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.

I saw this over on reddit and people complaining that they “betrayed” their user base. It’s amazing how many people think just because they’re privacy based that means they won’t respond to a lawful court order.

  • Chloé 🥕@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    356·
    24 hours ago

    i don’t see this as “proton being the bad guy”, or them “betraying their userbase”, i see this as proton being fundamentally unable to offer the kinds of service they claim to offer

    they’re a lot better than google or microsoft, for sure, but still not fully private. if you have any important privacy requirements, don’t rely on big commercial services. this goes to others like tutanota, too (in fact there’s credible evidence that tuta is a honeypot lol)

      • Chloé 🥕@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        3·
        11 hours ago

        an RCMP intelligence official testified in court that it was a honeypot

        That counterpart, according to Ortis, briefed him about a “storefront” that was being created to attract criminal targets to an online encryption service. A storefront, said Ortis, is a fake business or entity, either online or bricks-and-mortar, set up by police or intelligence agencies.

        The plan, he said, was to have criminals use the storefront — an online end-to-end encryption service called Tutanota — to allow authorities to collect intelligence about them.

        “So if targets begin to use that service, the agency that’s collecting that information would be able to feed it back, that information, into the Five Eyes system, and then back into the RCMP,” Ortis said.

        source

        of course tuta replied, with their reply basically being “no we’re not, you have no proof”. so.

    • Broken@lemmy.mlEnglish
      191·
      22 hours ago

      I agree with your first sentiment, proton’s not the bad guy here.

      I disagree with your second sentiment, that they are unable to services they claim to.

      They never claim to make you anonymous. They claim to offer privacy focused services, helping you stay private and not selling your information for profit like big tech does. Privacy is not anonymity.

      If you want to be a ghost you need to take far stricter measures than buying a proton account.