# Infomaniak breaks rank and comes out in support of controversial Swiss encryption law **URL:** https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/infomaniak-breaks-rank-and-comes-out-in-support-of-controversial-swiss-encryption-law/28065 **Category:** News **Created:** 2025-06-05T15:03:26Z **Posts:** 34 ## Post 1 by @commapause — 2025-06-05T15:03:26Z I just read this bombshell article on Tom’s Guide: > **[Privacy providers clash over controversial proposals to change Swiss...](https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/vpns/infomaniak-breaks-rank-and-comes-out-in-support-of-controversial-swiss-encryption-law)** > > The law could have a significant impact on VPNs As a French speaker, I went to verify the TV and radio interviews mentioned in Tom’s Guide and it’s truly shocking. Everyone should immediately dump Infomaniak. Here are some quotes from Infomaniak’s spokesperson, on [Swiss national TV](https://www.rts.ch/play/tv/forum/video/succes-dinfomaniak-le-fournisseur-suisse-de-services-cloud-interview-de-thomas-jacobsen?urn=urn:rts:video:1e5a3af0-bb0b-3ba2-9d56-34842591ee9c) and [Radio](https://www.rts.ch/play/tv/les-beaux-parleurs/video/faire-bonne-figure?urn=urn:rts:video:f357b48c-e80a-3330-b5c6-972e254d401f): > **“Today’s Internet is not yesterday’s Internet, and we still have companies offering free services that enable people to be completely anonymous, to encrypt their content and to be completely opaque when it comes to the law. This poses a problem, and it’s only right that the Swiss justice department should do its job.”** > **“Anonymity is a no-no, because if there’s a legal problem, we can’t do the job…. We’re not talking about accessing the contents of emails, but tracking exchanges, just to be able to track people down, …it’s necessary.”** > **“We speak about metadata, it doesn’t threaten encryption, and what the revision of the law is asking for is simply to make it impossible to create a completely anonymous identity to do unlawful activities that could not be prosecuted. Somehow, in “real life”, we would not accept this: as evidence, when we create a phone number with a SIM card, it is mandatory to provide an ID card and it’s exactly for the same reason.”** Infomaniak, a company that positions itself as “ethical”, and one who built a brand based on user security and privacy, is now publicly supporting the Swiss government’s move to **force VPN and email providers to log user data** and collect PII. I think the quotes speak for themselves, but TLDR they are explicitly calling for: - Mandatory metadata retention - A blanket ban on anonymity online - Making free & encrypted services subservient to the Swiss justice department This is completely disqualifying, and it’s important to spread the word, because there are posts where Infomaniak is recommended as a good option for activists and privacy sensitive people. IMO they should never be recommended because unlike other service providers talked about here (i.e. Proton), they don’t use end-to-end encryption, so they have access to all of your data, and now it seems they are apparently eager to hand it over to the government. Just to clarify how insane this is, the legal change they want to see in Switzerland would: - Require MANDATORY retention of all metadata & last connection info. - Outright ban no-logs VPNs - Require ID for all cloud services when registering - Require companies to automatically hand over data to the govt. with no chance to appeal, no court order needed. You can read more in-depth on this topic itself here (it’s in Swiss German but you can translate):[https://www.republik.ch/2025/05/07/die-schweiz-ist-drauf-und-dran-autoritaere-ueberwachungsstaaten-zu-kopieren](https://www.republik.ch/2025/05/07/die-schweiz-ist-drauf-und-dran-autoritaere-ueberwachungsstaaten-zu-kopieren) Infomaniak is, in effect, calling for a police state and elimination of all personal privacy rights online. Outrageous. As the TG article suggests, Proton & others are on the right side of this and fighting the proposal Infomaniak supports. They are resisting, have rejected the proposal, and stated that they will leave Switzerland if this passes: [Surveillance: le géant des mails cryptés Proton prêt à quitter Genève | Tribune de Genève](https://www.tdg.ch/surveillance-le-geant-des-mails-cryptes-proton-pret-a-quitter-geneve-947402188210) I