A lot of people talking about dumping Proton right now are misunderstanding what actually happened.
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@budududuroiu well Gail Slater is also trash so this defense is rather empty.
@axolotl it's not defense, I don't look to corporations to be the guardians of morality, just saying the person I was replying was saying nonsense
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A lot of people talking about dumping Proton right now are misunderstanding what actually happened.
Feds were able to coerce the Swiss government to coerce Proton to hand over whatever data they had on an anonymous Stop Cop City email address, that was being investigated for terrorism.
That metadata included credit card details information for the account, which is very difficult to anonymize.
Proton offers cash payments to work around this obvious security flaw.
If you must pay for a Proton account for a radical project, pay with cash (you can mail it) or washed crypto (Monero -> Bitcoin).
All credit card payments are traceable, even to a privacy-focused company.
Your security model should not rely on a business to fight the state on your behalf.
Your email or VPN provider is not going to risk prison time for your $5/mo. It's just not going to happen, at least for anything commercial. Tuta and every other email privacy-focused email company will comply with court orders.
Trying to find the perfect email provider is a fool's errand. It doesn't exist.
You can however anonymize your useage of privacy friendly services like Proton, Tuta, or Mailbox by not entering your credit card number, phone number, name, personal email, or IP to that account.
@COSAntiFascists and their CEO is a nazi or not?
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@COSAntiFascists "Your email or VPN provider is not going to risk prison time for your $5/mo."
- Taking a risk for $5/mo, no. But given the masses talking about dumping Proton rn, this decision is going to cost them much, much more than $5/mo.
- Im no lawyer, but im pretty sure this isnt a case of going straight to prison. Unless Switzerland is a totalitarian state and i didnt notice, there are legal measures they could have taken instead of immediately folding.
- Selling themselves as the 'privacy' option then selling out an activist without so much as a whimper is a bad look, and they deserve to lose trust and users.
- This wouldn't happen with riseup (like, they dont charge, so its literately impossible)
@axolotl @COSAntiFascists in addition: “That metadata included credit card details information for the account, which is very difficult to anonymize.” it is fucking rich to claim this when signal does it for their only paid feature: https://signal.org/blog/introducing-secure-backups/
“Using the same zero-knowledge technology that enables Signal groups to work without revealing intimate metadata, backup archives are stored without a direct link to a specific backup payment or Signal user account.”
and it’s open source
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@axolotl @COSAntiFascists in addition: “That metadata included credit card details information for the account, which is very difficult to anonymize.” it is fucking rich to claim this when signal does it for their only paid feature: https://signal.org/blog/introducing-secure-backups/
“Using the same zero-knowledge technology that enables Signal groups to work without revealing intimate metadata, backup archives are stored without a direct link to a specific backup payment or Signal user account.”
and it’s open source
@axolotl @COSAntiFascists and that’s not to say it’s trivial but uhhh maybe people shouldn’t trust supposed cryptographers who avoid doing difficult but solvable shit
also maybe a leftist group should avoid going to bat for a corporation that the ancoms have known is fucking rotten for years
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A lot of people talking about dumping Proton right now are misunderstanding what actually happened.
Feds were able to coerce the Swiss government to coerce Proton to hand over whatever data they had on an anonymous Stop Cop City email address, that was being investigated for terrorism.
That metadata included credit card details information for the account, which is very difficult to anonymize.
Proton offers cash payments to work around this obvious security flaw.
If you must pay for a Proton account for a radical project, pay with cash (you can mail it) or washed crypto (Monero -> Bitcoin).
All credit card payments are traceable, even to a privacy-focused company.
Your security model should not rely on a business to fight the state on your behalf.
Your email or VPN provider is not going to risk prison time for your $5/mo. It's just not going to happen, at least for anything commercial. Tuta and every other email privacy-focused email company will comply with court orders.
Trying to find the perfect email provider is a fool's errand. It doesn't exist.
You can however anonymize your useage of privacy friendly services like Proton, Tuta, or Mailbox by not entering your credit card number, phone number, name, personal email, or IP to that account.
@COSAntiFascists You can buy Mullvad vouchers through Amazon, which essentially anonymises your purchase.
Amazon knows you bought a Mullvad voucher, but don’t know your voucher code. Mullvad knows the voucher code but doesn’t know who bought it. Elegant solution.
(Shop-bought gift cards are activated at the till with your credit card details, and so are not anonymous).
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@COSAntiFascists "Your email or VPN provider is not going to risk prison time for your $5/mo."
- Taking a risk for $5/mo, no. But given the masses talking about dumping Proton rn, this decision is going to cost them much, much more than $5/mo.
- Im no lawyer, but im pretty sure this isnt a case of going straight to prison. Unless Switzerland is a totalitarian state and i didnt notice, there are legal measures they could have taken instead of immediately folding.
- Selling themselves as the 'privacy' option then selling out an activist without so much as a whimper is a bad look, and they deserve to lose trust and users.
- This wouldn't happen with riseup (like, they dont charge, so its literately impossible)
@axolotl I had to look up riseup - this looks amazing at first glance! Have I just been completely living under a rock, or is my surprise that more people aren't talking about this org justified?
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@axolotl I had to look up riseup - this looks amazing at first glance! Have I just been completely living under a rock, or is my surprise that more people aren't talking about this org justified?
@r3dr3clus3 yeah, i dont know. they have been around for quite awhile and provide a bunch of rad services for free. Some years ago they locked down new email accounts and you can only get one with a code from an og user. I assume this is the main reason they arent well known anymore.
But most of their services are open. Their vpn is free and easy, and i use their pads to collaborate on (non-sensitive) texts pretty much daily. -
Serious question, is this still a thing? Because all the cards in the stores here can be purchased with cash but then you have to go online and provide ID to actually use the card.
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