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Russia blocks ProtonMail

167 points by tdurden 8y ago

nukeop 8y ago
Protonmail is one of the last sane email providers. Gmail is essentially spyware and they can block your access to your account on a whim, especially if you refuse to have a phone number connected to it (phone numbers are commonly used to link your account across many different websites, that's why many of them force users to hand over their phone numbers under the guise of "security" or "2fa"). Protonmail has its problems but I hope they get over them as a company. Personally, so far I've received nothing but great customer support from them.
- dijit 8y ago
  You make no mention of fastmail, which as I understand is a very competent and forthcoming third-party email provider.
  - 8fingerlouie 8y ago
    Which is located in Australia, with it's own can of worms when it comes to privacy concerns. https://www.wired.com/story/australia-encryption-law-global-impact/ https://www.wired.com/story/australia-encryption-law-global-...
    - dijit 8y ago
      I think that’s fair. But it’s not /much/ different legally than using a US company as your third party as a non-US citizen. Non-US citizens have no rights of any kind in terms of data protection from the US government.
- cotelletta 8y ago
  Protonmail has been a huge disappointment personally. It took days of trying to get my email in over the IMAP bridge, and now it still has weird spazzes where it will suddenly decide to redownload all my 30k emails, effectively making all inbound mail wait for over a day while my laptop fans fire at full speed. On top of that, the mobile app is atrocious. It crashes at a drop of a hat, doesn't autosave drafts, and doesn't even do threading. It also makes terrible use of space, and has a permanent upsell ad in the sidebar, pushing my folders offscreen. Someone actually approved this design... I guess for those weirdos who can live with a webmail client it's servicable, but it's an embarrassment that they've been at it this long, and this is the state of their offering.
  - Sir_Substance 8y ago
    >Protonmail has been a huge disappointment personally. It took days of trying to get my email in over the IMAP bridge, and now it still has weird spazzes where it will suddenly decide to redownload all my 30k emails I've never had this problem, but since you mention the IMAP bridge it's worth noting that a) the linux version of the bridge is still an on-request beta rather than a freely available download despite working flawlessly for me for the last year and a half and b) you can only use the IMAP bridge with subscribed accounts. So if you're using a free account you can't use it at all, but if you have a mix of paid and free accounts only the paid accounts can use the bridge. I find the bridge pretty nice in and of itself, but the way it's managed and monetized is a bit of a trainwreck.
- galadran 8y ago
  I would highly recommend mailbox.org. Based in Germany, their offering is similar but cheaper than ProtonMail. They are much more flexible as well, and allow for better security. If you want to use the webmail client with javscript PGP (a la ProtonMail), that's supported, but they also allow you manage your own PGP keys and support using Thunderbird or Mailvelope. Additionally you can connect via a Tor Hidden Service if you want and they can PGP encrypt incoming plaintext messages if you want them to.
- josefresco 8y ago
  > Gmail is essentially spyware Free Gmail is essentially spyware. Why would you trust anything important/private to a provider you're not paying?
  - nukeop 8y ago
    Paid Gmail is spyware in addition to not being free (gratis). Why would you trust an advertising company to run your email?
    - josefresco 8y ago
      > Paid Gmail is spyware Source?
SUr3na 8y ago
I switched to protonmail after losing my gmail password.It was literally impossible to get my account back thanks to gmail "security features". The 500mb free plan is enough for personal usage. I hope other 3rd world countries don't block it following Russia.interestingly this happened not long after EU €2 million award.Probably someone read the news and googled protonmail, saw "encrypted email" in Wikipedia page and decided to block the whole thing.
- pmlnr 8y ago
  Own domain. That's the most important part of email. If you have that, you can move to wherever you want.
  - aljarry 8y ago
    It's also the weak point - do you trust your domain provider he won't allow a domain move / access based on parts of your personal information, like here [0]? Also is it only domain block and not ip block? [0] https://medium.com/@N/how-i-lost-my-50-000-twitter-username-24eb09e026dd https://medium.com/@N/how-i-lost-my-50-000-twitter-username-...
    - Semaphor 8y ago
      You shouldn't use the almost-scammers of GoDaddy as an example. Whenever I hear any Domain horror story it's about GoDaddy, it seems like a bad idea to extrapolate from them.
    - seszett 8y ago
      https://twitter.com/n https://twitter.com/n Apparently he's got his @N account back. I wonder how it happened, I don't see anything about it in the article.
    - deadbunny 8y ago
      Well, that made me activate 2fa on my domain provider. Thanks!
    - 8y ago
cpursley 8y ago
In Russia now. Just successfully logged into my protonmail account over VPN. My guess is that if you're a protonmail user in Russia, you're knowledgeable enough to use a VPN.
- ucha 8y ago
  The article says you can log into your ProtonMail account without a VPN. That is not an issue. Other Russian email providers would not be able to send you messages though.
- altmind 8y ago
  It seems that secret blocking now only affects MTS and RT. There are alternative outbound channels in russia, for instance TTK, so protonmail may be available for somebody.
- runn1ng 8y ago
  As the article itself states, problem is not with the frontend, but they block incoming e-mail to protonmail servers. Which is actually clever in a way, and smarter than just blocking the front-end. (And it shows another negative side of federated systems, like E-mail.)
  - kybernetikos 8y ago
    > (And it shows another negative side of federated systems, like E-mail.) The obvious point of comparison would be with a centralised system, but I can't see any possible way that would be better than federated in a situation like this.
- protonmail 8y ago
  We implemented some technical tweaks yesterday so that Russian users will no longer have any issues. Communications with Russian mail servers are also back up.
  - cpursley 8y ago
    Super! I can confirm that I can use protonmail without VPN in the glorious Russian Federation.
dwighttk 8y ago
Does ProtonMail work in China?
- dguo 8y ago
  Yes. I recently went to China, and I set up forwarding from Gmail to ProtonMail beforehand.
vogre 8y ago
