this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2025
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Privacy
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I don’t think that’s bad on Proton’s part. They are obeying the law they are obliged to obey.
Yeah, more important is what data was it
Most data is encrypted, so the government wouldn't be able to use it anyway.
There is some metadata though. I believe in the past they used Proton to be able to link a criminal to a back-up e-mail address he entered.
Well I'm certainly not a fan.
If you think all 30k plus were for legitimate reasons and not government control, I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.
I didn’t say that. I said they’re obeying the law they are obliged to obey. In other words, they’re not defying the courts. In a perfect world, they could defy the courts and get away with it in the interest of user privacy, but this is not a perfect world.
You are right, they can argue that the government does not have sufficient reason. Many companies push back, but Proton is not one of them. I.e. Proton will not fight for you at all and they will follow court orders from other countries that are often questionable at best because "Interpol".
I think my original point stands which should make most people seriously reconsider using them as they are not in the business of protecting their customers. In other words it is bad on their part and hand waving that away is pretty gross.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/09/privacy-focused-protonmail-provided-a-users-ip-address-to-authorities/
Privacy is not anonymity. In this case they were required to supply IP addresses of users logging into a certain account in an active investigation.
Yes, talk about it as nicely as you want. Ignore the facts and view them as lies. Feel free to trust that they don't have a key. I don't care. As a customer, I've been following what's been happening at Proton for long enough. What they say, what they promise, and what they actually do.
Feel free to vote me down because you don't like the reality. There's more to Proton's history, but I'm not going to look into it anymore because you don't want to know and instead punish those who give you sources. I'll laugh about it heartily in a few years.