HN user

istingray

1,352 karma

Got a Librem or PinePhone sitting around? I would love to try it out. Email me!

EMAIL: hnaccounts@altmails.com

Mac Addict Moving to Linux due to Apple's surveillance

Ask HN: Do you use Purism, PinePhone, or Fairphone? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28164208

Ask HN: Do you use a Linux-first laptop? (System76, Librem, Dell XPS Dev Ed) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28216287

New System76 owner https://system76.com

Super interested in privacy-respecting devices like Purism https://puri.sm

Standard Notes as a iOS Notes replacement: https://standardnotes.com/

http://nextcloud.com as an iCloud alternative?

Posts8
Comments381
View on HN

Privacy is a human right.

I support providers that believe this as well, and act in accordance.

Your model more treats privacy as something to be earned or attained through technical knowledge. No thanks. Journalists and whistleblowers need others looking out for them when no one else will.

If Protonmail doesn't solve this by the time my account is up for renewal, I will not be renewing.

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.

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%"

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...

Not sure this would be a solution. In this case it seems like Protonmail wasn't logging IP but then was compelled to by law. So my assumption here is even if they stripped IPs, law enforcement could compel them to unstrip them going forward for an account. And that's what happened in this case.

That said, if there was a third entity that removed IPs for Protonmail, maybe that could get away with it. Kind of like how Tor is functioning.

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.

Protonmail increasingly seems like one of those Tim Ferris type scams. The one where you build a nice solution and write a bunch of blog posts...

And then you just let it run for 10 years without doing any more work and it just rots away.