Here’s the problem and I’ve said this before. No company executive is going to risk going to jail to defend you. Doesn’t matter if it’s Proton and Tuta. I think PG should try to steer people away from email. Usage should be kept at the bare minimum. Of course, they’ll follow all lawful orders.While I do believe Proton would do everything possible in court to resist handing the information out, if the judge says hand over the data, they will. What will you do then?
@jonah, is there a way to get a Proton and Tuta rep to participate here rather than just relying on Reddit?
For existing users, who have made the mistake of using a credit card to pay and gave Proton/Tuta a recovery email, is there a way to remove it? Will any of these companies work with its users to clean up their accounts to remove all identifiable information?
I will try and get someone from the Proton team to respond in here, but I would imagine there’s not much more they can add from the comment posted on Reddit.
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As a community, we need to demand both Proton and Tutanota give us the options to clean up our accounts. I’m glad that Proton cleared things up in their response, but just because we paid with a credit card once doesn’t mean that information should stay on the account forever. I’m officially going to stop sending any emails from both Proton and Tutanota until this is resolved. I might even close my accounts.
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I get what you’re saying and I wish the same, but it’s not as simple as that. Under Swiss law, Proton (and other Swiss companies) have to keep payment information up to 10 years per Article 958f of the Swiss Code of Obligations. It’s up to the user at the end of the day to manage their threat model and opsec.
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Is it confirmed that Proton has to keep it for ten years? No way around that? Damn! What happens if I delete my account? Sounds like I’ll be done with my current Proton account.
Poor OPSEC set up is on the user. Proton and Tuta offer private payment options. And provide ability to fully maximize your privacy and anonymity. In this case, the activist did not follow and set it up properly. That’s on the user.
What would you have Proton do? Break the law and not provide details it had for a legal order?
What you and everyone should know: the company/any company can only give info they have. If you can use a service they provide without providing any info, that’s what you should be doing if you’re going to be engaging in sensitive acts as an activist.
This is like being mad at Proton for your account being hacked because you did not have 2FA and used your birthday for your password. Buddy.. that’s on you then.
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Also, speak for yourself only please. Claiming to speak on behalf of a community makes you come off as more pretentious than actually knowledgeable. Sorry, no one else will say it but it needs to be corrected. I can’t believe I am the only one feeling icky about being included in someone else’s comment without even a general community consensus on a new news item.
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Once a card is removed from an account that information is deleted.
EDIT: to clarify that, we will know you paid in the past and with credit card, but we don’t store the card details for past transactions.
As above:
For users who want maximum anonymity: use Proton VPN or Tor, pay with cash or cryptocurrency, and don’t add a recovery email.
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How can this be? Don’t businesses need to store financial records?
Your response feels too good to be true. Are you sure that’s the actual way your systems are set up?
How would you ever survive an audit from a credit card company if this was the case? How would you address a chargeback from a customer who deleted their card?
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If just feels so disingenuous to read this statement when items were already addressed as not being sufficient, but seemingly ignored.
Proton VPN - Leaks your IP address
The use of “Cryptocurrency” is effectively just Bitcoin. XMR was never implemented to be able to fund your account with XMR credits, and is not available for most service plans. Only Proton Pass is available at a significant mark-up.
The vast majority of cryptocurrencies operate on a transparent blockchain, meaning that every transaction’s details are public knowledge. This includes most well-known cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Source
In my opinion, a recovery email could be stored more securely. I guess there is no reason to re-iterate the very well authored dark pattern post, but I’ll link it once more.
Even if you do decide to switch to BTC or Cash as a your new payment method - it’s not possible to delete your credit card while still subscribed.
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Well, maybe you should change your payment system then. With a subscription for a year I cant remove my credit card.
“Please add another payment method or cancel your subscription first”
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So this case involved a user with an active recurring payment?
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AFAIK, Proton stores a payment token and some essential transaction details (transaction ID, amount, date, currency and last 4-digits of the card), but does not store the full card details.
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Most services don’t let you change your payment method unless you cancel the subscription or add a new payment method, because the subscription is tied to the payment token that was generated when you first added a card. That token is what the billing system (and the payment processor) uses to charge you each cycle.
For me, that limitation feels reasonable—but, as @CarefulMouse pointed out, even after adding a cryptocurrency/cash payment method as the primary option, you still can’t delete the previously‑saved card. That restriction doesn’t make sense to me.
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There is no meaningful difference there though. If you have that data you can then ask the card company for the rest.
And to be clear I actually don’t think proton did anything ”wrong” here, I just don’t think anonymity via credit card payment should be assumed by anyone.
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Aside from cash, there isn’t an anonymous payment option for Proton services, since they don’t support Monero and BTC isn’t private. That’s the main reason I stopped using Proton services last year.
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Totally fair!
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I 100% agree with you they should accept Monero, but Monero–>Bitcoin–>Proton is anonymous. It is not private, but it is anonymous.
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IMHO, THE HEADLINE IS ACCURATE
I disagree. Words have meaning. How you use them matters, and this headline to me strikes accurate. Proton helped the FBI. They helped an FBI investigation. The fact that they didn’t directly hand over the user’s info to the FBI is irrelevant. The original request was made by the FBI, and they got the information they asked for from the Swiss government who compelled Proton to do so.
Yes, Proton followed the law. Nobody is saying they should have disobeyed the law. But the truth is this: most Proton users are unaware of all the types of information Proton holds that are not E2EE and that can be shared with authorities. And in my opinion, that is partly Proton’s fault because Proton is not completely upfront about it.
By that I mean that Proton doesn’t share ALL that information in their marketing or make it easily available on their website. It’s not front and center. They are open about the fact that some of the metadata around your emails is not E2EE, but that doesn’t cover everything. There are a lot of things they have NOT communicated in their marketing or on their website that you have to ask to know the answer.
I am sure that a lot of people here had no idea that your recovery email address could identify you until the controversy about that Spanish activist who was identified through their Apple ID that they used as recovery.
Some companies keep records of the information you delete, and we don’t know the full details of that. For example, 1Password keeps a record of all the email addresses you used with your account even after you change it. I had to ask Proton to find out if they keep records of deleted recovery email addresses. It was not in their marketing nor on their website. I don’t believe that has changed.
PROTON BARES SOME RESPONSIBILITY AND CAN DO BETTER
Who said the activist expected to be anonymous? We don’t know that.
In my opinion, as with many companies, there is a significant gap between Proton’s marketing messaging and what they actually deliver in terms of protection. Ideally that gap should be tiny, but many people, understandably, only retain what is in the marketing.
If Proton were forthright about what they don’t protect in their marketing and communication on social media and websites, we would be less upset about these cases.
I understand that Proton is rightly obeying the law. But the reason these controversies look bad is because there is a lack of transparency and lack of effort to protect users’ privacy. I suspect that Proton doesn’t want to be so transparent that it hurts their marketing efforts, but I still believe that more transparency and better efforts to protect user privacy would go a long way.
I disagree that there isn’t much Proton can do. There is actually a lot.
- Be transparent about ALL the things that can be shared about users in full detail.
- Be transparent about ALL the information that you retain and for how long.
- Make that information clear, explicit, comprehensive, and easy to find.
Put it in your marketing. Let people see it when they sign up and easily find this information when they visit your website. Include it in the welcome email.
- Make your credit card payments anonymous like Posteo.
Posteo is a private email provider based in Germany, and they have found a way to NOT connect the data that they receive during credit card payments with your email account with them.
They have been doing this since 2009! Why can’t Proton follow this model?
- Accept anonymous payments.
Contrary to popular belief, Proton does not accept anonymous payments.
And that is a big problem.
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