A court record reviewed by 404 Media shows privacy-focused email provider Proton Mail handed over payment data related to a Stop Cop City email account to the Swiss government, which handed it to the FBI.
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.
Not at all. Proton doesn’t require any personal info at all. But if you pay with a credit card… That has your personal info tied to it. It’s their fuck up paying with a credit card. Proton accepts other payment methods that aren’t tied to your identity.
Proton is required by law to provide information they have when the courts say so.
So I’m not a criminal organization as far as I know, but if I did pay with a credit card originally can that be rectified without deleting and starting over?
Proton uses Chargebee for payments, which has its own data retention policy of essentially “as long as we want to”, but Proton does themselves keep limited data like the billing name, and last 4 digits.
Proton’s privacy policy says nothing about a pre-set time delay after which they’d delete that data. They only claim that they “reserve our right” to remove your payment information if they think it’s no longer valid. So theoretically, that might mean if your card’s expiry date has passed, but that’s not a confirmation.
The best way to reliably make sure Proton wouldn’t have any info on you is to not have ever tied any real information about yourself or your payment info to that account.
On the one hand, I really like how often Proton’s shortcomings are highlighted. This SHOULD be a wake up call that you should never rely on a company to protect you and should instead focus on what you can do to ptorect yourself. And Proton… actually are pretty good in that regard. Connect from a burner/live image computer over public wifi using tor (or something similar) and their free accounts are STILL the gold standard for journalism and whistleblowers.
But the problem is that people are stupid and lazy (and many outlets actively benefit from "Eww, proton is bad. If only they had paid for NordVPN to really protect them from the FBI! ~Note, NordVPN provides no guarantees of protection~ ". So we just get stupidity.
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.
Really, this headline should be “Organization so poorly organized that they messed up having relatively secure email.”
Not at all. Proton doesn’t require any personal info at all. But if you pay with a credit card… That has your personal info tied to it. It’s their fuck up paying with a credit card. Proton accepts other payment methods that aren’t tied to your identity.
Proton is required by law to provide information they have when the courts say so.
So I’m not a criminal organization as far as I know, but if I did pay with a credit card originally can that be rectified without deleting and starting over?
Proton uses Chargebee for payments, which has its own data retention policy of essentially “as long as we want to”, but Proton does themselves keep limited data like the billing name, and last 4 digits.
Proton’s privacy policy says nothing about a pre-set time delay after which they’d delete that data. They only claim that they “reserve our right” to remove your payment information if they think it’s no longer valid. So theoretically, that might mean if your card’s expiry date has passed, but that’s not a confirmation.
The best way to reliably make sure Proton wouldn’t have any info on you is to not have ever tied any real information about yourself or your payment info to that account.
@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.
Gift cards don’t work for me. Guess I need one ordered from outside the US.
Mullvad accepts cash.
And Monero.
Does Proton Mail?
Is there a link you could share?
https://account.proton.me/mail/signup
Yup
Hopefully people like you will be able to nip this in the bud before yet another joke of a controversy starts…
You must be new here…
On the one hand, I really like how often Proton’s shortcomings are highlighted. This SHOULD be a wake up call that you should never rely on a company to protect you and should instead focus on what you can do to ptorect yourself. And Proton… actually are pretty good in that regard. Connect from a burner/live image computer over public wifi using tor (or something similar) and their free accounts are STILL the gold standard for journalism and whistleblowers.
But the problem is that people are stupid and lazy (and many outlets actively benefit from "Eww, proton is bad. If only they had paid for NordVPN to really protect them from the FBI! ~Note, NordVPN provides no guarantees of protection~ ". So we just get stupidity.
OP’s title certainly doesn’t help.