For all the Proton fans
@skinnylatte I jumped off of them for unrelated reasons. This just reinforces my decision.
@serebit @skinnylatte unless you’re planning on self hosting there is literally no other email service you could jump to that hasn’t done the same thing.
@k3ym0 @skinnylatte I mean yeah, but I'll put it this way: Proton sells its service on how unbelievably private it is and how they'd never give away your identity. When they turn around and do it, it stings far more than another company who never made those promises doing the same. Kinda like Target and DEI: it was a complete 180 from the way they'd sold their brand.

@serebit @skinnylatte what got him was paying for his “anonymous” account with his Platinum Visa like a normie buying socks on Amazon.

Proton handed over the payment identifier, Swiss authorities passed it to the FBI, and suddenly your anonymity has a name on it.

if you’re not paying with Monero or cash, you don’t have an anonymous email. you have encrypted email with a billing address. those are very different things.

@k3ym0 @serebit @skinnylatte

This really should be front and centre of the discussion. They complied with a valid Swiss court order, as stated on their ToS.

The account holders opsec is the issue if they required full anonymity (possible? Another discussion).

This whole thing is the same as the statement "Your VPN provider won't go to jail for your $5".

If they were served with an administrative warrant from an out of jurisdiction LEA and complied, then WAY more to be upset over.

@chroma0 @k3ym0 @serebit @skinnylatte the disconnect here is that people think proton is offering something it has never claimed to offer. They will obey all warrants issued to them under Swiss law. They will hand over all personal data they have on you. They have never said otherwise. It is incumbent on the user to give them a minimum of personal info.

Proton sells an email service with messages they can't decrypt. They do not sell anonymity.

@stinerman @chroma0 @k3ym0 @serebit @skinnylatte
They tried to sell it as that until the French environmental activists got dobbed in. Now it's just services like VPN they sell as being anonymised.

I knew about the Swiss law in 2015 when I binned a privacy-oriented Swiss document management system (for many reasons, including this).

It's not incumbent on the user to have to cloak their IP address. Use Tuta instead. Why can't Proton just not log this information?

@davep @stinerman @chroma0 @serebit @skinnylatte Tuta and Proton have the exact same policy on logging IP addresses:

Tuta: "By default, we don’t record IP addresses of our users. Therefore, IP addresses can only be recorded for a single user account after we received a valid German court order for a real time monitoring (TKÜ), but not for the past."

https://tuta.com/blog/transparency-report#guide-to-types-of-requested-data

Proton: "From time to time, Proton may be legally compelled to disclose certain user information to Swiss authorities, as detailed in our Privacy Policy. This can happen if Swiss law is broken. As stated in our Privacy Policy, all emails, files and invites are encrypted and we have no means to decrypt them."

https://proton.me/legal/privacy

Transparency Report & Warrant Canary | Tuta

Tuta rejected 75% of all requests from authorities in 2025.

Tuta