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Comment by COGlory | Hacker News Reader

>If as soon as police show up (Which is almost the only case that people would want their IP hidden) they give IP logs, it is clearly false advertising

Is there any evidence this is what happened?

An alternate scenario is that they were not keeping logs, and were then compelled by the authorities to start keeping them on that user.

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The end result is the same either way

No. With on-demand logging, they can find the owner of the account (assuming he doesn't take further measures), but you can't retroactively prove someone used that account to do something at a specific time. For example, you could not prove that the individual was logged in at internet cafe xy near the time of the crime. Also, an opsec mishap (such as logging in without protection) will not be fatal unless you're already under surveillance.

no, the end result is not the same either way.

I'm not taking sides on privacy or the threat of govt (or other sourced) tyranny, I'm just explaining the logic to answer your question:

Let's say you engaged in a long history of using protonmail innocently, then one day you decided to start commiting crimes for the first time and attract police interest. You would know that your historical logs were not kept, and it was only after you started attracting police attention that you would be at risk of incriminating yourself through proton mail. Maybe, on the run from the law, it would be safe for you to hide at your old friends house because there was no log to link you to him.

Yes, it is also the case that you may not have realized that ordinary behavior had been criminalized by an evil govt all along blah blah blah... I'm just pointing out that there is a difference where you saw none.

I said the end result is the same. Not that it is the same. In both case they give the IP when the police ask for it

In both cases they don't give the IP.

in the case where they receive a court order, they first log your IP and then they give it.

but you know this from their terms of service.

if you stop using protonmail when you start your criminal career, they will not give your IP because they didn't save it.

it's different in the end, not the same.

If you knew this, couldn't you login from someone's ip you want to frame the crime on?

No, if they were not collecting logs by default, then it is clearly not false advertising.

So the default is when nobody ask for the logs? What the point of not collecting IP unless for the time it is useful?

No history of when you logged in from where and, possibly, plausible deniability about about you being the only user of that account (through you'd probably need to prepare for this to be believable).

I mean it's either this or traffic analysis. If you use your clearnet IP address to do illegal things, it's nothing more than reasonable that you can get in trouble for it.

This is also why I don't get protonmail in the first place. Unless you use pgp or equivalent, you'll always be subject to law enforcement. Just that protonmail cares more and caters more to activists and so might not give it out without checking that the asker is really legit and then give the minimal amount possible. But they'll always be able to turn over your emails and log IPs, it's not protonmail's fault the laws were voted into action like this.

Technically correct but misleading.

They tout that off-by-default statement on their homepage, underneath the header of "Anonymous Email," with the closing sentence of "Your privacy comes first."

So why even market that? It provides no meaningful security.

Were _you_ mislead by this? Did you really expect a Switzerland-based company not to comply with law of the land?

There is a difference between "available to police, not retroactively, and only with a valid warrant" and "available to any government agency constantly and in bulk, as well as to data-collecting commercial entities, Russian and Chinese hackers, and their dogs". Don't you agree?

Really solid explanation of what you’re paying for as a proton customer - and despite this unfortunate situation for the French advocate is why myself and others will continue their paid ProtonMail plans

Fair point. I still don't think they've worded that well enough. I would probably not have read "By default" to have the context of "Unless asked to do so by authorities."

They're not being as transparent as possible in their marketing, which is at odds with their allure of security.

Wouldn't they have to comply with a secret data collecting order?

We are trusting they wouldn't comply or no one would make that request?

As far as I know, Swiss law does not allow for "secret data collecting orders", unlike US after "Patriot Act".

This is the benefit if being located in Switzerland, where banking is one of the main pillars of the economy and which historically has been much more supportive of personal privacy than most other countries.

They eventually caved under US pressure on some things, so it's not such a "haven" as it used to be, but I believe it is still the country that respects individuals' rights the most.

Not perfect by any means, just better than most others.

Wouldn't "any" include authority compelled logging?

Perhaps, but I'd imagine that semantically, "by default" negates that since this is clearly not a default situation.

Stop trying to defend indefensible behavior by getting hung up on semantics.

I, for one, will not renew my ProtonMail account if that's their status quo.

I'm extremely confused by this.

Unless you are naive enough to assume that ProtonMail is incapable of logging IP addresses (in which case they'd be incapable of serving HTTP requests...see the problem?) then they can log. And they most certainly aren't going to declare independence from Switzerland and refuse to turn on IP logging when required to by law.

Whereas with E2E-E, they actually are incapable of turning over readable emails.

what other status quo do you expect from them? Having to provide IP logs after a warrant has been issued is the law in switserland (and most if not all of the EU).

Sure, the law would (hopefully) be changed, but at the moment, this is the best they can legally do?

Tell users you are being logged on website.

Put alert warning that account has logging enabled

Change the service so collecting logs is not possible

Stop adding captcha to tor users login because you want to identify users

>Tell users you are being logged on website.

Frequently not legal

>Put alert warning that account has logging enabled

See above. Gag orders a problem with government in general. They do have a warrant canary page though, as well as a transparency report.