the corner cases and tricks.

Realistically, even HN users would make enough mistakes.

This is why I’m dubious of these types of products marketing to average consumers

pc862• 2 years ago

If your threat model is "utilize secure email/VPN/tor to evade organizations on the spectrum of [law enforcement...intelligence services]" you are not a typical user even of those services and saying that it's on you to understand all the corner cases and tricks to avoid persecution, prosecution, execution, etc. seems pretty reasonable.

dcist• 2 years ago

Yes, if your information is stored with a third-party, it can be subject to disclosure with a lawful subpoena.

dennis_jeeves2• 2 years ago

I suppose the second learning is to elect governments which respect democratic freedoms,

This will _never_ happen. It's the human condition....

nerdjon• 2 years ago

I would argue that the second learning is to make it impossible to comply with these subpoenas where possible by making it so the company itself is unable to decrypt it.

Admittedly this is not really an easy solution with something as open as emails, it's possible within corporations but I don't know of a solution between "random" people.

But outside of email and things that have to be unencrypted for interoperability, everything should be encrypted and inaccessible to the company so this situation is impossible.

I think the ship has sailed on the idea of electing people who will actually care about privacy of their citizens.

xinayder2• 2 years ago

I don't think this is solely the issue that users don't understand that the companies are obliged to provide the data requested by the authorities.

The whole controversy surrounding Proton started when they marketed themselves as "secure and private email", promising they would NEVER give away their users' data, until they did. I had a similar discussion with my friends today about this topic and the issue I have with it is that Proton tries to market itself as an email which will never snitch your data to the authorities. And we've seen countless times (they have provided data to almost 6k requests last year) that this isn't the case.

The problem as I see it is that Proton is not even trying to challenge the requests anymore. It's not like Tuta, who you can read on the news that they keep challenging almost every order they get from the authorities, even if they lose the battle in court: https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/08/german-secure-email-provid...

As I read on a website comparing "private email services", the question here is not whether a service provider will or will not abide by the court requests. It's whether it will do anything to challenge it or just giveaway the data without questions asked.

obelus5• 2 years ago

But didn't this prove the opposite? An optional email recovery.. I think other companies would have been obligated to provide far more information, including emails etc..

nucleardog• 2 years ago

Tangent: Been looking to switch email providers for a while, and hadn’t heard of Tuta. Looked good enough I just went ahead and signed up… only to find out apparently they provide no real data portability whatsoever.

The only option for getting your email _out_ of their systems is to select small batches of them one-by-one in their app and export them.

There have been many requests for something similar to Proton’s bridge functionality that haven’t gone anywhere. A more useful export function has been near the top of their public roadmap[0] for half a decade now it looks like.[1]

Guess I’ll go find out what their refund process is like.

Don’t mind me. Just yelling into the void.

[0] https://tuta.com/roadmap/ [1] https://github.com/tutao/tutanota/issues/1292

yencabulator• 2 years ago

The one good way forward I can see for any such privacy-conscious service provider is to let the user see exactly what data is stored about them (and purge it where feasible).

You store my access times and IP addresses? I should see that.

I think this would align well with GDPR, too.

jacooper• 2 years ago

But that's not true? Proton said they will not hand over your emails, which they never did because they couldn't and still can't.

quitit2• 2 years ago

I disagree, while the marketing is carefully worded, it doesn't say that and both Proton's privacy policy and their transparency report detail what kinds of information they gather and how often they hand over that data.

https://proton.me/legal/privacy

https://proton.me/legal/transparency

I standby the assertion that people will believe what they want to, despite there being easily accessible information that contradicts those ideas.

snakeyjake• 2 years ago

I suppose the second learning is to elect governments which respect democratic freedoms, even if that puts them on the back foot.

Democratic freedoms, in the United States at least, protect people from UNREASONABLE search and seizure.

Compelling a third party to reveal information about a customer via a court order is not now, has never been, and will never be until the end of time and space, unreasonable.

The order itself might be unreasonable and should be challenged if so, but the procedure and ability to do so is not and will never be.

sonicanatidae2• 2 years ago

Democratic freedoms, in the United States at least, protect people from UNREASONABLE search and seizure.

