They gave meta information like IP to the government in Switzerland, where they are based, after the government forced them to with a court order. Not the encrypted mail, mind you, because they can’t do that, just the additional information they have on a user like email and IP.
Because of that, a lot of redditers on r/privacy think they spy on their users for the US government. It’s a stretch, yes, but you have to remember they take turns using the one brain they collectively have.
Not the encrypted mail, mind you, because they can’t do that
Just want to point out for anyone new that ProtonMail does not use E2EE for email headers. That means they CAN access your subject lines, to/from fields, and other email headers. That means they CAN be forced to hand it over to the government.
Subject lines and recipient/sender email addresses are encrypted but not end-to-end encrypted.
Personally I am disappointed in a lot of Proton’s wording about this. They frequently promise they can’t access “your data” and “your messages” when they do, in fact, store potentially sensitive data in a format they CAN access.
A bit more context is important here. They aren’t E2EE, but they are stored encrypted. In the case of the person whose meta information was turned over, ProtonMail wasn’t forced to hand over the information right away, they were forced to collect it the next time that person accessed and used their email. That tells us that they didn’t store the information beforehand and could not access it without preparing to intercept it the next time their service was used.
Ultimately, though, if something like that’s a dealbreaker, it’s likely you’re doing something that would benefit from a more secure way of communicating than email.
Well, you don’t even need to provide an email or phone number when you sign up, so if you access the site via their onion address every time, they would have no information on you at all.
They gave meta information like IP to the government in Switzerland, where they are based, after the government forced them to with a court order. Not the encrypted mail, mind you, because they can’t do that, just the additional information they have on a user like email and IP.
Because of that, a lot of redditers on r/privacy think they spy on their users for the US government. It’s a stretch, yes, but you have to remember they take turns using the one brain they collectively have.
Just want to point out for anyone new that ProtonMail does not use E2EE for email headers. That means they CAN access your subject lines, to/from fields, and other email headers. That means they CAN be forced to hand it over to the government.
Source: https://proton.me/support/proton-mail-encryption-explained
Personally I am disappointed in a lot of Proton’s wording about this. They frequently promise they can’t access “your data” and “your messages” when they do, in fact, store potentially sensitive data in a format they CAN access.
It’s email, that’s the best you can get with email, if you want to have more privacy, DON’T USE EMAIL
A bit more context is important here. They aren’t E2EE, but they are stored encrypted. In the case of the person whose meta information was turned over, ProtonMail wasn’t forced to hand over the information right away, they were forced to collect it the next time that person accessed and used their email. That tells us that they didn’t store the information beforehand and could not access it without preparing to intercept it the next time their service was used.
Ultimately, though, if something like that’s a dealbreaker, it’s likely you’re doing something that would benefit from a more secure way of communicating than email.
If all they have on you is your optional backup email and your IP, I think they’re doing pretty well in the no data-collecting part?
Well, you don’t even need to provide an email or phone number when you sign up, so if you access the site via their onion address every time, they would have no information on you at all.