In Russia there is an anonymous network of political Telegram channels which is read by both citizens and elite. The largest one, @russica2 acquire its information using protonmail. Looks like these measures are taken to restrict russian officials to send their information to these accounts.
- SUr3na 8y ago
  They can still encrypt their emails in many other ways Just like people did before protonmail existed.
  - tracker1 8y ago
    Or, since they can still access the web interface, they can still send to addresses/servers not in russia.
rmujica 8y ago
Probably a good time to start using ProtonVPN.
Brain_Thief 8y ago
IMHO, anyone who claims to care about privacy should seriously consider throwing down the ~$10 a month (I forget exactly how much it costs) to have a paid PM account. The company isn't perfect, but it's a far sight better than the majority of other providers out there. Furthermore, by paying for your account you are not only directly supporting a service that aspires to provide communications privacy, you're also helping to subsidize said service for those users who may not be able to afford a paid account (particularly important in countries where economic and governmental problems overlap). I pay for my PM account and have had nothing but good experiences with the company and service so far (including with the VPN and with the mobile app before I ditched my iPhone). It took me years to migrate off of Gmail but since I finally managed to do it I've never looked back. Give it a shot.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- jsjsjsjsjsjs 8y ago
  120/year is way too much for receiving spam. They are overcharging so much its not even funny.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- imbusy111 8y ago
  You must not have had to migrate your emails from another email service. That experience was terrible.
move-on-by 8y ago
Maybe this will reduce my spam rate. Also, this has increased my trust in ProtonMail.
PeterZhizhin 8y ago
This situation really pissed me off. FSB (Russian FBI) had problems with receiving bomb threats coming from Protonmail addresses. So, they secretly ordered (with an almost classified order) major ISPs to block Protonmail bypassing Russian's existing website/IP addresses blocking scheme. Even worse, they ordered to __BLACKHOLE__ traffic coming to Protonmail. It means that ISPs were ordered to silently drop all traffic coming to Protonmail addresses. This raises problems not only for Russians, but for potentially for other countries as well. So, for example, someone connects from Japan to Protonmail (server is located in Europe, for instance). So, if traffic decides to go through Russian channels, for a client in Japan it will be just like Protonmail is not just responding because a Russian ISP in the chain silently drops traffic. Again. I want to repeat this once again. FSB had problems receiving bomb threats to their addresses. Instead of configuring their mail servers to ignore Protonmail incoming mail, they ordered major ISPs in Russia to block Protonmail for EVERYONE in the country. That's so dumb. Moreover, another recent leak coming from another Russian ISP indicates that FSB also ordered to block sending and receiving mail for certain mail addresses regardless of their domain. They ordered an ISP to block Email for certain addresses. Like, they ordered to ban all Email going from/coming to Emails starting with "putin666", like putin666@protonmail.com, puting666@gmail.com, puting666@example.com, any email coming from an email staring with "putin666". It's so dumb, oh god. They cannot configure their mail servers, but they have power to threat ISPs to ban Email for the entire country.
- everdrive 8y ago
  > they secretly ordered (with an almost classified order) Most of the time I hear about secret FSB orders, it's from HackerNews.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > FSB (Russian FBI) had problems with receiving bomb threats coming from Protonmail addresses Source?
  - PeterZhizhin 8y ago
    The source is in the article, actually. This is the order from FSB that MTS operator received. They translated this as: “the mass distribution of obviously false reports of a terrorist act” in January, resulting in “mass evacuations of schools, administrative buildings and shopping centers.” Right before the IP addresses list, you can find terms "blackhole", "BGP". The document has a signature of a head of the FSB center that handles this types of requests and orders. Also, you can see a stamp in the right bottom corner on the first page. Full story, how a Russian internet company has actually found out about blackholing can be found here (in Russian): https://habr.com/ru/company/tm/blog/443222/ https://habr.com/ru/company/tm/blog/443222/ In the story, you can find that MTS confirmed that they are blocking traffic and referenced the order in the original article.
wpdev_63 8y ago
ehh... it's been known for awhile that protonmail is in the pockets of the US government so it's not really a loss for the russian people. What they should be using is either Streisand[0] email with a server in a country that respects their privacy(neitherlands, panama, etc) or lavabit email[1]. [0]: https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand [1]: https://lavabit.com/ https://lavabit.com/ EDIT -- Sorry streisand doesn't in fact have an e-mail server. I thought it did at one point. I guess you can use mail-in-a-box(https://github.com/mail-in-a-box/mailinabox https://github.com/mail-in-a-box/mailinabox).
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > it's been known for awhile that protonmail is in the pockets of the US government Source? I thought ProtonMail were Swiss and E2E encrypted.
  - brokensegue 8y ago
    They have an SF office
    - a012 8y ago
      Do they have Canberra office too?
    - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      > they have an SF office I didn’t know they had “support centers in San Francisco, CA, and Skopje, Macedonia” [1]. Thank you. Still a far cry from proof of being “in the pockets of the US government” [2]. Signal, too, has American nexuses. That doesn’t automatically render it compromised. [1] https://protonmail.com/about https://protonmail.com/about [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19368140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19368140
- amdavidson 8y ago
  Streisand doesn't install an email server. https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand#services-provided https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand#services-provid...
betulaq 8y ago
ProtonMail is a service I fully support, but these sorts of actions only underscore the importance of decentralized alternatives to email.
- topranks 8y ago
  Email is decentralized. The only centralized part is the DNS.
MrXOR 8y ago
For russians: https://protonirockerxow.onion/login https://protonirockerxow.onion/login

