this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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Privacy

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ProtonMail Complied with 5,957 Data Requests in 2022 - Still Secure and Private? (restoreprivacy.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] Achird 223 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Proton are very transparent about what data is and isn’t stored, how data is protected and what (very limited) data may be available in the event of a legal warrant - going through all the proper channels.

Complying with legal warrants doesnt make the service insecure or not private. It makes it a legal and legitimate company.

It shouldn’t really be a surprise to any of it’s users.

[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Some people have the idea that a private business is going to break the law or defy their governments requests for them. That’s completely deluded, nobody would ever open willingly expose themself to that kind of risk. No organization is going to let themselves go on trial for $15/month. It seems we have a binary idea of privacy, when the reality is much more complex.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

It's the "if you're not with us, then you're against us" mentality.

Huh, I guess these people haven't been roaming the real world for a long time, they get their ideas from television shows and movies.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

The best take on here. The reasonable one that still highlights how much better it is compared to other mainstream services

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Remember that time I think it was Signal got a warrant for all data they had on a user and literally all the data they had was account name, creation date, and last login date? That was funny.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Well, in the US, FISA warrants are technically legal, too.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

What they can share, IP, Recovery Email, Payment information, for every email: From, To, Subject, Time, Size..

Basically all of your metadata. If you're concerned about people knowing your metadata, especially who you're talking to and when you're talking to them, don't use proton. Better not to use email at all.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

That second part. The 'e' in email stands for evidence.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Never forget every email that leaves Protonmail to other email providors are not anymore secure or encrypted as using gmail or others.

Second no one can certify that incoming emails and meta-data can't be read and recorded to a ghost mailbox before getting encrypted. you have no control on what happens on their servers

privacy shouldn't rely on trust

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's really difficult if not impossible to be private with services you can't trust... suppose you were to not trust Tor. How can you prove it to be private if you can't trust anything they say or share? I think it's almost impossible, isn't it?

You're going to have to put trust somewhere if you want to be private, whether it's your device's hardware, software, ISP or other...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think that Tor relies entirely on trust. it rather relies on the probability that there needs to be at least half of entry and exit nodes compromised for a attacker to be able to deanonymize users trying to access the clearnet. the hidden network is even harder to deanonymize as there are more than 6 hops in the path. and all nodes participating in the network are visible.

proton on the other hand can do what ever they please on their servers and can never get caught with it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I don't disagree with you. But if you start with the assumption that a service cannot be trusted, it's really difficult, maybe even impossible that despite it, privacy is safe. That's a different claim. Especially as this claim would have to hold across the whole end to end. I can't see how one can imagine having any privacy in such a scenario.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Only private if you use gpg... But you still leak metadata

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

In other news, water is wet.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Protonmail is basically a honey pot. I lost all trust the moment they gave the French government a protestor's location. Why the hell is it complying to foreign government requests?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

They have to, because they had the data they have to obey lawful requests.

But the fault is still theirs. They architected a system where they have access to data that will endanger people. They deliberately disincentivize signing up via the onion network. They require two-factor verification of identity for most signups. They're deliberately making sure they have the data to expose people.

If they truly cared they would have architectured a system that was as close to zero knowledge as possible. Were they insured they never had access to personal data. I.e. Tor sign ups possible, let people pay with Monero, never require identity verification.