- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.ml
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I just switched from proton to mailbox. Mailbox gives you a say so over what happens when law enforcement asks for your account info.
Mailbox.org doesn’t have the option for anonymous payments beyond payments in cash, which was the reason for the article in the first place.
It does t matter if you have the ability to simply delete all of your account info.
You do realize that you don’t get time, generally speaking, to delete things, when a government legally demands your info, right?
As soon as any company sees a lawful order demanding information, deleting it becomes a crime.
If this same thing happened to mailbox.org, you heard about it immediately, and hit all the delete buttons you can find, mailbox.org will still hand over your info to them, as they’re legally obligated to do so. It’s not a gdpr violation or anything like that.
You’re not understanding. It’s a preemptive option.
You’re not understanding. They can order whenever.
And the Germans don’t give a fuck.
Their transparency report says otherwise…
I’ve been a paid protonmail user for years. What should I use instead?
If you’re worried Proton could identify you to authorities, either just make a new Proton account and pay anonymously (cryptocurrency or cash by mail), since that’s the only way this person was identified, or you could use what I’d consider to be the next-best, which is Tuta.
Nowhere near as slick a UI, less overall offerings (only email and calendar), but it costs less and generally provides similar security and privacy to Proton. Though again, you’d have to pay via private means, otherwise you’re gonna get identified by the same mechanism this person was if the government really decided to come after you by your account.
this person said it once, but I’ll say it again.
the same thing can happen on Tuta unless you pay with an anonymous method. these are privacy focused email providers, they are not anonymous email providers. they keep as little data on you as they need, but if you’re paying with a credit card then obviously you have your real name tied to the account.
Posteo has an anonymized payment system, so you could pay with credit card and your payment information won’t be linked to your account.
Proton was legally ordered by the Swiss justice department to hand over the (severely limited) information about a law breaking organization’s account. They had paid for Proton using a credit card instead of the anonymous payment methods Proton offers, and that is what Proton was forced to hand over. It was the organization’s bad OpSec, not Proton willingly deanonymizing users.
@Charger8232 @jrcruciani The bug is between keyboard and chair. It is always a problem to use crédit card.
I like services like PIA that let you pay in gift cards.
Owned by Kape technologies, and uses Google analytics. Big nope. Any VPN service worth its money support anon payments (including gift cards) anyways.
Does Proton Mail?
Is there a link you could share?
Sorry to reply to a two week old comment, this is their supported payments page: https://proton.me/support/payment-options.
You can use a prepaid visa to buy account credits, or proton gift cards. They don’t support monero, which is really annoying, but it’s not the biggest hassle to convert from monero to bitcoin for a purchase.
The link leads to an error 404.
You can use a prepaid visa to buy account credits
Have you tried doing specifically that and/or do they claim you can do specifically that? I tried doing the same thing when making a Tuta account and it wouldn’t accept prepaid cards, though they do have a 3rd party source you can pay cash or Monero for gift card codes, giving true anonymity
but it’s not the biggest hassle to convert from monero to bitcoin for a purchase.
I think the issue is that Bitcoin hasn’t been anonymous for a few years now (unlike Monero).
I don’t see any anonymous payment methods on this page.
Tuta has a 3rd party provider that you can send cash or Monero to and get a gift card to pay for your account.
Mullvad will directly take cash and Monero.
I don’t see anything suggesting that Proton does anything similar
Hopefully people like you will be able to nip this in the bud before yet another joke of a controversy starts…
OP’s title certainly doesn’t help.
Why do you think Proton stores the association between accounts and payment identity?
Many privacy-oriented companies actually accept credit card payments and simply don’t store that information.
answer:
proton is snake oil
Yeah, I am no fan of proton and they have lied before (no log VPN logs magically finding logs for authorities and then later removing the no-log claim).
But this is literally just proton being legally compelled to hand over data the user willingly gave (not being harvested or de-encrypted). A nothing story.
Some people in the comment section are really dumb switching to other alternatives thinking that Proton isn’t trustworthy because they gave the information despite the organisation not using anonymous currency. What’s ironic is that some of these people are switching to those alternatives where you can’t even use anonymous currency.