think it is clear who can be trusted and who cannot be trusted. Looking forward to your thoughts on this also, especially if anyone here is using the kSuite. --- ## Post 2 by @KevPham — 2025-06-05T15:13:37Z Terrifying. Thanks for sharing to the forum and offering your insights from the French-language articles. How widespread is infomaniak anyways? Are their user-facing services, such as K Mail and KSuite, even worth discussion at the first place? I haven’t heard of them before but curious to hear your thoughts on their products. --- ## Post 3 by @commapause — 2025-06-05T15:23:19Z I’m surprised you haven’t heard of them – they do get mentioned on here from time to time, and some forum members have recommended them, despite not being E2EE. Their suite is a lot more ‘complete’ I’d say, especially thanks to kMeet/kChat. Still, I would say lately they have been benefiting a lot on the Mail and Cloud Storage front when it comes to user-facing products, which is especially obvious when you lurk mainstream subreddits or even recently growing ones like deGoogle. I particularly find it mindblowing that a Swiss company would go against the grain of so many of their competitors, like Threema/Proton, and so on, when the signals have been so loud that people don’t want this, and the companies themselves don’t want it either. --- ## Post 4 by @anon80779245 — 2025-06-05T15:57:10Z It’s appalling how he doesn’t understand that a backdoor is for everyone and not only for the good guy. They say that “swiss and european citizens don’t want to bear responsibility for justice issues, such as the r\*pe of a girl, because [investigators] cannot track the network”. Yet, he also claims that should China ask for information to Swiss trough Interpol, infomaniak would then protect users that are climate, humanitarian or democratic activists. So you think that because you are advocating for the law now, swiss courts would say “Oh, this request for information on an activist is to infomaniak, so we will go soft on them”? No, you will have to comply, and with all the metadata you will have to store, many info will be known of those activists. --- ## Post 5 by @commapause — 2025-06-05T16:27:02Z Naive all around :person_facepalming: --- ## Post 6 by @arise1984 — 2025-06-05T16:41:03Z They’re basically saying anonymity are for criminals. Yep people should dump them and shouldn’t be recommending them for just that absurd notion alone. Personally i used to thought they’re an okay-ish provider. Obviously not on par with proton or tuta since theres no e2e but also not as obvious horrible as google or microsoft. Their storage offerings are dirt cheap, useable for clientside manual encryption via cryptomator and such. Their privacy policy while mentioned they do collect PII are understandable considering they’re a domain registrar bound with icann contract for kyc-ing domain registrant but this call of support mandatory metadata retention is really bad faith. Way to shoot yourself in the foot distancing yourself from your original userbase target with the self proclaimed “ethical”. Disgusting people. --- ## Post 7 by @anon80779245 — 2025-06-05T20:19:17Z There was a comment on Linkedin of someone saying he felt betrayed for recommending infoManiak to his customers --- ## Post 8 by @lorenzo12 — 2025-06-07T09:57:48Z I have 10+ domains and VPS there, someone knows a valid privacy respecting alternative to migrate? Possibly Swiss and not Njalla --- ## Post 9 by @jonah — 2025-06-09T04:50:28Z [I am highly unconvinced](https://x.com/privacy_guides/status/1931931134113230894?s=46), but they did post a response: > **[Our View on the Second Revision of the LSCPT Ordinances • Infomaniak](https://news.infomaniak.com/en/viewpoint-lscpt/)** > > Infomaniak’s official position on the second revision of the LSCPT ordinances, which in its current form lacks safeguards against mass surveillance. --- ## Post 10 by @GreenAlligator — 2025-06-09T10:29:43Z “The company defends a responsible digital model: no total anonymity” ok, bye? :joy: I can also agree with them that **they** don’t want anonymous users, but demanding that anonymous users shouldn’t exist is a strong opinion that in my view has no “excuses.” --- ## Post 11 by @CarefulMouse — 2025-06-09T11:28:31Z Despite that being a direct quote, they actually doubled down and accused Andy Yen of spreading