If you’re still using Proton mail:

[witchgirls@woof.tech]

@ache Look, I use Tuta myself, but I find the "They gave someone's data to the police!!!" argument really stupid, no offense.

Every company (including Tuta) is legally obligated to cooperate with the police if they are investigating. It is literally a crime not to. If they refused they'd just get sued and shut down - and for the purpose of helping *one* person, they'd harm their other millions of users. The only thing they can do is collect as little as possible so they can have nothing to give them.

Every single web app collects your IP and links it to your account. That's literally just how the internet works. I guess that doesn't apply to the name and the phone number, but isn't that that guy's fault? Proton has very publicly said "if you are being chased/persecuted, our service is not secure enough for you". Proton works perfectly fine without a phone number, so it's on that person for linking it, in my opinion

[witchgirls@woof.tech]

@slothrop Here's another response I found from the CEO:

[witchgirls@woof.tech]

@slothrop TL;DR: It's just more enlightened centrist freeze peach stuff.

Personally, I'm starting to think tech people are all doomed and computers were a mistake and we should probably just start from scratch. Hey I'm a tech person too, we gotta make some sacrifices...

[ache@social.lol]

@witchgirls Fair point.
As you said, 'As little data as possible' isn't the Proton way, it's not the goal. They don't advert to be secure enougth to protect against abusive police requests.

I still think that the internal phone number and email adresse use as a recovery is too much information to hold and that nobody will expect them to share it with the police.
But again, they don't advert themself as secure enougth so ... not in the contract, so blame the user.
Yet you have to notice the user of that behaviour, I understand that they don't expect that.

But right, the "they help the police" isn't the best argument. The other points still hold.

[slothrop@chaos.social]

@witchgirls there’s so many things wrong with this response that I don’t even know where to start, but as a first point, I struggle to take seriously someone who confuses “what you’re legally allowed to say” with “what my company wants to support financially”

Since the Proton CEO is probably (probably) not that stupid, it follows that this is a PR message, aimed at people who aren’t very good at using their brains.

[dngrs@chaos.social]

@Phracker2Art like I'm the coordinator?

[pgiulan@federate.social]

@slothrop Additional context from Proton: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1u2uore/explaining_how_proton_works_with_creators/

[slothrop@chaos.social]

@pgiulan Thanks for the link! I just spent several minutes of my one precious life reading that bag of waffle.

What he says is:
1. Yep, our agency paid Lapierre to advertise for us
2. Vetting who we advertise with is, like, hard work, man
3. Is Lapierre a right-wing extremist? Who knows, it’s a “grey zone”. Politics are in the eye of
4. the beholder.

That’s obviously bullshit. He’s trying to avoid responsibility for giving money to Nazis.

[slothrop@chaos.social]

@pgiulan The Proton CEO could say “sorry, we fucked up, and ended up giving money to a Nazi. We have directed the agency we work with to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

This is perfectly feasible, and lots of other brands manage this successfully.

Instead, he chose to say, essentially, “we have no values we know of, and will find the most repulsive causes in return for a bit of reach.”

At least, that makes it clear where Proton stands as a company.

[witchgirls@woof.tech]

@passocacornio Tuta is okay, but mind you, it's kind of like search engines, you have to find the least shitty one, not the *good* one.

[rsn@framapiaf.org]

@slothrop thanx for editing.

However, the #advertisement business model is concerned. Proton is a paid service. That should be enough IMHO.

But Proton is Swiss so it is very legalist, and law defends better the powerfulness. Swiss enterprises obey, they did and will obey even a scelerate state. Papers & leaks showed it.

So Proton depends on politics. And Proton is #advertising so it depends as well on advertisers and, therefore, big money.

I don't know what one could expect from that.