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Comment by bulbosaur123 | Hacker News Reader

Daily reminder Proton snitched their users:

https://restoreprivacy.com/protonmail-discloses-user-data-le...

They’re not outside the law, if the police come knocking with a legal request they have to provide data\details they have. What would you have them do?

In this specific case of a recovery email address, maybe there is something that could be done so that they wouldn't hold the email address itself. At least 2 options come to mind.

Daily reminder thats actually Apple.

From article:

> The core of the controversy stems from Proton Mail providing the Spanish police with the recovery email address associated with the Proton Mail account.

> Upon receiving the recovery email from Proton Mail, Spanish authorities further requested Apple to provide additional details linked to that email, leading to the identification of the individual.

Daily reminder that Proton is a company that operates legally in jurisdictions that have police forces and laws. If you're a dissident in one of those countries you'll definitely need something else (or a few layers on top of Proton to protect your real IP), but it's weird to see people turning this into a moral problem with Proton.

Sure, but maybe don't advertise "protecting free speech" as part of their "impact", because it only goes so far.

https://proton.me/about/impact

And you don't even need to be a dissident in "one of those countries". As long as Europol's arm (or some other organization that Swiss is part of) can reach you, you are not covered, as in https://restoreprivacy.com/protonmail-logs-users/

I don't have an opinion on whether this is ok or not (protecting dissidents and protecting "real" criminals), I am just sick of false advertising.

It is because of these reasons I chose Fastmail over Proton when I was looking for an alternative. The E2EE itself is almost bogus, and I would rather look for othet features that I need.

There's a great blog post that identifies your position as the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics [0]:

> The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics says that when you observe or interact with a problem in any way, you can be blamed for it. At the very least, you are to blame for not doing more. Even if you don’t make the problem worse, even if you make it slightly better, the ethical burden of the problem falls on you as soon as you observe it. In particular, if you interact with a problem and benefit from it, you are a complete monster. I don’t subscribe to this school of thought, but it seems pretty popular.

Proton is guilty because they attempt to protect free speech and aren't able to do so completely. Fastmail is not guilty because they don't do anything more to protect free speech than any other provider.

Do you see the problem?

[0] https://gwern.net/doc/philosophy/ethics/2015-06-24-jai-theco...

When I sign up for a service, I don’t expect them to break the law on my behalf, regardless of their advertising.

I agree that false advertising would upset me...what on that Proton "impact" page is actually false, though?

And in what way would FastMail not be impacted by analogous events? https://www.itnews.com.au/news/fastmail-loses-customers-face...

I do agree that the value of email encryption for 99% of users is overstated, given the fundamental nature of email communications to begin with.

Fastmail with servers in USA.. You sure it is more protected than Switzerland?

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