false information. Unbelievable. --- ## Post 12 by @anon80779245 — 2025-06-09T11:49:16Z Thread on Twitter [https://xcancel.com/infomaniak/status/1931658700743135261#m](https://xcancel.com/infomaniak/status/1931658700743135261#m) --- ## Post 13 by @TinFoilHat — 2025-06-09T11:52:24Z > Since its founding, Infomaniak has always committed to retaining only the data our clients consciously choose to store with us — in full respect of their privacy So do they really allow user to choose what to store with them, encrypted or unencrypted? If the post office in my city tells me they will automatically collect and retain all the metadata of my every mail, i would walk away immediately. --- ## Post 14 by @r3m8 — 2025-06-09T13:48:59Z I’ve translated all their speeches, and they’re changing positions to keep the boat from sinking. But the substance remains the same : they indirectly support the surveillance order (saying that regulation is needed on several occasions) and their position on the blog has nothing to do with their own words a few days ago. **Andy Yen was able to see my transcript and may write a right of reply soon**. Don’t put the spotlight on Infomaniak’s response ; it clearly hides their game. They attack Proton repeatedly on the radio. > Having just read the transcript thanks for @\_r3m8, the accusation of false information is a bold one. There are so many falsehoods in that transcript I am tempted to exercise our right of reply. [https://x.com/andyyen/status/1932066617841877106](https://x.com/andyyen/status/1932066617841877106) I have highlighted the most problematic arguments in my thread : [https://x.com/\_r3m8/status/1931775986145628443](https://x.com/_r3m8/status/1931775986145628443) The full transcription in french is available here : [#### Tomas Jacobson responsable communication chez Infomaniak (RTS.ch)https: - Pastebin.com](https://pastebin.com/M0UVwL7c). I’d like to make it clear that I’ve written everything by hand to avoid any potential mistakes that an AI might make. Anyone who can translate this text is welcome to do so. --- ## Post 15 by @anon80779245 — 2025-06-09T14:33:38Z Thank you for the quite detailed thread. --- ## Post 16 by @KevPham — 2025-06-09T14:49:21Z > [@r3m8](#): > > They attack Proton repeatedly on the radio. Motivations could not be clearer. If this law comes into effect, Informaniak gets to harm their main competitors in this market even if said product offerings don’t have feature parity with Proton’s services. If you think about it, they’re gunning their entire strategy on “Buy EU” and data governance rather than offering E2EE --- ## Post 17 by @jonah — 2025-06-09T14:58:01Z > [@r3m8](#): > > and their position on the blog has nothing to do with their own words a few days ago. I do agree, but I was mainly saying that their new position on their blog is _still_ bad lol --- ## Post 18 by @r3m8 — 2025-06-09T15:26:56Z I agree. I don’t want to cry scandal, but they make a lot of reference to the problem of the presence of US software in E.U. and Switzerland. And it’s a problem, I think the privacy community is totally convinced of the problem. This is what Infomaniak says very clearly ; according to them, we (privacy focused communities) won’t have anything to do with the presence of U.S. software in our applications under the cloud act. _Lol do they know what they’re talking about ?_ Here is one of the many problematic excerpts that reveals their position very clearly, translated word for word : > [_…_] is to ask the question : why Microsoft and Google [_Infomaniak implies that nobody cares_] and why are we attacking a law like this [_the surveillance order_], which is necessary, which is old and which needs to be modernized ? > As a company, we don’t have to be for or against [_the surveillance order_]. So our position is fairly neutral, like Switzerland. **“necessary”** , **“needs to be modernized”**. Now in their blog : **We are opposed to this revision as it stands**. :exploding_head: I’d go further, but remain cautious ; perhaps their stance can help them seduce public institutions, particularly European ones, with their desire for a “happy medium”. They’ve accused Proton of focusing money (and it’s false), when in fact it’s they who are looking for customers. I really hope it’s not true, but it could look like this. --- ## Post 19 by @PurpleDime — 2025-06-09T15:36:45Z > [@KevPham](#): > > Are their user-facing services, such as K Mail and KSuite, even worth discussion at the first place? To think I’ve been considering signing up for **KMail** as part of my email strategy. The only reason I’ve been stalling is because they require a phone number. This is extremely disappointing. Even though **KMail** is not E2EE, I had heard that they were planning on implementing it. But these comments from the head of the company shows that they clearly don’t care about privacy. If they did, they would at least criticize **Proton** on solid grounds, but those statements were so misinformed. If you are going to compete in the privacy market, at least know what your competition is all about. One thing that always bothered me with **Infomaniak** is that they heavily market themselves as private, and to me, it is unthinkable to do that when you don’t have E2EE. Especially when you know **Proton** and **Tuta** exist. --- ## Post 20 by @KevPham — 2025-06-09T15:48:02Z > [@PurpleDime](#): > > One thing that always bothered me with **Infomaniak** is that they heavily market themselves as private, and to me, it is unthinkable to do that when you don’t have E2EE. Especially when you know **Proton** and **Tuta** exist. Were they planning to pull a Pavel Durov and not respond to FBI legal requests or something? Or is this “privacy” marketing nonsense backed by them promising not to sell your personal data to advertisers? Maybe that latter is enforceable through a good privacy policy. To be honest, I have no idea what their unique value proposition is besides being European-based! --- ## Post 21 by @PurpleDime — 2025-06-09T16:02:27Z > [@KevPham](#): > > Were they planning to pull a Pavel Durov and not respond to FBI legal requests or something? Or is this “privacy” marketing nonsense backed by them promising not to sell your personal data to advertisers? Maybe that latter is enforceable through a good privacy policy. It’s more of the latter. **Infomaniak** is apparently Switzerland’s largest web hosting company, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that gives them an easy in into the E-Mail/Cloud/Office market. At least in Europe. [There was a discussion about it on **TechLore**](https://discuss.techlore.tech/t/so-infomaniak-is-bad/13574) just a couple of months ago. --- ## Post 22 by @epoberezkin — 2025-06-11T18:00:58Z As I said/wrote on many occasions - there is no such thing as the ideal jurisdiction that would respect users privacy and security. The only viable model for the end users remaining in control of their communications is the network combining multiple small operators, where identities of these operators are known (so they can’t consolidate without end users knowing, like Tor or Session nodes can), and that are located in different jurisdictions. --- ## Post 23 by @commapause — 2025-06-11T18:51:43Z Quick update as I’ve just spotted it on [the top of r/privacy](https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1l8xohr/infomaniak_employees_response_to_supporting_mass/): # Infomaniak employee’s response to supporting mass surveillance: “Are you a war criminal? No? Then why worry?” It seems that this person had their GitHub linked on their Reddit profile… ![1](//forum-uploads.privacyguidesusercontent.com/original/2X/4/4b5a82f8e62cc2c815da3d3b5080b864399a35b2.png) ![2](//forum-uploads.privacyguidesusercontent.com/original/2X/2/234e79a9a5305617f7cdb0bd513efd794f898d86.png) --- ## Post 24 by @anon80779245 — 2025-06-11T19:05:32Z Tbf, we shouldn’t view this as an official response. After all, you had to link with their GitHub profile to find this link out. --- ## Post 25 by @commapause — 2025-06-11T19:45:33Z I still think it’s a bit weird to reply as an employee of the company in question and try to defend the awful stance they have taken, **on a privacy subreddit** , and also while referring to the company as “they”. Disingenuous at best, and still very subversive thing to try to do. I also think it offers some insight into the wider culture at the company, which is something always worth considering when choosing vendors. I’m not really looking at it as an ‘official response’, but an interesting tidbit from someone who works at a company that prides themselves on being “ethical” and different from Big Tech adversaries. --- ## Post 26 by @K3 — 2025-06-12T10:09:19Z