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Comment by edly | Hacker News Reader

I agree that Protonmail has been dishonest in their marketing, but marketing =/= policies.

If you're storing any kind of information you'd rather keep private on a server you do not control and not diving into the policies and blog posts of said provider to make doubly sure they're all they say they are, it's no one's fault but your own when something inevitably happens. Either do your due diligence or blindly accept the risk. People took the second option and look what happened.

And yes, I would say an order from Swiss courts that was unappealable is an extreme criminal case. Anything that could threaten Protonmail qualifies.

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> And yes, I would say an order from Swiss courts that was unappealable is an extreme criminal case. Anything that could threaten Protonmail qualifies.

So before this case, if I told you is someone in France trespassing enough for ProtonMail to log and provide IP, you would say sure?

My point is that this is not what most people would expect by reading extreme criminal case. If it's not what they expect, it is thus misleading.

I also wouldn't even agree that this is an extreme criminal case. What an non extreme one then? This is not an exception, this is simply a criminal case. It clearly doesn't need to be extreme to allow them to get the IP.

Note that I have not even mentioned France.

Protonmail was forced by Swiss courts, period. Protonmail will not risk themselves for you. No client of Protonmail is worth fighting the Swiss courts over. Protonmail bowed down to the laws of the country they operate in, a smart move if they wish to continue legal operations.

If you still do not understand this fact, or that I am speaking strictly about the repercussions that a Swiss company could face by ignoring a court order from Swiss courts in Swiss law in Switzerland, then we have nothing else to discuss.

> If you still do not understand this fact, or that I am speaking strictly about the repercussions that a Swiss company could face by ignoring a court order from Swiss courts in Swiss law in Switzerland, then we have nothing else to discuss.

Where did I say they shouldn't have done this? I do understands that fact.

The issue isn't on what they did, it's on how they said they were protected against this but actually wasn't. We are talking about their marketing materials promising anonymity that they can't legally provide.

If that was a mere misunderstanding from their parts and they thought they could actually get away from providing the IP but couldn't actually, sure it was a simply mistake from their part to say that, I would agree with you, but you provided the proof that they knew, and you even said it was "abundantly clear" that it was the case.

I'll say the same as you, if you don't understands that part, we have nothing else to discuss. Even more so if you believe that it's fine to promise stuff that you can't legally provide.

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