this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2025
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411
ProtonMail Logged IP Address of French Activist; Should You Be Worried About Your Privacy? (beebom.com)
submitted 1 day ago by themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] ook@discuss.tchncs.de 23 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What data? Here it is the IP address and only under order by authorities.

I feel ever since the social media shitstorm people love to pile on Proton for anything. They never said they won't comply with law enforcment, did they?

[–] Dojan@pawb.social 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

What data? Here it is the IP address and only under order by authorities.

Whatever they gather. It says as much in the article; they started recording IPs once a request by the Swiss government came through.

ProtonMail can’t directly share data with foreign governments. In fact, doing so is illegal under Article 271 of the Swiss Criminal code. The police gained access to the IP address because Swiss authorities chose to cooperate with the French government. ProtonMail also points out how Swiss authorities will only approve requests that meet Swiss legal standards.

Under Swiss law, ProtonMail should notify the user if a third party makes a request for their private data and if the data is for a criminal proceeding. However, there’s a big catch/ loophole here. On its law enforcement page, ProtonMail highlights that the notification can be delayed in the following cases:

That's based on the currently available laws. So if a law gets drafted that says "if we suspect someone to be complicit in criminal activity we want you to gather more data" we should just be fine with that because the authorities say so? Because the authorities are always infallible and incorruptible, right?

The details of this individual case isn't the problem, it's the precedent it sets that is. When Mullvad got raided for their logs there was nothing recovered because they don't store anything. Proton stores things based on if the authorities ask them to, and when they find out that it wasn't a terrorist or child-trafficker they go "woops we had no idea the account belonged to a climate activist."

The authorities aren't infallible. Some years back here in Sweden we had police raid, physically abuse, and kidnap a guy they suspected was a pedophile because he'd sent images of him and his 30 year old boyfriend having sex via Yahoo Mail. There's no reality where this man should've been fucking beaten up and traumatised the way he was, but it happened, and there was no recourse for him. Nowhere down the chain of responsibility did anyone get reprimanded or investigated for misconduct.

Complying with the law is such a bullshit fucking excuse.

[–] Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

ProtonMail does not log things by default, but they can still be court ordered to do so by swiss authorities - if you want to run any business at all, you have to submit to a jurisdiction, you can only choose which one to run under. And even if your chosen authority is alright by itself, it can still be misled by other jurisdictions like the French did, using the terror-cudgel against climate activists.

I can also recall that in this case Proton said that had their user actually bothered to use any VPN, even Proton's, there wouldn't have been anything to give to authorities except for an exit node IP.

[–] Dojan@pawb.social -1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Proton said that had their user actually bothered to use any VPN, even Proton’s, there wouldn’t have been anything to give to authorities except for an exit node IP.

"She shouldn't have dressed that way."

Proton could do better, and it's ridiculous that there are people out here okay with them not doing better.

[–] Arcka@midwest.social 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Our legal entity is in Sweden, where the law does not allow for any government to force us to spy on our users.

You'll agree that Proton doing better would require them to move to a different country, right?

Also Mullvad doesn't offer email accounts, does it? Seems that they couldn't have a 'no user data' policy if they did since the emails would be exactly that.

[–] Dojan@pawb.social -1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

You’ll agree that Proton doing better would require them to move to a different country, right?

I'm okay with this. Sweden isn't exactly known as a bastion of freedom. Our current minister of equality (Liberals) is pushing for a porn ban. The EU proposal colloquially called "Chat Control" was originally put forth by the Swedish EU Commissioner Ylva Johansson who belongs to the Social Democrats.

Also Mullvad doesn’t offer email accounts, does it? Seems that they couldn’t have a ‘no user data’ policy if they did since the emails would be exactly that.

You'll forgive me if I don't feel like it's productive to repeat myself, but if you genuinely care for a response you can view it here: https://pawb.social/comment/18804733

Have a good one.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

When Mullvad got raided for their logs there was nothing recovered because they don't store anything.

Mullvad is not a mail provider...?