Last night, noticing the growing interest in this post, I saved the reddit page of the profile “THE\_BATTER” because I was sure he would delete all his comments the next day (which indeed happened). So attached here are the screenshots of the comments he had posted. ![Reddit 2](//forum-uploads.privacyguidesusercontent.com/original/2X/d/d680bd63140b0d0e5e2f24dbb8d0558dea505949.png) I don’t understand why the post was deleted on reddit. Link to post: [Reddit - The heart of the internet](http://reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1l8xohr/infomaniak_employees_response_to_supporting_mass/) In addition to that, I wanted to come back one last time to the words of Infomaniak’s spokesperson during a broadcast on Swiss radio and television (link to the broadcast, starts at 55:28: [Faire bonne figure - Les beaux parleurs - Play RTS](https://www.rts.ch/play/tv/les-beaux-parleurs/video/faire-bonne-figure?urn=urn:rts:video:f357b48c-e80a-3330-b5c6-972e254d401f)). At 59:16, just after the spokesman had criticized skepticism about a proposed surveillance law - citing Switzerland as a model of democracy - a participant pointed out that the same country had recently surveilled all its citizens. The spokesman, however, completely ignored the remark and quickly moved on. Or at 1:08:27, the spokesman says he also has a free proton email address, but only uses it for, and I quote, “junk mail” or “if I’m going to do illegal activities, that’s the first email address I’m going to use”. Or at 1:09:07, talking about proton mail, he said, and I quote, "the question is what service do we want to support, do we also want to protect pedophiles or networks that are undesirable? And then he goes on to point out that the prisons are full, etc etc. And these are just a few examples of the many shocking things said by this Infomaniak spokesman. I’ve been an Infomaniak customer for more than 3 years, I’ve really appreciated their products and have often tended to recommend their products to those who want a simple alternative to Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc.. 2 years ago, I migrated to proton for their E2EE, while keeping a close eye on the development of these 2 companies. And as a French-speaking Swiss (living near Geneva where Infomaniak and Proton have their headquarters), the impression I get is that Infomaniak is trying to publicly harm Proton. They are indeed competitors, but in this broadcast, instead of fighting with Proton to maintain privacy in Switzerland, the spokesman criticized Proton so much, saying that their service was largely used by criminals and that Proton was preventing justice from doing its job, that I’m really sincerely astonished by this stance and behavior. And lastly, not to make this post even longer, the fact that this Infomaniak employee has deleted all these comments gives me the impression that Infomaniak is hiding a whole other game than what it claims to be doing. This attempt to completely discredit their competitor Proton instead of focusing on the Swiss law proposal, makes me think that Infomaniak has only one thing in mind, expand no matter how. I’d be happy to read your thoughts on this :slight_smile: --- ## Post 27 by @Hiddn — 2025-06-12T12:15:53Z Hmm… You should save this page too. Who knows what can happen… :thinking: --- ## Post 28 by @arise1984 — 2025-06-12T14:38:24Z The more i think about what infomaniak are doing, the more i somehow see they’re trying to gain the favor of the swiss government. Maybe to grab a govt contract or something. Basically a sellout. They clearly did a bait and switch with their “ethical” tagline. --- ## Post 29 by @PurpleDime — 2025-06-12T14:50:08Z I didn’t even know **Infomaniak** had a Subreddit. Thank you for your service! Yeah, this company is not to be trusted. --- ## Post 30 by @CarefulMouse — 2025-06-13T10:13:50Z As noted several Reddit posts were removed, but I found this now removed post by Andy Yen interesting. You can still find it on his profile under [u/Andy1011000](https://old.reddit.com/user/andy1011000). Unfortunately I don’t have the context of the comment being replied to. > The problem is that’s not how it would work and they are either ignorant, or intentionally lying about it. The revised proposal they voiced support for would require automated mass metadata retention that would be indiscriminate, which