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Disclaimer: I have a ProtonMail account that I pay for. I have seen a ton of disturbing pieces about ProtonMail. Every time I've looked into them, they seem to

Disclaimer: I have a ProtonMail account that I pay for. I have seen a ton of disturbing pieces about ProtonMail. Every time I've looked into them, they seem to be maliciously motivated and usually not true, or otherwise twisting of the truth. This has been a confusing thing for me because why is there a small subset of people so vehemently against them? In this case, I'm not surprised. They say quite clearly they can be compelled to collect IP addresses - including in the linked tweet. This seems like a pretty clear cut case of them being compelled to provide an IP address. What the authorities can't do, is read that person's email. And that's what I and others pay for. I'm not sure what there is to be upset about here? Other than perhaps France prosecuting this individual to begin with? If we had faith that ProtonMail wouldn't hand over anything to the government, why would anyone even care about having encrypted emails?

istingray 5y ago
I'm also a Protonmail customer. Tor solves this. Protonmail's Tor support is lukewarm. They have a Tor based login without captchas. It's mentioned on their homepage in the bottom menu under "Onion Site", (/tor). And there's one blog post from 2017 that still promotes their v2/shorter onion address. I expect Protonmail to push its users to login through Tor. "Don't trust us, trust math". Embed Tor support in their apps as well. Rebuild their iOS app to offer to drive all connections through Tor. And frankly, for $50 a year for email, I expect Protonmail to be thinking ahead about this, rather than me coming up with dumb ideas on a forum. Protonmail was neat in 2018 but 3 years later it's stagnant.
- Aachen 5y ago
  How is that lukewarm? Sounds like first class support if they have a dedicated onion address and not just let you connect to the regular clearnet. Or is that address only in that old blog post and not mentioned in places you'd usually look? It's a bit unclear to me.
  - istingray 5y ago
    It's lukewarm because what less could you do besides not support Tor? Tor is mentioned on their homepage in the bottom menu under "Onion Site". However, this menu link redirects to their Tor placeholder page, rather than directly to the Tor service: https://protonmail.com/tor https://protonmail.com/tor There's one blog post from 2017 that still promotes their old v2 onion address: https://protonmail.com/blog/tor-encrypted-email/ https://protonmail.com/blog/tor-encrypted-email/ Protonmail's Tor service is located at: https://protonmailrmez3lotccipshtkleegetolb73fuirgj7r4o4vfu7ozyd.onion/ https://protonmailrmez3lotccipshtkleegetolb73fuirgj7r4o4vfu7...
    - yunohn 5y ago
      > It's lukewarm because what less could you do besides not support Tor? Alright then, what more do you want them to do? Spend millions in court fighting every warrant issued for their users and go bankrupt defending criminal activity?
- cortesoft 5y ago
  What does using Tor have to do with trusting math?
  - istingray 5y ago
    "What makes Tor different from the usual thesaurus-full of government projects is that Tor is essentially a very elaborate math trick, using layers of math puzzles to create a network-within-the-network. That math is being implemented in front of a global audience of millions of sophisticated watchers. It is likely the most examined codebase in the world. It has been subjected to multiple public audits. The math, well known and widely standardized, will work for everyone, or it will not, whoever pays the bills." from https://pando.com/2014/12/09/clearing-the-air-around-tor/ https://pando.com/2014/12/09/clearing-the-air-around-tor/
    - sweetbitter 5y ago
      "Trusting mathematics" would be a much more accurate claim if we were talking about mix networks, such as Loopix (https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.00536 https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.00536). But Tor is vulnerable to confirmation attacks to varying degrees, (depending on whether you are accessing clearnet or not, of course) which is very much worth noting in the context of a global passive adversary.
- PeterisP 5y ago
  Aren't a big part of Tor entry/exit nodes considered to be monitored or even operated by the authorities?
  - pabs3 5y ago
    The authorities don't need to run exit nodes, they just pwn enough routers, have enough interception devices or buy enough netflow data that they can trace data flowing through the Tor work back to its original location.
  - DocTomoe 5y ago
    Sure, but if that becomes a problem for you depends on 1. whether or not your request stays within the tor network or not (if you use the .onion address, no need for an exit node) 2. given both entry and exit nodes can be literally all over the world: your threat opposition level. I doubt the NSA will be happy to help French authorities trying to catch a teenager who blockaded a government parking garage).
polote 5y ago
One of the first sentence on their website is "By default, we do not keep any IP logs". If as soon as police show up (Which is almost the only case that people would want their IP hidden) they give IP logs, it is clearly false advertising. The fact that only the anonymous feature is important to you will not change the fact that they do the opposite of what they advertise regarding IP logs
- COGlory 5y ago