Also, kind of a clickbait title.
Being secure online and being anonymous online is not the same. Proton only promises one of those.
Is there any private way to have emails forwarded from a service like GMail to Proton? I know you could forward to an alias on the Proton account, or alternatively forward through a third party (which you would then have to also trust), but I want to hear from people who know more on the topic than me.
Private from what? Google sees the forwarded emails anyway.
Yes, that’s basically what I was getting at. So it sounds like as long as Google knows the account emails are being forwarded to (can see the headers) there is no notion of privacy.
The way email forwarding works is: email is being received in full (by Google in your case), they look up processing rules, and send a copy to your Proton account, then optionally delete it.
The only thing you protect yourself from this way is Google knowing your IP address every time you check email. They have seen the contents and all headers of forwarded messages.
Oh boy, their man fawning over Trump is aging like fine milk.
Proton the company that prides itself protecting privacy when it is literally the law of the country they are in. It is like a cabby advertising that they have license and insurance.
Protón don’t promise anonymity If you use your credit card to pay protón services. Maybe he has to learn more about OPSEC. 🤷♂️
Please, using crypto alone isn’t going to do shit. The barrier to entry for truly anonymous usage is not something most people will ever accomplish.
Privacy is effectively dead but yet we have a company trying to advertise about it. Proton has always been marketing garbage meant to attract people’s money.
Garbage company with no ethics other than taking care of their pocket book.
You’re mixing up privacy and anonymity. Encryption alone doesn’t make you anonymous — that’s true — but Proton never claimed it would. Their promise is that email content is end-to-end encrypted, which is why they can’t hand over the messages themselves.
In the case reported by 404 Media, the identification came from payment information, not from breaking encryption. If you pay with a credit card, your identity is already tied to the account. That would happen with any service under a legal jurisdiction.
The real takeaway isn’t that Proton is “garbage”, it’s that most people misunderstand what encryption actually protects.
I was talking about both. The fact that Proton exists as a middle man to expose a customer is the reality of the situation. Do you think they score points for blaming their customer!? I really have a hard time dealing with shills for corporations.
The real takeaway is the way Proton advertised itself was a fucking lie and now they have to spend all their time back peddling while shills like you do PR for them.
Garbage company with to leaders who say stupid shit about politics they don’t understand and make idle threats to their own government saying they are going to move like the little fascist bitches they are.
Proton didn’t “expose” the user by breaking encryption. According to the reporting, the identification came from payment information, which any company legally has to keep and can be compelled to provide under a court order. The email content remained encrypted.
This isn’t unique to Proton — any service operating under a legal jurisdiction is a potential middleman if it stores identifiable data. That’s exactly why anonymity requires Tor, anonymous payments, and strict OPSEC, not just encrypted email.
So the real lesson isn’t that encryption is fake; it’s that privacy tools don’t automatically give anonymity, and many people expect them to.
Proton, if it cared, could have taken any number of steps to mitigate this problem. Like I said, they created a false image of what they provided to the public and have been back peddling ever since. I get it you don’t see it that way and that you don’t view yourself as a shill.
You’re still confusing two completely different things: privacy and anonymity. Encryption protects the content of messages, not every piece of metadata around an account. Proton has always been clear about that.
In the 404 Media case, the identification came from payment information, not from Proton breaking encryption. If someone pays with a credit card, their identity is already tied to the account. That would happen with any provider under legal jurisdiction.
Honestly, the way you’re framing this suggests you don’t really understand how encryption, metadata, and OPSEC work. Encryption ≠ anonymity. Anyone who actually works in security knows that.
They gave payment data to the authorities, because, guess what, they HAVE to provide whatever is subpoenaed. Did they provide emails, IP addresses? Doesn’t say any of that. There’s the option of paying with crypto, but the imbeciles that know they are going to be at risk of being found, paid with a credit or debit card.
404 media is more of the same sensationalism laden bullshit out there. Make a fucking Strom out of a drop of water.
