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this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2023
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Privacy Guides
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False.
Proton can not be made to spy on customers most they can do is hand over info they already have
https://proton.me/blog/climate-activist-arrest
Proton's encryption cannot be bypassed by legal order. Tutanota's can.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/08/german-secure-email-provider-tutanota-forced-to-monitor-an-account-after-regional-court-ruling/
Proton can be legally ordered to start recording the IP address of a specific user. That's why they recommend that you always connect through their Onion site.
Other than that and if that's possible, I think it may also be possible to legally order Proton to keep the unencrypted form of incoming emails for a specific user, but Proton did not said it in the article, and Swiss laws might protect them against that. It's certainly possible technically, and good to be aware of it, I think.
Sorry but I can't open the second link, as it actively resists it. I suspect though that the problem with Tutanota was not their encryption, but their legal system, which required them to keep a copy of the incoming emails.
Also, don't mistake me, I'm all for protonmail, and I mean this. But did you know they only encrypt the email contents? Metadata like title, sender recipient and other things in the mail header don't get encrypted.
you're right about the IP thing. that's a good clarification rather than just "spy". i suppose it's less dire than Tutanota not encrypting incoming mails if you use tor and vpn by default.
yeah basically it more or less proves that swiss privacy is a bit stronger in this case vs Germany.
on the proton encryption, i did know about this but does that apply to proton-to-proton, proton-to-NonProton, or both? if you have details on this let me know.
either way the fact that they dont makes me feel that proton is a similar honeypot to signal and telegram, where they make a compromise with the five eyes, to give them metadata even if actual contents are safe. metadata can be much more powerful than contents often times
in general email is just the worst protocol when it comes to privacy. sadly.
As I know it applies to both. Formerly they were asking (among other things) about the titles of your latest emails for account recovery. (after I have put all the links here I realized that these don't give a details on whether this also applies to inter-proton messages..)
A few sources:
https://proton.me/support/proton-mail-encryption-explained
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/b1ect2/a_question_about_encryption_metadata_subject/eiphhs7/?context=3
https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/196265/why-is-some-meta-data-not-encrypted-in-proton-mail
Yeah, might as well be. But if it is, I'm afraid we won't get to know for a few decades, if ever. And I think it's still better than the alternatives.. the alternative email providers, that is.
If it comforts you, in their reddit comment I linked they mention (in 2019..) that there's a proposal they support for openpgp to be able to have an encrypted subject line.
Really appreciate your thoughts and time, thanks.
I found out also that Tutanota is essentially the same, except that they do E2EE subject lines between tutanota users, but I am guessing that is because they don't use PGP unlike Proton. In which case, Proton is in the right in this case because they are increasing E2EE interoperability beyond just their own users. So, my comment about honeypotting was really uncalled for I think, and I apologize for that.
The OpenPGP proposal is interesting, but I couldn't find anything on it. All I found was this below, which explains that email headers can't be/aren't encrypted, and subject is one of those, so that's why. I have no clue what Proton was talking about, or where they got that info
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/cku293/cant_find_the_openpgp_subject_line_encryption/