  >If as soon as police show up (Which is almost the only case that people would want their IP hidden) they give IP logs, it is clearly false advertising Is there any evidence this is what happened? An alternate scenario is that they were not keeping logs, and were then compelled by the authorities to start keeping them on that user.
  - bdibs 5y ago
    Wouldn't "any" include authority compelled logging?
    - COGlory 5y ago
      Perhaps, but I'd imagine that semantically, "by default" negates that since this is clearly not a default situation.
      - hh3k0 5y ago
        Stop trying to defend indefensible behavior by getting hung up on semantics. I, for one, will not renew my ProtonMail account if that's their status quo.
        kazen44 5y ago
        what other status quo do you expect from them? Having to provide IP logs after a warrant has been issued is the law in switserland (and most if not all of the EU). Sure, the law would (hopefully) be changed, but at the moment, this is the best they can legally do?
aborsy 5y ago
>> What the authorities can't do, is read that person's email. What if authorities ask, serve this user this malicious JacaScript code to obtain their encryption key? PM has to obey and the result is the same.
- pgalvin 5y ago
  They claim this is not possible under Swiss law, fwiw. We’ve recently seen that it is possible under German law, with a competitor (Tutanota) building a server-side backdoor for one user.
  - caeril 5y ago
    ...but we know it's possible under Swiss law, from this case, for them to be compelled to start logging specific account accesses, that they by default were not previously. How is that any different from them being compelled to disable or weaken clientside encryption? In both cases they're being compelled to make changes to their service. The camel's nose is clearly already under the tent. Everybody needs to start diffing javascript served by them.
    - feu 5y ago
      [Deleted]
      - pessimizer 5y ago
        That's not the claim. The claim is that we don't know if X is possible under Swiss law. You seem to be the one claiming that because they said it's not possible, then it's not possible. If not, I don't know what you're claiming. The GP says that it's possible under German law. Is it "FUD" to say that it could end up being possible under Swiss law? Shouldn't there be fear, uncertainty, and doubt about any channel that activists use to communicate with each other?
    - dane-pgp 5y ago
      > Everybody needs to start diffing javascript served by them. It would be nice if there were something like Perspectives[0] or Binary Transparency / Sigstore[1] to raise the alarm when something like this happened, but the threat would also be avoided if ProtonMail was available as a SecureBookmark[2]. [0] https://www.techrepublic.com/blog/data-center/ssl-tls-certificates-perspectives-helps-authentication/ https://www.techrepublic.com/blog/data-center/ssl-tls-certif... [1] https://security.googleblog.com/2021/03/introducing-sigstore-easy-code-signing.html https://security.googleblog.com/2021/03/introducing-sigstore... [2] https://coins.github.io/secure-bookmark/ https://coins.github.io/secure-bookmark/
c7DJTLrn 5y ago
I am also paying for ProtonMail. They come off as a very dodgy company willing to twist the truth themselves. They claim that they can provide E2EE for email, being careful not to give away the fact that this is impossible for regular emails to non-PM customers. Frankly I only use them because they're the biggest "private" email service and that provides a kind of safety in numbers.
- Sebb767 5y ago
  As a business in that space, you probably need to have dodgy marketing in order to convince mainstream users. I'm not disagreeing that it's bad, but it's probably necessary business-wise.
- codyro 5y ago
  Also a paying ProtonMail customer. While I concur that it's a bit misleading nothing is stopping you from using your own key and mail client (albeit with their "bridge" solution) to send E2EE e-mails. If you rely on the keys they generate you can export them and use them accordingly but one should be weary of the handling of said keys if they were compelled to make a backdoor as others have noted. That being said this does leave a bad taste in my mouth.
smsm42 5y ago
If they can be compelled to collect IP addresses - why can't they be compelled to collect your password and revel the contents of any mails the police wants to see? I mean, it's their site and AFAIK there's no way for you to prevent them from accessing the content of your emails, unless they are fully encrypted on the client side - in which case any random mail provider would work the same. From where I stand, the only difference here is that ProtonMail has to receive the warrant before they give up all the info they have on you, and others may do it voluntarily even without that, just to keep on the good side of the police, but since it's not exactly hard to achieve such warrants (and in the US, as we learned, it's ok for the police to lie on such warrants and they know no punishment will come to them even if the lie is discovered later) the difference is minimal. If you have something the police really wants to see, and they can reveal it, they will.
nvarsj 5y ago
I couldn't agree more. Anyone that thinks a company can hide/avoid all government (legally mandated) requests is just incredibly naive. I don't know why the anti-protonmail spin exists. Protonmail does the best they can, as far as I can tell, given the legal frameworks that are in place and the modern erosion of privacy.

