Has Proton ever posted anything about Tuta? I’m genuinely curious. It’s childish behaviour for companies like Proton and Tuta to make posts like this.
Yeah it’s really a shame, I guess many people would prefer seeing them collaborate to implement cross provider e2ee between proton and tuta or something in the likes.
To the extent that privacy companies such as Proton and Tuta like to throw snark at surveillance capitalism companies like Google, it doesn’t surprise me that they would through some friendly snark at each other.
Personally, for me, the snark thrown at Google, Meta, and their ilk is absolutely justified. I have mixed feelings about privacy companies throwing shade at each other.
It is not clear to me who started it, but I have always wondered why in its privacy alternatives recommendations, Tuta would always omit Proton. And to my understanding, they did that because Proton would always omit them in their recommendations, so it seems like Proton started it, though I am not 100% sure.
Either way, I do think it is weird that Lumo would have biases toward Proton, and as a result distort the truth.
French article : L'entreprise technologique genevoise Proton gèle ses investissements en Suisse - rts.ch - Suisse
Google translated : L'entreprise technologique genevoise Proton gèle ses investissements en Suisse - rts.ch - Suisse
Proton prévoit aussi un investissement de plus d’un milliard de francs d’ici la fin de la décennie pour concurrencer Google en Europe. Là, les 900 millions restants pourraient être réinvestis à Genève. Proton ne quittera la Suisse que si elle y est forcée, a souligné son patron.
DeepL :
Proton also plans to invest over a billion francs by the end of the decade to compete with Google in Europe. The remaining 900 million francs could be reinvested in Geneva. Proton will not leave Switzerland unless it is forced to do so, stressed its boss.
They’re at it again!
It’s not clear to me that what Tuta is saying here is actually true. At least not until Switzerland actually changes its laws, if they ever do.
Just realized they wrote a whole blog post linked in their video:
All this talk about EU privacy being better. With all the recent proposals and changes coming to Europe given the few recent stories posted on here, this bragging is going to come back and bite them. Mark my words.
Here before Tuta sovereign-washes themselves despite the implementation of Chat Control and mandated E2EE backdoors!
Oh wait.
I do find it interesting and disappointing that other privacy companies in Switzerland are not commenting about the law that is being proposed. Companies like Tresorit for example. Yes, they don’t necessarily have a product that would force them to share data, but since they are in the privacy business, they should take a stand. Not taking a stand in their position is cowardly.
If Tuta and other companies believe the EU protects privacy better than Switzerland, I don’t have a problem with them defending that position. The question is, is it actually true? And are all EU countries protected equally? I’m not sure about the former, and I am confident that the latter isn’t true
After reading Tuta’s blog post, I have more respect for them. I’m glad they are taking a stand against Switzerland’s invasive surveillance law proposals, and it is clear that they have been doing it for over a decade. It’s not just an opportunity to one-up Proton.
Moreover, given that Switzerland has been introducing more surveillance laws since the early 2010, I cannot imagine that Proton has not considered moving before the latest law proposal was introduced.
Tresorit is a Swiss government project. I have seen other Swiss companies like Nym speak out against this.
I had no idea Tresorit was a Swiss government project. I just read about them on Wikipedia, it appears that they didn’t start as a government project. They were a traditional company until the Swiss post office bought a majority stake, and now it seems they own the company entirely. I guess that explain why they haven’t taken a stance. But still, government institutions can disagree on new policy proposals.
In Tuta’s post that I linked above, they mentioned that Switzerland passed a law in the 2010s that requires ID for sending mail. That is alarming, and when you consider that the Swiss Post office owns Tresorit, I guess we should assume they support surveillance to some degree.
I’m glad other Swiss companies are taking a stand, though.
They should take a look at Seychelles, no retention laws for emails and VPN and all digital communications.
I’d be cautious about Proton moving to Germany. The proposed modernization of the Federal Police Act raises significant privacy concerns that could undermine Proton’s core values.
The new Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) is making a new attempt to allow the federal police to use state Trojans and thus also to be able to monitor unsuspected persons preventively.
According to the proposal, the federal police would be allowed to eavesdrop on digital communications, such as encrypted messengers like WhatsApp, Signal, or Threema, as well as internet phone calls and video calls.
While the law isn’t final, it shows a clear trend in German security policy that is at odds with the privacy and security that Proton and any other privacy respecting project promises its users. Moving to Germany under these circumstances could severely damage user trust.
He also intends to review Palantir’s nationwide usage.
- Sources: https://www.heise.de/news/Dobrindt-Gesetzentwurf-Bundespolizei-soll-Handys-und-Rechner-hacken-duerfen-10507629.html
- https://netzpolitik.org/2025/referentenentwurf-wir-veroeffentlichen-das-neue-bundespolizei-gesetz/
- (Please try to translate it. I haven’t found an English article yet.)
It would be effective to choose an EU location that is not characterised by a high degree of political or social concentration as Jonah already suggested in this thread.
The main reason I decided to pay for ProtonVPN is their secure-core servers in Switzerland.
Not only they actually owned their data-center (comparing with “owned” servers of other VPN providers, who still place them in data-centers out of their control), but they do really have their own internet provider (AS) in Switzerland. It was a killer feature, no other VPN has anything like that.
Couple of months ago all my connections through Proton-owned-CH servers stopped working. I was using wg configs with strict firewall rules for leak-protection, and it plays badly, because solution was not as simple as hitting “Choose other server” button.
At that time I wasn’t physically able to change setup to use other servers quickly enough, so my family left without any internet access for quite a long time.
My relatives didn’t have any desire for a VPN in the first place, but I convinced them it was a good thing and worth some slower ping, some captchas, some completely blocked internet-resourses and some dollars.
But after that situation I decided that I won’t pay for the next year. Now I understand that it was probably caused by their migration process (or not).
Anyway, this owned-infrastructure advantage is gone now, and I see even less sense in paying for ProtonVPN. Maybe if they move to some offshore country, with their reputation it would still be a good VPN choice, but it was clearly stated they are moving to EU, and I don’t see how it makes things any better.
The GDPR is an advantage when used effectively.
Switzerland is not subject to such strict rules, even though its data protection laws are theoretically similar in some respects.
Switzerland jurisdiction is their main marketing point, I believe. Together with their CERN legacy for some reason, lol.
They actively positioned Switzerland as country that clearly better for a VPN provider than any other country. I believed them.
There are tons of EU-based VPN providers, some are pretty decent and reputable, and I don’t see any reasons to pay for Proton, when there is Mullvad, which has more advanced features. Aside for the price at the sale maybe.
But looking at the direction EU is going, I’m inclined to buy from some cheap and reputable enough provider based in some 3rd world (non-authoritarian) country.
Or just to stop using VPN completely.
Yes, of course you can choose other VPN solutions.
However, Proton’s Business model is based on selling a variety of products as an ecosystem. They do not specialise in a single product.
Ensuring the security, privacy and quality of all these products is a huge undertaking, which is why selecting a suitable new location is so important.
Unlike Google, for example, Proton does not have such an easy source of income from simply analysing and selling large amounts of user data, which, unfortunately, is very valuable.
Source? It is exaggerated to say so, even if the Swiss Post (which is a private company now) is detained by the state), because of the special status of the Swiss Post. The Swiss government owns Swiss Post only to the extent that it is its sole shareholder. DeepL says it’s legal status translates to “public limited company”.
Yes, that is how ownership works…