I no longer trust ProtonMail

The ProtonVPN controversy made things worse, but for me, this was the final straw.

I don’t know about you, but I’m going to be taking a look at Vivaldi’s built-in email client.

I had a feeling that it was too good to be true. I kept asking myself the question about what would happen if the Swiss government did the work of other governments for them. Well, now we know. I’m now 100% convinced that the only privacy that really matters is that the company that hosts my email doesn’t monetize my information because there is no way to ensure that any service will not be attained by a government entity if they truly want it.

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Anyone who claims they’re not keeping logs is almost certainly not telling the truth.

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Woah, calm down. I was typing that at midnight. Nobody’s perfect at a time like that.

I was referring to this. Vivaldi is an email provider: https://webmail.vivaldi.net/

Protonmail is still E2E encrypted and can’t be read. I doubt Vivaldi mail is E2E, so I don’t think this really solves your concerns.

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Yet they were still able (and willing) to so easily and quickly hand over all of that data and information to the government?

The email being E2E encrypted, if true, means ProtonMail can’t read it. Regarding “easily and quickly”, the article rather clearly states:

However, as a Swiss company itself, ProtonMail was obliged to comply with a Swiss court’s injunction demanding that it begin logging IP address and browser fingerprint information for a particular ProtonMail account.

In other words, they didn’t have it. The court made them start collecting it, and turn it over.

Regarding Vivaldi, it doesn’t seem to solve the problem of logging or demands from the government.

Reference their privacy policy here:
Community Privacy policy | Vivaldi Browser.

which contains the ever-so-helpful note that:

We do not share or sell your personal data with any third party. We protect user data from disclosure, with exceptions only requested by law or court order.

So Vivaldi would’ve handed over the same data to the court as ProtonMail. Except they wouldn’t have had to start collecting it for the court, because they’d already have it:

When you visit Vivaldi’s websites, we collect some visitor statistics. The visitor statistics include information about the visitor’s truncated IP-address, usage patterns, the point in time the visitor visits our websites on Vivaldi.net and Vivaldi.com and information about the browser and operating system the visitor uses.

It’s fine if you think ProtonMail lost its reputation because you caught them in a lie. But the service you’re moving to is rather obviously not a better, more secure option.

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I don’t understand why totally innocent comments are being flagged. If you can’t handle someone asking a legitimate question about something you posted, maybe the internet isn’t for you….

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Maybe they’re missing the Reddit downvote.

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The truth of the matter is that anything posted on the internet is not secure.

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At least partially because not keeping any logs is very, very hard to do from a practical point of view.

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I have been trying to find out what charge was cited against the French climate activist who got in the cross-hairs of this investigation, but not coming up with much. The Verge is talking about “occupation of appartments and commercial spaces” but surely, anyone occupying a space illegaly could be apprehended on site.

All companies must comply with local laws and regulations. However, it sure would be interesting to learn what heinous crime this person is suspected of that warrants this level of state action. As crimes go, occupation and possibly some vandalisation of property, seems like a low bar to me.

Of course, there might be more to the story, so if anyone comes across a good link, please do share it. Thanks!

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I didn’t intend on moving to Vivaldi yet. If anything, I wanted to consider more options and dig into it further before jumping ship. I’m no longer considering Vivaldi now, so thanks! :slight_smile:

Do you have any other recommendations? I’d love to hear them.

Anybody who intends on flagging a post is (hopefully) going off of the official rules.

Yes, exactly. We can only try to be as secure as possible. There’s no such thing as complete security on the internet.

The company was compelled by the Swiss courts and had to do it.

Yes, I know that now.

So what rule was used as justification for flagging the post in this thread? Wasn’t rude, was a simple question in regards to what was posted.

I can only assume it was this one.

Shaming someone for their opinions or lack of experience in an area is not cool, either.

I guess asking for clarifcation is now shaming. :grinning:

What is your idea of “asking” for clarification? :thinking: