[HN Gopher] Proton Mail Helped FBI Unmask Anonymous 'Stop Cop Ci...
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Proton Mail Helped FBI Unmask Anonymous 'Stop Cop City' Protester
Author : sedatk
Score : 96 points
Date : 2026-03-05 21:35 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.404media.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.404media.co)
| sam0x17 wrote:
| Well I guess Proton cannot be trusted. You know what they say,
| centralization corrupts absolutely
| mystraline wrote:
| Given they were praising Trump, Vance, and gang - I called it
| then.
|
| I cancelled my Proton account when all of that hit Mastodon.
| Their VPN was good, but I dont support nazies and their
| toadies.
| Vaslo wrote:
| I bet you make these big announcements in everything you do,
| and think that people really care.
| dgxyz wrote:
| We do care. Someone's gotta stand up to it.
| Vaslo wrote:
| They'll still be in business in 20 years. So much for all
| that standing up.
| Computer0 wrote:
| Well I care. I am more informed because of their comment. I
| now know that I must avoid Proton.
| worksonmine wrote:
| I don't know what Proton did regarding Trump, but if you
| follow this principle to the end you might as well ditch
| technology and live in the forest. I'm not being
| hyperbole, everyone does business with or endorses
| someone on either side who does stupid shit.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Based on the response it seems like a fair number of people
| found it interesting, but essentially nobody found your
| emotionally fragile whinging interesting.
| Vaslo wrote:
| No whinging here, just pointing out the obvious of the
| self important. The only whinging I see is people using
| terms like Nazi for everyone they disagree with, and
| other people who jump into the comment section to back up
| this kind of childish rhetoric.
| jachee wrote:
| No, people here are using the term Nazi for avowed white-
| supremacist antisemite Christian nationalists. Not just
| "people they disagree with".
|
| Only right-wingers throw around meaningless names like
| that.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| I wasn't even aware of anything around Proton and specific US
| political parties. Thank you for your post, as it led me to
| some searching.
|
| The single most useful link I found was this Reddit thread:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i2nz9v/on_poli.
| ..
| lucb1e wrote:
| In trying to check this claim (I thought Proton did sensible
| things), I found that the submitted news article is not new
| at all:
|
| > [Proton's] homepage touts that "With Proton, your data
| belongs to you, not tech companies, governments, or hackers."
| However, [...] Proton previously handed over an IP address at
| the request of French authorities made via Europol to Swiss
| police. Yen wrote a Twitter post at the time, stating,
| "Proton must comply with Swiss law. As soon as a crime is
| committed, privacy protections can be suspended and we're
| required by Swiss law to answer requests from Swiss
| authorities." ---https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-
| mail-andy-yen-tru...
|
| Big surprise: swiss company complies with swiss law!
|
| And the same happened now, quoting the part of the submission
| that you can read without signing up:
|
| > privacy-focused email provider Proton Mail handed over
| payment data related to a Stop Cop City email account to the
| Swiss government, which handed it to the FBI.
|
| Anyway, regarding your claim, it's a whole rabbit hole of
| statements they made but broadly speaking it sounds like
| you're right: Vance supported legislation which Proton
| campaigned for and, subsequently (as of 2025-01), Proton
| loves the US Republican Party, believing they would stand up
| for 'the little guy'. To be fair, they bring some evidence
| that sound like it can be verified and back this opinion up
| somewhat, but even if it's a correct opinion on this sub-
| topic, it's still supporting authoritarianism. Anyway, this
| is where I'm going to stop trying to politically analyze
| their situation and just not recommend Proton anymore...
| Anonbrit wrote:
| I don't think _any_ commercial entity can be trusted to break
| the law on behalf of customers who only pay a small fee each
| sithadmin wrote:
| As a long time Proton customer...I am fairly certain Proton has
| always been completely upfront that they will comply with
| lawful requests for information from the Swiss authorities, if
| response is obligated by Swiss law. Therefore this isn't
| especially surprising.
| bombcar wrote:
| The key is and always has been to make sure that someone like
| Proton _simply doesn 't have the information_ so they can't
| give it away.
| WithinReason wrote:
| Exactly, you can use bitcoin, even cash. You can even add
| credits with PayPal or a credit card, in which case Proton
| (I assume) won't remember your payment data. But if you
| attach credit card info permanently to your account then it
| can be retrieved.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| It's wild to me that people are downvoting this. Nobody is
| going to jail for you...
| thephyber wrote:
| In this case, it was Swiss courts who forced them to comply,
| not foreign courts.
|
| And from what little I can tell from the article, it was
| account payment data, not content from the account.
|
| Proton was never designed or advertised to resist this kind of
| threat.
| dgxyz wrote:
| What Proton sell you is reduction of anxiety. But that's a lie.
|
| The whole idea of encrypted email is pointless. There's
| absolutely no guarantee it's encrypted in transit or encrypted
| at rest on any machines it transits through unless you
| encapsulate the messages with PGP and then you still leave a
| trail of envelopes everywhere. Any government who wants your
| data will come round and beat it out of you or the provider as
| best as they can. And if you have the pay the provider, as
| evidenced here, they can point to you and then beat you for it.
