A court record reviewed by 404 Media shows privacy-focused email provider Proton Mail handed over payment data related to a Stop Cop City email account to the Swiss government, which handed it to the FBI.
Proton was legally ordered by the Swiss justice department to hand over the (severely limited) information about a law breaking organization’s account. They had paid for Proton using a credit card instead of the anonymous payment methods Proton offers, and that is what Proton was forced to hand over. It was the organization’s bad OpSec, not Proton willingly deanonymizing users.
On the one hand, I really like how often Proton’s shortcomings are highlighted. This SHOULD be a wake up call that you should never rely on a company to protect you and should instead focus on what you can do to ptorect yourself. And Proton… actually are pretty good in that regard. Connect from a burner/live image computer over public wifi using tor (or something similar) and their free accounts are STILL the gold standard for journalism and whistleblowers.
But the problem is that people are stupid and lazy (and many outlets actively benefit from "Eww, proton is bad. If only they had paid for NordVPN to really protect them from the FBI! ~Note, NordVPN provides no guarantees of protection~ ". So we just get stupidity.
Not at all. Proton doesn’t require any personal info at all. But if you pay with a credit card… That has your personal info tied to it. It’s their fuck up paying with a credit card. Proton accepts other payment methods that aren’t tied to your identity.
Proton is required by law to provide information they have when the courts say so.
So I’m not a criminal organization as far as I know, but if I did pay with a credit card originally can that be rectified without deleting and starting over?
Proton uses Chargebee for payments, which has its own data retention policy of essentially “as long as we want to”, but Proton does themselves keep limited data like the billing name, and last 4 digits.
Proton’s privacy policy says nothing about a pre-set time delay after which they’d delete that data. They only claim that they “reserve our right” to remove your payment information if they think it’s no longer valid. So theoretically, that might mean if your card’s expiry date has passed, but that’s not a confirmation.
The best way to reliably make sure Proton wouldn’t have any info on you is to not have ever tied any real information about yourself or your payment info to that account.
Not sure about Swiss laws regarding merchant payment card data retention… But they aren’t really going to matter with this situation either way. Even if Proton doesn’t keep any identifying information directly, the payment processor for sure is going to keep identifying data. Proton will have a confirmation number for the payment being processed, which can be correlated via the payment processor anyway.
Yeah, exactly. They don’t make it hard to not tie personal data to them if you want, you just have to actually DO the thing to take advantage of it. These people seemed to think it was magic, which seems to be how a lot of people think Proton or Tuta works.
You can use a prepaid visa to buy account credits, or proton gift cards. They don’t support monero, which is really annoying, but it’s not the biggest hassle to convert from monero to bitcoin for a purchase.
Have you tried doing specifically that and/or do they claim you can do specifically that? I tried doing the same thing when making a Tuta account and it wouldn’t accept prepaid cards, though they do have a 3rd party source you can pay cash or Monero for gift card codes, giving true anonymity
but it’s not the biggest hassle to convert from monero to bitcoin for a purchase.
I think the issue is that Bitcoin hasn’t been anonymous for a few years now (unlike Monero).
Remove the period at the end of my link, most clients should automatically, but in hindsight not the best place to punctuate anyways.
Personally, no I have not tested it, however it should be the same as a regular debit card, which I know through testing that they accept, and a quick internet forum search says they do accept Visa gift cards.
If you generate a brand new wallet, convert your monero to bitcoin, and then pay Proton, there’s very little to trace back to you.
Yeah, I am no fan of proton and they have lied before (no log VPN logs magically finding logs for authorities and then later removing the no-log claim).
But this is literally just proton being legally compelled to hand over data the user willingly gave (not being harvested or de-encrypted). A nothing story.
Proton was legally ordered by the Swiss justice department to hand over the (severely limited) information about a law breaking organization’s account. They had paid for Proton using a credit card instead of the anonymous payment methods Proton offers, and that is what Proton was forced to hand over. It was the organization’s bad OpSec, not Proton willingly deanonymizing users.
Hopefully people like you will be able to nip this in the bud before yet another joke of a controversy starts…
You must be new here…
On the one hand, I really like how often Proton’s shortcomings are highlighted. This SHOULD be a wake up call that you should never rely on a company to protect you and should instead focus on what you can do to ptorect yourself. And Proton… actually are pretty good in that regard. Connect from a burner/live image computer over public wifi using tor (or something similar) and their free accounts are STILL the gold standard for journalism and whistleblowers.