would capture everybody’s data, even if you are not suspected of a crime. Furthermore, the proposal would require automated giving data to the police, without court order, and with no possibility to oppose. The police would decide who is an activist or not, and we know many people who are actual activists would simply be deemed to be criminals to get their data. This article goes in depth into this: [Die Schweiz ist drauf und dran, Überwachungsstaaten zu kopieren – Republik](https://www.republik.ch/2025/05/07/die-schweiz-ist-drauf-und-dran-autoritaere-ueberwachungsstaaten-zu-kopieren) This is why Proton is fighting this proposal. --- ## Post 31 by @Mitel — 2025-06-16T15:49:16Z Just listened the show. Seems that this guy from Infomaniak was absolutely not ready for this talk. The only argument he brings on the table is, we have one of the best democracy in the world and we should trust our government. And as you said, at 59:16, the participant pointed out that we should not because this same government surveilled citizens last year. He just affirmed that yes, it’s true (“Voilà”), but we should still trust them. At 01:04:13, he also said that Infomanik is neutral when it comes to this new law. But if you are neutral and don’t care about it, why did you come on the show in order to preach in favor of this new law ? Honestly, I can’t find anything to explain why they are preaching for this law. I can’t see what they will win except the government’s favor. We live in the same area so we can have a beer moment with the\_batteur and talk about it ahah --- ## Post 32 by @commapause — 2025-06-18T09:13:18Z As of Tuesday, 17th of June 2025, Infomaniak added a new page to their website stating that they are now offering encrypted emails: [Email encryption is available for all Infomaniak email addresses • Infomaniak](https://news.infomaniak.com/en/email-encryption/) The question is, out of those who heavily rely and depend on encrypted email solutions (think journalists, people in authoritarian regimes, etc), who is going to trust Infomaniak with their information? They’ve already outed themselves and their philosophy on privacy and condemned it. My mind goes back to the employee’s comment, “Are you a terrorist? No? Then why worry?”. What is going to happen when a climate activist, or a journalist on the frontlines of authoritarian regimes, is deemed to be a ‘terrorist’? Does that mean that Infomaniak now gets to dig out everything they have on said person and hand it to the government, no questions asked? Another issue is that, if this ‘encrypted email’ is anything like their kDrive (which is also ‘encrypted’), then it is only server-side encrypted, which means that they technically own the keys and can decrypt all of your emails and data. I strongly DO NOT recommend anyone buy into this company’s marketing and attempt to rehash history. They have outed themselves, and regaining trust is nigh-impossible at this point. --- ## Post 33 by @Regime6045 — 2025-06-18T13:24:29Z > [@commapause](#): > > Another issue is that, if this ‘encrypted email’ is anything like their kDrive (which is also ‘encrypted’), then it is only server-side encrypted, which means that they technically own the keys and can decrypt all of your emails and data. It is explained here: [🚀 Secure an email send by encryption key on the Infomaniak Web Mail app](https://www.infomaniak.com/en/support/faq/1582/secure-an-email-send-by-encryption-key-on-the-infomaniak-web-mail-app) Seems to be based on PGP but only really works between Infomaniak accounts. Not sure if it’s really end-to-end because there doesn’t seem to be a function yet to upload your own PGP key. --- ## Post 34 by @KevPham — 2025-06-18T14:24:22Z > [@commapause](#): > > The question is, out of those who heavily rely and depend on encrypted email solutions (think journalists, people in authoritarian regimes, etc), who is going to trust Infomaniak with their information? They’ve already outed themselves and their philosophy on privacy and condemned it. They don’t care about the average consumer. Infomaniak has always been about gaining the trust and support of enterprise, and especially government customers. They’re probably banking on becoming the main customer of several government offices across the EU while also not having the baggage of being aligned with privacy advocacy organizations.