You're conflating what's written in the law and the sad reality of how a lot of that is simply ignored by law enforcement, while they are standing on your neck, searching your car.

matheusmoreira12• 2 years ago

Yeah. This stuff is all about putting an end to the global mass surveilance dragnets. Police and government should still be able to operate of course, with checks and balances.

They should not be able to push a button and learn everything about a person. If they want to learn about an individual's private life, they should have to get a warrant then put people to work on the guy's case. They should have to literally follow their targets, photograph them, put hardware keyloggers into their keyboards. That sort of hardship imposes natural limits on the scale of their operations: there are only so many police officers you can assign. With computerized dragnet surveillance, the scale of their operations is essentially limitless.

These encrypted communications services aren't generally in the business of going to jail in their customer's place. They gotta comply with the government laws. When a court orders them to do something, they either obey or they are held in contempt of court if not worse. It can't be helped. It's still helping reduce global surveillance by forcing them to target their attacks.

dragonwriter• 2 years ago

Compelling a third party to reveal information about a customer via a court order is not now, has never been, and will never be until the end of time and space, unreasonable.

Its unreasonable if the standards for issuing the court order (as applied, even if not in theory) are unreasonable.

And that is often now, and has often been, and will often be (likely until the end of human history), unreasonable.

nthb3kk• 2 years ago

If Protonmail, and Apple, and Google, and Microsoft and Phone companies, etc., all, in concert, give some parts of the identity -- the total identity can fairly easily be found.

Alfagun74• 2 years ago

ProtonMail itself probably is some GOV honeypot, why should anyone offer such service

wepple6• 2 years ago

When thinking about these types of cases, always keep Parallel Construction in mind: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

There’s a reasonable chance that they already had this info (possibly even cleartext email via an ISP lawful intercept), and the proton/apple jig whilst bad, wasn’t as bad as the real source

fifteen15062• 2 years ago

I never thought of ProtonMail as a secure-from-state-surveillance provider. Only as a secure-from-civil-surveillance-aparatus provider. A replacement for Gmail, no more than that.

If I wanted to conduct illegal activities I would not use my main account on it, at minimum.

Protonmail is a step up from Gmail/Outlook, but no more than that. You need more layers on top of it.

nairboon• 2 years ago

Quite interesting how the Spanish authorities got the recovery email: (from a link in the article)

In the police cooperation form requesting the information, the Spanish officers indicate to the Swiss authorities that the investigation is for the crime of terrorism.

moosemess2• 2 years ago

It is 2024 and there are still people who cling to the idea there can be privacy with email, so much so they are willing to be parted with their money for the "privilege". I really cannot imagine a more diametrically opposed schism in privacy threat modeling.

jimmydoe• 2 years ago

If avoiding Europe governments is a priority, would it be better to use mail service from China or Russia?

beretguy• 2 years ago

I use Proton to protect myself from Google, Microsoft, advertisements, tracking, terrible, slow, “too much padding everywhere” UI, my emails/data being sold to 3rd parties, etc. I’m not worried about Proton cooperating with law enforcement agencies to catch criminals.

However.

What if say, russia/nk/china wants to catch somebody some journalist for speaking truth about their regimes? Or, like say, Jason Bourne exposing some IronHand in “democratic” country like USA? How can we protect good actors without enabling adversaries to do “bad stuff”? Is it even possible? I still don’t know the answer…

obelus5• 2 years ago

But requests have to meet Swiss standards, which makes all the difference.

kazinator• 2 years ago

Catalan independence organization, Democratic Tsunami

OK, I think I grokked this. You might think that a Greco-Nipponese name for this organization poorly conveys Catalan nationalist pride. But in fact it quite effectively says "anything but Spanish". That's almost certainly the gag.

i8comments• 2 years ago

Instead of blaming corporations for following the law, blame the laws and the government for what they force others to do.

It is not up to corporations to decide which laws should be enforced, and this again shows how futile this specific kind of corporate resistence is.

Just change the law.

nsoolo• 2 years ago

I understand that no person or company is above the law and that the user should have used a VPN or Tor but I find it funny that Proton promotes itself as a private provider which does not give out user information when it can log any type of user information and give it to the authorities, it is certainly not a private service.

Proton Mail discloses user data leading to arrest in Spain

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