But the problem is that people are stupid and lazy (and many outlets actively benefit from "Eww, proton is bad. If only they had paid for NordVPN to really protect them from the FBI! ~Note, NordVPN provides no guarantees of protection~ ". So we just get stupidity.
OP’s title certainly doesn’t help.
Why do you think Proton stores the association between accounts and payment identity?
Many privacy-oriented companies actually accept credit card payments and simply don’t store that information.
answer:
proton is snake oil
Recurring payments I think
Another comment linked to a reddit post where Proton explained what happened.
Yeah, the credit card was on file for recurring payments.
Really, this headline should be “Organization so poorly organized that they messed up having relatively secure email.”
Not at all. Proton doesn’t require any personal info at all. But if you pay with a credit card… That has your personal info tied to it. It’s their fuck up paying with a credit card. Proton accepts other payment methods that aren’t tied to your identity.
Proton is required by law to provide information they have when the courts say so.
So I’m not a criminal organization as far as I know, but if I did pay with a credit card originally can that be rectified without deleting and starting over?
Proton uses Chargebee for payments, which has its own data retention policy of essentially “as long as we want to”, but Proton does themselves keep limited data like the billing name, and last 4 digits.
Proton’s privacy policy says nothing about a pre-set time delay after which they’d delete that data. They only claim that they “reserve our right” to remove your payment information if they think it’s no longer valid. So theoretically, that might mean if your card’s expiry date has passed, but that’s not a confirmation.
The best way to reliably make sure Proton wouldn’t have any info on you is to not have ever tied any real information about yourself or your payment info to that account.
Thank you for the information.
Are they required to keep the data?
Not sure about Swiss laws regarding merchant payment card data retention… But they aren’t really going to matter with this situation either way. Even if Proton doesn’t keep any identifying information directly, the payment processor for sure is going to keep identifying data. Proton will have a confirmation number for the payment being processed, which can be correlated via the payment processor anyway.
Yeah, exactly. They don’t make it hard to not tie personal data to them if you want, you just have to actually DO the thing to take advantage of it. These people seemed to think it was magic, which seems to be how a lot of people think Proton or Tuta works.
@Charger8232 @jrcruciani The bug is between keyboard and chair. It is always a problem to use crédit card.
I like services like PIA that let you pay in gift cards.
Owned by Kape technologies, and uses Google analytics. Big nope. Any VPN service worth its money support anon payments (including gift cards) anyways.
Does Proton Mail?
Yup
Is there a link you could share?
Sorry to reply to a two week old comment, this is their supported payments page: https://proton.me/support/payment-options.
You can use a prepaid visa to buy account credits, or proton gift cards. They don’t support monero, which is really annoying, but it’s not the biggest hassle to convert from monero to bitcoin for a purchase.
The link leads to an error 404.
Have you tried doing specifically that and/or do they claim you can do specifically that? I tried doing the same thing when making a Tuta account and it wouldn’t accept prepaid cards, though they do have a 3rd party source you can pay cash or Monero for gift card codes, giving true anonymity
I think the issue is that Bitcoin hasn’t been anonymous for a few years now (unlike Monero).
Remove the period at the end of my link, most clients should automatically, but in hindsight not the best place to punctuate anyways.
Personally, no I have not tested it, however it should be the same as a regular debit card, which I know through testing that they accept, and a quick internet forum search says they do accept Visa gift cards.
If you generate a brand new wallet, convert your monero to bitcoin, and then pay Proton, there’s very little to trace back to you.
https://account.proton.me/mail/signup
I don’t see any anonymous payment methods on this page.
Tuta has a 3rd party provider that you can send cash or Monero to and get a gift card to pay for your account.
Mullvad will directly take cash and Monero.
I don’t see anything suggesting that Proton does anything similar
Idk you asked. I used a search engine. You can too.
Gift cards don’t work for me. Guess I need one ordered from outside the US.
Mullvad accepts cash.
And Monero.
Yeah, I am no fan of proton and they have lied before (no log VPN logs magically finding logs for authorities and then later removing the no-log claim).
But this is literally just proton being legally compelled to hand over data the user willingly gave (not being harvested or de-encrypted). A nothing story.
B…But…Swiss evil?