167 points by tdurden 8y ago

Protonmail is one of the last sane email providers. Gmail is essentially spyware and they can block your access to your account on a whim, especially if you refuse to have a phone number connected to it (phone numbers are commonly used to link your account across many different websites, that's why many of them force users to hand over their phone numbers under the guise of "security" or "2fa"). Protonmail has its problems but I hope they get over them as a company. Personally, so far I've received nothing but great customer support from them.

dijit 8y ago
You make no mention of fastmail, which as I understand is a very competent and forthcoming third-party email provider.
- 8fingerlouie 8y ago
  Which is located in Australia, with it's own can of worms when it comes to privacy concerns. https://www.wired.com/story/australia-encryption-law-global-impact/ https://www.wired.com/story/australia-encryption-law-global-...
  - dijit 8y ago
    I think that’s fair. But it’s not /much/ different legally than using a US company as your third party as a non-US citizen. Non-US citizens have no rights of any kind in terms of data protection from the US government.
cotelletta 8y ago
Protonmail has been a huge disappointment personally. It took days of trying to get my email in over the IMAP bridge, and now it still has weird spazzes where it will suddenly decide to redownload all my 30k emails, effectively making all inbound mail wait for over a day while my laptop fans fire at full speed. On top of that, the mobile app is atrocious. It crashes at a drop of a hat, doesn't autosave drafts, and doesn't even do threading. It also makes terrible use of space, and has a permanent upsell ad in the sidebar, pushing my folders offscreen. Someone actually approved this design... I guess for those weirdos who can live with a webmail client it's servicable, but it's an embarrassment that they've been at it this long, and this is the state of their offering.
- Sir_Substance 8y ago
  >Protonmail has been a huge disappointment personally. It took days of trying to get my email in over the IMAP bridge, and now it still has weird spazzes where it will suddenly decide to redownload all my 30k emails I've never had this problem, but since you mention the IMAP bridge it's worth noting that a) the linux version of the bridge is still an on-request beta rather than a freely available download despite working flawlessly for me for the last year and a half and b) you can only use the IMAP bridge with subscribed accounts. So if you're using a free account you can't use it at all, but if you have a mix of paid and free accounts only the paid accounts can use the bridge. I find the bridge pretty nice in and of itself, but the way it's managed and monetized is a bit of a trainwreck.
galadran 8y ago
I would highly recommend mailbox.org. Based in Germany, their offering is similar but cheaper than ProtonMail. They are much more flexible as well, and allow for better security. If you want to use the webmail client with javscript PGP (a la ProtonMail), that's supported, but they also allow you manage your own PGP keys and support using Thunderbird or Mailvelope. Additionally you can connect via a Tor Hidden Service if you want and they can PGP encrypt incoming plaintext messages if you want them to.
josefresco 8y ago
> Gmail is essentially spyware Free Gmail is essentially spyware. Why would you trust anything important/private to a provider you're not paying?
- nukeop 8y ago
  Paid Gmail is spyware in addition to not being free (gratis). Why would you trust an advertising company to run your email?
  - josefresco 8y ago
    > Paid Gmail is spyware Source?

