Neil BrownWell, Mullvad's fall from grace was certainly fast. And I seem to recall that Proton had a moment too, a while back.
What's the current go-to recommendation for VPNs/proxies, for people who don't want to run their own?
Troed Sångberg@neil In Mullvad's case it was actual big money spending on fascists from an active owner & founder of the company. In Proton's case it was not - just a lot of people who felt like screaming a bit.
I'm still a very happy Proton user.
Paul Leader@Noneeeed Their process for vetting people who signed up for affiliate links didn't catch a known French holocaust denier. Proton took the blame and changed their processes, but they also admitted that they can't do 100% pre-vetting on self signups and appreciate when the community notifies them if they screw up.
Apparently that was bad.
SpycrabIIRC, it was less about the fact that they did it, and more that Proton makes claims like
> With Proton, your data belongs to you, not tech companies, governments, or hackers.
on the front page of the site, without saying "but of course we will comply with disclosure obligations".
I think that there was also a question as to whether Proton attempted to push back against the request, but there may not have been scope to do so.
This is linked from the front page - and has been since 2014:
https://proton.me/blog/switzerland
Proton has never claimed they won't cooperate with the Swiss judicial system. They have (the link above) explained in detail how being incorporated and headquartered in Switzerland makes is much harder for governments to get access to user data than in the EU and the US, for example.
hyperreal@neil @troed @spycrab @Noneeeed Yeah, it's misleading on Proton's part. They also only encrypt the email contents, not the email metadata, so the metadata (including the IP addresses) could be subject to subpoena, and the email participants might want or expect that to be encrypted. Proton says that you could keep your real IP address out of the metadata if you use their ProtonVPN (or any reputable VPN) service. This seems more like a marketing ploy for tiered privacy services, which is pretty deceptive / manipulative.
To maximize privacy in email, I'd only recommend Tuta as of this time. Sadly I don't know of any VPN services to replace Mullvad.