cronenthalThe informed choice
Big TI’ve been using the one included with my Proton subscription, what do yall think about it? Worth it to also pay for Mullvad?
Proton is known to unmask paying customers to agencies like the FBI, just so you know.
zarkanianNo, lol. That would have to go through a Swiss court first. Also, the only info the FBI is going to get is “Yes, this person is a ProtonVPN customer.” Your data is end-to-end encrypted, so Proton cannot decrypt it.
Check the news. Proton literally unmasked the identity of a paying customer to the FBI. Delivering someone’s identity is as bad if not worse than delivering messages: at that point it matters not if your data is encrypted because now the FBI can target you for $5-wrench torture.
The reporting doesn’t say Proton “literally unmasked a user to the FBI.” What happened is that Proton was legally compelled by Swiss authorities to provide payment data they already had, and those authorities later shared it with the FBI through a legal assistance treaty.
The email content remained encrypted. What identified the user was the credit-card payment tied to the account, which is inherently traceable.
The uncomfortable reality is that people often deanonymize themselves: they create accounts without Tor, pay with identifiable cards, and link real-world data to the account. At that point the provider doesn’t need to “break” anything — the identifying information already exists.
Slice it how you dice it, Proton aided in the process, and they gave out information that the FBI would have reasonably not have had at that point, or else they’d have acted upon it. Slice it how you dice it, Proton unmasked a customer to the FBI.
You can repeat that framing, but it’s still inaccurate. Proton didn’t “unmask a user for the FBI.” They complied with a legal order from Swiss authorities for data they already had, and that information was later shared through legal channels.
What identified the user was their own payment data tied to the account. If you pay with a credit card and create the account without anonymity tools, your identity is already linked — no provider has to “break” anything.
That’s the uncomfortable reality: people often de-anonymize themselves by using identifiable payments and normal connections instead of Tor and anonymous methods when creating the account.