SUr3na 8y ago

I switched to protonmail after losing my gmail password.It was literally impossible to get my account back thanks to gmail "security features". The 500mb free plan is enough for personal usage. I hope other 3rd world countries don't block it following Russia.interestingly this happened not long after EU €2 million award.Probably someone read the news and googled protonmail, saw "encrypted email" in Wikipedia page and decided to block the whole thing.

pmlnr 8y ago
Own domain. That's the most important part of email. If you have that, you can move to wherever you want.
- aljarry 8y ago
  It's also the weak point - do you trust your domain provider he won't allow a domain move / access based on parts of your personal information, like here [0]? Also is it only domain block and not ip block? [0] https://medium.com/@N/how-i-lost-my-50-000-twitter-username-24eb09e026dd https://medium.com/@N/how-i-lost-my-50-000-twitter-username-...
  - Semaphor 8y ago
    You shouldn't use the almost-scammers of GoDaddy as an example. Whenever I hear any Domain horror story it's about GoDaddy, it seems like a bad idea to extrapolate from them.
  - seszett 8y ago
    https://twitter.com/n https://twitter.com/n Apparently he's got his @N account back. I wonder how it happened, I don't see anything about it in the article.
  - deadbunny 8y ago
    Well, that made me activate 2fa on my domain provider. Thanks!
  - 8y ago

cpursley 8y ago

In Russia now. Just successfully logged into my protonmail account over VPN. My guess is that if you're a protonmail user in Russia, you're knowledgeable enough to use a VPN.

ucha 8y ago
The article says you can log into your ProtonMail account without a VPN. That is not an issue. Other Russian email providers would not be able to send you messages though.
altmind 8y ago
It seems that secret blocking now only affects MTS and RT. There are alternative outbound channels in russia, for instance TTK, so protonmail may be available for somebody.
runn1ng 8y ago
As the article itself states, problem is not with the frontend, but they block incoming e-mail to protonmail servers. Which is actually clever in a way, and smarter than just blocking the front-end. (And it shows another negative side of federated systems, like E-mail.)
- kybernetikos 8y ago
  > (And it shows another negative side of federated systems, like E-mail.) The obvious point of comparison would be with a centralised system, but I can't see any possible way that would be better than federated in a situation like this.
protonmail 8y ago
We implemented some technical tweaks yesterday so that Russian users will no longer have any issues. Communications with Russian mail servers are also back up.
- cpursley 8y ago
  Super! I can confirm that I can use protonmail without VPN in the glorious Russian Federation.

dwighttk 8y ago

Does ProtonMail work in China?

dguo 8y ago
Yes. I recently went to China, and I set up forwarding from Gmail to ProtonMail beforehand.

vogre 8y ago

In Russia there is an anonymous network of political Telegram channels which is read by both citizens and elite. The largest one, @russica2 acquire its information using protonmail. Looks like these measures are taken to restrict russian officials to send their information to these accounts.

SUr3na 8y ago
They can still encrypt their emails in many other ways Just like people did before protonmail existed.
- tracker1 8y ago
  Or, since they can still access the web interface, they can still send to addresses/servers not in russia.

rmujica 8y ago

Probably a good time to start using ProtonVPN.

