6 ms·

The CEO's position on Twitter is that "by default" (from the sentence you're quoting) means when there is no criminal investigation, but when there is a legal o

The CEO's position on Twitter is that "by default" (from the sentence you're quoting) means when there is no criminal investigation, but when there is a legal order in place, Protonmail will collect the IP... https://twitter.com/andyyen/status/1434600373059297284 https://twitter.com/andyyen/status/1434600373059297284 "As described in the link above, under Swiss law, we can be forced to collect info on accounts belonging to users under criminal investigation. This is obviously not done by default, but only if we get a legal order." Activists beware.

civilized 5y ago
"We won't keep logs on you, except if you're in trouble with The Authorities, then we'll definitely keep logs on you and rat you out" Weird definition of privacy we've got going these days
- rossdavidh 5y ago
  If you thought that Protonmail (or any other company) was going to go to break the law in order to avoid keeping logs on you despite a Swiss-backed warrant saying they had to do so, then you had the wrong impression. But I never got the impression Protonmail was saying that.
  - civilized 5y ago
    I have never used the service and don't know or care a thing about it. But their advertising is laughably inconsistent with the reality of the service provided. If it's illegal to provide a completely anonymous email service, then you should not claim to provide a completely anonymous email service.
    - freshhawk 5y ago
      I think everyone has gotten used to this particular lie, because it's so widespread and all the "privacy" email providers say things like this. Except maybe Lavabit, that guy apparently shut everything down to avoid doing something along these lines. So maybe he wasn't actually lying.
- istingray 5y ago
  "We don't keep IP addresses. (we keep PI addresses which are tooooootally different and you didn't ask about those)"
salawat 5y ago
Once again: if you can't see their server software, you should assume they are FOS, and are capable of recording anything. Also: One more reason NAT was a good thing over IPv6. The closer we get to the platonic ideal of "UUID per person" the more likely justice systems will use it that way. The day everyone learns how to self-host mail on ephemeral compute instances is the day law enforcement starts requiring MX domain logs to be maintained in a historical manner. Work around that magically, and some law'll go on the books to try to tame the super spooky criminal communicators hiding from law enforcement. This is why we can't have nice things.
- CraneWorm 5y ago
  doesn't the amount of available IPv6 mean you can get a new one every time?
  - kemotep 5y ago
    Theoretically yes but if your ISP assigns your home a /64 you can use 2^64 different addresses to access the internet. This still doesn’t protect your privacy because your ISP knows what prefix they gave you and will likely provide that to the authorities if you broke the law while using that address. Just like they would even if you used NAT and ipv4 so I don’t get where the parent comment thinks that is protecting their privacy at all.
    - salawat 5y ago
      Plausible deniability. My NAT and DHCP leases can be shortened, and not logged. At best you know something came from my network, and I may have many users on my network. For nodes, VPN, etc... IP's address Internet endpoints, not people using them, yet States, prosecutors, and law enforcement regularly try to create the illusion that an IP has anything to do with who uses something. IPv6 makes that temptation worse. IPv4 forces you to realize IP's can be ambiguous. IPv6, through having more addresses than people on Earth, checks off the Institutional checkbox for "raw material to contribute to a UUID identity scheme". Just look at China's proposals for a more governable international Telecom network, and the intention to use device persistent addressing as a control mechanism becomes obvious. Where IPv4 creates enough decentralization and localized namespace unscrambling to provide enough friction via statefulness to thwart these types of efforts, I'm not at all confident IPv6 will do the same. I believe it is just what the Doctor ordered for laying the foundation of coupling IP's and net addresses in the minds of the masses to personal identifiers. Which is not by any stretch the way we want things to go.
jrochkind1 5y ago
"obviously"?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

civilized 5y ago

"We won't keep logs on you, except if you're in trouble with The Authorities, then we'll definitely keep logs on you and rat you out" Weird definition of privacy we've got going these days

rossdavidh 5y ago
If you thought that Protonmail (or any other company) was going to go to break the law in order to avoid keeping logs on you despite a Swiss-backed warrant saying they had to do so, then you had the wrong impression. But I never got the impression Protonmail was saying that.
- civilized 5y ago
  I have never used the service and don't know or care a thing about it. But their advertising is laughably inconsistent with the reality of the service provided. If it's illegal to provide a completely anonymous email service, then you should not claim to provide a completely anonymous email service.
  - freshhawk 5y ago
    I think everyone has gotten used to this particular lie, because it's so widespread and all the "privacy" email providers say things like this. Except maybe Lavabit, that guy apparently shut everything down to avoid doing something along these lines. So maybe he wasn't actually lying.
istingray 5y ago
"We don't keep IP addresses. (we keep PI addresses which are tooooootally different and you didn't ask about those)"

salawat 5y ago

Once again: if you can't see their server software, you should assume they are FOS, and are capable of recording anything. Also: One more reason NAT was a good thing over IPv6. The closer we get to the platonic ideal of "UUID per person" the more likely justice systems will use it that way. The day everyone learns how to self-host mail on ephemeral compute instances is the day law enforcement starts requiring MX domain logs to be maintained in a historical manner. Work around that magically, and some law'll go on the books to try to tame the super spooky criminal communicators hiding from law enforcement. This is why we can't have nice things.

CraneWorm 5y ago
doesn't the amount of available IPv6 mean you can get a new one every time?
- kemotep 5y ago
  Theoretically yes but if your ISP assigns your home a /64 you can use 2^64 different addresses to access the internet. This still doesn’t protect your privacy because your ISP knows what prefix they gave you and will likely provide that to the authorities if you broke the law while using that address. Just like they would even if you used NAT and ipv4 so I don’t get where the parent comment thinks that is protecting their privacy at all.
  - salawat 5y ago
    Plausible deniability. My NAT and DHCP leases can be shortened, and not logged. At best you know something came from my network, and I may have many users on my network. For nodes, VPN, etc... IP's address Internet endpoints, not people using them, yet States, prosecutors, and law enforcement regularly try to create the illusion that an IP has anything to do with who uses something. IPv6 makes that temptation worse. IPv4 forces you to realize IP's can be ambiguous. IPv6, through having more addresses than people on Earth, checks off the Institutional checkbox for "raw material to contribute to a UUID identity scheme". Just look at China's proposals for a more governable international Telecom network, and the intention to use device persistent addressing as a control mechanism becomes obvious. Where IPv4 creates enough decentralization and localized namespace unscrambling to provide enough friction via statefulness to thwart these types of efforts, I'm not at all confident IPv6 will do the same. I believe it is just what the Doctor ordered for laying the foundation of coupling IP's and net addresses in the minds of the masses to personal identifiers. Which is not by any stretch the way we want things to go.

jrochkind1 5y ago

"obviously"?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]