istingray 5y ago

I'm also a Protonmail customer. Tor solves this. Protonmail's Tor support is lukewarm. They have a Tor based login without captchas. It's mentioned on their homepage in the bottom menu under "Onion Site", (/tor). And there's one blog post from 2017 that still promotes their v2/shorter onion address. I expect Protonmail to push its users to login through Tor. "Don't trust us, trust math". Embed Tor support in their apps as well. Rebuild their iOS app to offer to drive all connections through Tor. And frankly, for $50 a year for email, I expect Protonmail to be thinking ahead about this, rather than me coming up with dumb ideas on a forum. Protonmail was neat in 2018 but 3 years later it's stagnant.

Aachen 5y ago
How is that lukewarm? Sounds like first class support if they have a dedicated onion address and not just let you connect to the regular clearnet. Or is that address only in that old blog post and not mentioned in places you'd usually look? It's a bit unclear to me.
- istingray 5y ago
  It's lukewarm because what less could you do besides not support Tor? Tor is mentioned on their homepage in the bottom menu under "Onion Site". However, this menu link redirects to their Tor placeholder page, rather than directly to the Tor service: https://protonmail.com/tor https://protonmail.com/tor There's one blog post from 2017 that still promotes their old v2 onion address: https://protonmail.com/blog/tor-encrypted-email/ https://protonmail.com/blog/tor-encrypted-email/ Protonmail's Tor service is located at: https://protonmailrmez3lotccipshtkleegetolb73fuirgj7r4o4vfu7ozyd.onion/ https://protonmailrmez3lotccipshtkleegetolb73fuirgj7r4o4vfu7...
  - yunohn 5y ago
    > It's lukewarm because what less could you do besides not support Tor? Alright then, what more do you want them to do? Spend millions in court fighting every warrant issued for their users and go bankrupt defending criminal activity?
cortesoft 5y ago
What does using Tor have to do with trusting math?
- istingray 5y ago
  "What makes Tor different from the usual thesaurus-full of government projects is that Tor is essentially a very elaborate math trick, using layers of math puzzles to create a network-within-the-network. That math is being implemented in front of a global audience of millions of sophisticated watchers. It is likely the most examined codebase in the world. It has been subjected to multiple public audits. The math, well known and widely standardized, will work for everyone, or it will not, whoever pays the bills." from https://pando.com/2014/12/09/clearing-the-air-around-tor/ https://pando.com/2014/12/09/clearing-the-air-around-tor/
  - sweetbitter 5y ago
    "Trusting mathematics" would be a much more accurate claim if we were talking about mix networks, such as Loopix (https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.00536 https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.00536). But Tor is vulnerable to confirmation attacks to varying degrees, (depending on whether you are accessing clearnet or not, of course) which is very much worth noting in the context of a global passive adversary.
PeterisP 5y ago
Aren't a big part of Tor entry/exit nodes considered to be monitored or even operated by the authorities?
- pabs3 5y ago
  The authorities don't need to run exit nodes, they just pwn enough routers, have enough interception devices or buy enough netflow data that they can trace data flowing through the Tor work back to its original location.
- DocTomoe 5y ago
  Sure, but if that becomes a problem for you depends on 1. whether or not your request stays within the tor network or not (if you use the .onion address, no need for an exit node) 2. given both entry and exit nodes can be literally all over the world: your threat opposition level. I doubt the NSA will be happy to help French authorities trying to catch a teenager who blockaded a government parking garage).

polote 5y ago

One of the first sentence on their website is "By default, we do not keep any IP logs". If as soon as police show up (Which is almost the only case that people would want their IP hidden) they give IP logs, it is clearly false advertising. The fact that only the anonymous feature is important to you will not change the fact that they do the opposite of what they advertise regarding IP logs