Brain_Thief 8y ago

IMHO, anyone who claims to care about privacy should seriously consider throwing down the ~$10 a month (I forget exactly how much it costs) to have a paid PM account. The company isn't perfect, but it's a far sight better than the majority of other providers out there. Furthermore, by paying for your account you are not only directly supporting a service that aspires to provide communications privacy, you're also helping to subsidize said service for those users who may not be able to afford a paid account (particularly important in countries where economic and governmental problems overlap). I pay for my PM account and have had nothing but good experiences with the company and service so far (including with the VPN and with the mobile app before I ditched my iPhone). It took me years to migrate off of Gmail but since I finally managed to do it I've never looked back. Give it a shot.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
jsjsjsjsjsjs 8y ago
120/year is way too much for receiving spam. They are overcharging so much its not even funny.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
imbusy111 8y ago
You must not have had to migrate your emails from another email service. That experience was terrible.

move-on-by 8y ago

Maybe this will reduce my spam rate. Also, this has increased my trust in ProtonMail.

PeterZhizhin 8y ago

This situation really pissed me off. FSB (Russian FBI) had problems with receiving bomb threats coming from Protonmail addresses. So, they secretly ordered (with an almost classified order) major ISPs to block Protonmail bypassing Russian's existing website/IP addresses blocking scheme. Even worse, they ordered to __BLACKHOLE__ traffic coming to Protonmail. It means that ISPs were ordered to silently drop all traffic coming to Protonmail addresses. This raises problems not only for Russians, but for potentially for other countries as well. So, for example, someone connects from Japan to Protonmail (server is located in Europe, for instance). So, if traffic decides to go through Russian channels, for a client in Japan it will be just like Protonmail is not just responding because a Russian ISP in the chain silently drops traffic. Again. I want to repeat this once again. FSB had problems receiving bomb threats to their addresses. Instead of configuring their mail servers to ignore Protonmail incoming mail, they ordered major ISPs in Russia to block Protonmail for EVERYONE in the country. That's so dumb. Moreover, another recent leak coming from another Russian ISP indicates that FSB also ordered to block sending and receiving mail for certain mail addresses regardless of their domain. They ordered an ISP to block Email for certain addresses. Like, they ordered to ban all Email going from/coming to Emails starting with "putin666", like putin666@protonmail.com, puting666@gmail.com, puting666@example.com, any email coming from an email staring with "putin666". It's so dumb, oh god. They cannot configure their mail servers, but they have power to threat ISPs to ban Email for the entire country.

everdrive 8y ago
> they secretly ordered (with an almost classified order) Most of the time I hear about secret FSB orders, it's from HackerNews.
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> FSB (Russian FBI) had problems with receiving bomb threats coming from Protonmail addresses Source?
- PeterZhizhin 8y ago
  The source is in the article, actually. This is the order from FSB that MTS operator received. They translated this as: “the mass distribution of obviously false reports of a terrorist act” in January, resulting in “mass evacuations of schools, administrative buildings and shopping centers.” Right before the IP addresses list, you can find terms "blackhole", "BGP". The document has a signature of a head of the FSB center that handles this types of requests and orders. Also, you can see a stamp in the right bottom corner on the first page. Full story, how a Russian internet company has actually found out about blackholing can be found here (in Russian): https://habr.com/ru/company/tm/blog/443222/ https://habr.com/ru/company/tm/blog/443222/ In the story, you can find that MTS confirmed that they are blocking traffic and referenced the order in the original article.

wpdev_63 8y ago

ehh... it's been known for awhile that protonmail is in the pockets of the US government so it's not really a loss for the russian people. What they should be using is either Streisand[0] email with a server in a country that respects their privacy(neitherlands, panama, etc) or lavabit email[1]. [0]: https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand [1]: https://lavabit.com/ https://lavabit.com/ EDIT -- Sorry streisand doesn't in fact have an e-mail server. I thought it did at one point. I guess you can use mail-in-a-box(https://github.com/mail-in-a-box/mailinabox https://github.com/mail-in-a-box/mailinabox).

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> it's been known for awhile that protonmail is in the pockets of the US government Source? I thought ProtonMail were Swiss and E2E encrypted.
- brokensegue 8y ago
  They have an SF office
  - a012 8y ago
    Do they have Canberra office too?
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > they have an SF office I didn’t know they had “support centers in San Francisco, CA, and Skopje, Macedonia” [1]. Thank you. Still a far cry from proof of being “in the pockets of the US government” [2]. Signal, too, has American nexuses. That doesn’t automatically render it compromised. [1] https://protonmail.com/about https://protonmail.com/about [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19368140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19368140
amdavidson 8y ago
Streisand doesn't install an email server. https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand#services-provided https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand#services-provid...

betulaq 8y ago

ProtonMail is a service I fully support, but these sorts of actions only underscore the importance of decentralized alternatives to email.

topranks 8y ago
Email is decentralized. The only centralized part is the DNS.

MrXOR 8y ago

For russians: https://protonirockerxow.onion/login https://protonirockerxow.onion/login