Again, they did not “aid” nor “give” that information. They were legally obliged to do so. There was never a choice. This could’ve happened with literally any company, E2EE stops them from being forced to turn over the emails themselves, but basic account metadata (creation date, payment methods, contact details, potentially IP access logs) will always be available. What you can do is limit the amount of information a provider requires/saves (for which Proton is a good choice) or don’t rely on a company at all and roll your own email server.

Furthermore, you can pay with bitcoin or even cash (sent to their HQ by mail). That way they’d have even less on you.

Furthermore, you can pay with bitcoin or even cash (sent to their HQ by mail). That way they’d have even less on you.

With the caveat that in some of their procedures they (seem to?) require to append account information in the mail, so if the postage can be traced back to you that’s an issue.

Yeah, not sure how it’d work with return addresses and whatnot. But if the letter itself is intercepted there’s probably more that can be used to trace back to you, unless you only handled the money and paper in a clean room.