COGlory 5y ago
>If as soon as police show up (Which is almost the only case that people would want their IP hidden) they give IP logs, it is clearly false advertising Is there any evidence this is what happened? An alternate scenario is that they were not keeping logs, and were then compelled by the authorities to start keeping them on that user.
- bdibs 5y ago
  Wouldn't "any" include authority compelled logging?
  - COGlory 5y ago
    Perhaps, but I'd imagine that semantically, "by default" negates that since this is clearly not a default situation.
    - hh3k0 5y ago
      Stop trying to defend indefensible behavior by getting hung up on semantics. I, for one, will not renew my ProtonMail account if that's their status quo.
      - kazen44 5y ago
        what other status quo do you expect from them? Having to provide IP logs after a warrant has been issued is the law in switserland (and most if not all of the EU). Sure, the law would (hopefully) be changed, but at the moment, this is the best they can legally do?

aborsy 5y ago

>> What the authorities can't do, is read that person's email. What if authorities ask, serve this user this malicious JacaScript code to obtain their encryption key? PM has to obey and the result is the same.

pgalvin 5y ago
They claim this is not possible under Swiss law, fwiw. We’ve recently seen that it is possible under German law, with a competitor (Tutanota) building a server-side backdoor for one user.
- caeril 5y ago
  ...but we know it's possible under Swiss law, from this case, for them to be compelled to start logging specific account accesses, that they by default were not previously. How is that any different from them being compelled to disable or weaken clientside encryption? In both cases they're being compelled to make changes to their service. The camel's nose is clearly already under the tent. Everybody needs to start diffing javascript served by them.
  - feu 5y ago
    [Deleted]
    - pessimizer 5y ago
      That's not the claim. The claim is that we don't know if X is possible under Swiss law. You seem to be the one claiming that because they said it's not possible, then it's not possible. If not, I don't know what you're claiming. The GP says that it's possible under German law. Is it "FUD" to say that it could end up being possible under Swiss law? Shouldn't there be fear, uncertainty, and doubt about any channel that activists use to communicate with each other?
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    > Everybody needs to start diffing javascript served by them. It would be nice if there were something like Perspectives[0] or Binary Transparency / Sigstore[1] to raise the alarm when something like this happened, but the threat would also be avoided if ProtonMail was available as a SecureBookmark[2]. [0] https://www.techrepublic.com/blog/data-center/ssl-tls-certificates-perspectives-helps-authentication/ https://www.techrepublic.com/blog/data-center/ssl-tls-certif... [1] https://security.googleblog.com/2021/03/introducing-sigstore-easy-code-signing.html https://security.googleblog.com/2021/03/introducing-sigstore... [2] https://coins.github.io/secure-bookmark/ https://coins.github.io/secure-bookmark/

c7DJTLrn 5y ago

I am also paying for ProtonMail. They come off as a very dodgy company willing to twist the truth themselves. They claim that they can provide E2EE for email, being careful not to give away the fact that this is impossible for regular emails to non-PM customers. Frankly I only use them because they're the biggest "private" email service and that provides a kind of safety in numbers.

Sebb767 5y ago
As a business in that space, you probably need to have dodgy marketing in order to convince mainstream users. I'm not disagreeing that it's bad, but it's probably necessary business-wise.
codyro 5y ago
Also a paying ProtonMail customer. While I concur that it's a bit misleading nothing is stopping you from using your own key and mail client (albeit with their "bridge" solution) to send E2EE e-mails. If you rely on the keys they generate you can export them and use them accordingly but one should be weary of the handling of said keys if they were compelled to make a backdoor as others have noted. That being said this does leave a bad taste in my mouth.

smsm42 5y ago

If they can be compelled to collect IP addresses - why can't they be compelled to collect your password and revel the contents of any mails the police wants to see? I mean, it's their site and AFAIK there's no way for you to prevent them from accessing the content of your emails, unless they are fully encrypted on the client side - in which case any random mail provider would work the same. From where I stand, the only difference here is that ProtonMail has to receive the warrant before they give up all the info they have on you, and others may do it voluntarily even without that, just to keep on the good side of the police, but since it's not exactly hard to achieve such warrants (and in the US, as we learned, it's ok for the police to lie on such warrants and they know no punishment will come to them even if the lie is discovered later) the difference is minimal. If you have something the police really wants to see, and they can reveal it, they will.

nvarsj 5y ago

I couldn't agree more. Anyone that thinks a company can hide/avoid all government (legally mandated) requests is just incredibly naive. I don't know why the anti-protonmail spin exists. Protonmail does the best they can, as far as I can tell, given the legal frameworks that are in place and the modern erosion of privacy.