| Beating being metaphorical or otherwise.
|
| Use any old shitty email provider and make sure you can move
| off it quickly if you need to. Standard IMAP, not weird ass
| proprietary stuff like proton. Think carefully what you do and
| say. Use a side channel for anything that actually requires
| security.
| petcat wrote:
| > The records provide insight into the sort of data that Proton
| Mail, which prides itself both on its end-to-end encryption and
| that it is only governed by Swiss privacy law, can and does
| provide to third parties.
|
| Didn't Proton already say that they were physically relocating
| their servers outside of Switzerland because the Swiss government
| couldn't be trusted?
|
| Although I guess the server location didn't matter in this case
| since all they wanted was the billing information and the credit
| card info to identify the person.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| > prides itself both on its end-to-end encryption
|
| Their end-to-end encryption is pointless because the vast
| majority of any recipients will just leak the plaintext emails
| via their own account providers anyway. It only works under
| very specific circumstances (all parties are using it). I think
| their marketing overstates what their secure private email
| actually means.
| elashri wrote:
| > Didn't Proton already say that they were physically
| relocating their servers outside of Switzerland because the
| Swiss government couldn't be trusted?
|
| They said they want to relocate to Germany which I would say in
| a polite way, is much worse in this regard.
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| Wild that it says this on their site:
|
| >Sign up with no phone number: Get a private email account
| without handing over more personal data than necessary, making it
| harder for advertisers, data brokers, and other services to track
| you online.
|
| I guess it doesn't mention law enforcement so -\\_(tsu)_/-
| ranger_danger wrote:
| The article explains that the account was identified based on a
| credit card payment for a paid account, which does not
| invalidate the statement in question IMO. Perhaps we differ on
| the definition of "private" or something else, but unless all
| parties are using proton, email is inherently insecure and
| somebody can/will have a record of your communication
| regardless.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > unless all parties are using proton, email is inherently
| insecure and somebody can/will have a record of your
| communication regardless.
|
| That the person you're exchanging messages with, has your
| messages, is hardly a surprise. Not everyone-but-Proton sells
| your data though so it's not quite that black-and-white
| gruez wrote:
| I'm not sure what you were expecting here. If you have data and
| the police shows up with a warrant, you can't just tell them
| "nah we don't feel like it".
| h4kunamata wrote:
| People will never understand, Proton is a privacy based email
| server, it is not the dark web where you can do as you please
| without consequences.
|
| Proton only has access to your IP and device ID, not your data.
| With IP and device ID, you can easily track an user like finding
| the ISP, etc.
|
| Do you wanna do naughty things?? Don't use such services do to
| so.
|
| And ironically,this 404 Media is the only place I found covering
| this information and they require you to login to read the whole
| thing.
|
| Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm red flag big time!!!!
| observationist wrote:
| Proton isn't opsec, it's just the best available commercial
| clearweb host that still has to follow all the laws and comply
| with warrants, but won't be arbitrarily selling your metadata
| or engaging in the adtech garbage.
|
| Kagi is to google as proton is to gmail.
|
| You get web mail, custom domains, decent security, decent spam
| detection, solid features, and no PII being sold. Nice, clean,
| simple - I like paying them money. I feel good about doing
| business with them, and I don't run into that often these days.
| lucb1e wrote:
| What device identifier are you referring to, something like the
| MAC addresses of your network cards? How are they retrieving
| that via a browser?
| hypeatei wrote:
| Proton doesn't really protect anything email related unless the
| recipient is also using protonmail. The article also points out
| they sought payment data, not "IP and device ID" information.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > unless the recipient is also using protonmail
|
| Or any similar service from another vendor? Or hosts their
| own email. If someone using Protonmail emails me, their data
| is also not getting sold for example, it's just stored on my
| laptop
| rideontime wrote:
| 404 Media has an excellent track record and is very reputable,
| if you're saying the "red flag" applies to them.
| mhitza wrote:
| That's 404 media's approach. That's why I only read their
| headlines.
|
| In theory you could open up your protonmail account over tor
| and with bitcoin (or does that not work anymore?).
|
| Its been a good while since I tried them out. Why I don't
| recommend them anymore is because when I didn't extend my
| subscription in time (expecting an account downgrade), my mail
| was locked and emails hold on to as random. Allowed to login
| only for payment.
|
| That was one red flag from me, the second was when they shared
| IP address logs of a French protestor. Even though at the time
| they had a no logs policy, if I remeber correctly. Or if I
| don't.
| gruez wrote:
| >the second was when they shared IP address logs of a French
| protestor. Even though at the time they had a no logs policy,
| if I remeber correctly. Or if I don't.
|
| You probably aren't remembering correctly given that
| specifically have a "login logs" option that can be toggled
| on/off.
| mistyvales wrote:
| You can still pay with cash!
| tototrains wrote:
| last time i tried they asked for an email to link the account
| to. I don't think they provide anonymous accounts anymore,
| but you can probably create one with another anonymous email.
| afavour wrote:
| I really don't think 404 Media having a login gate is a red
| flag. They're a business that needs to make money and the
| alternative to subscriptions is ads, which would be
| exponentially worse for user safety than what exists today.
| netfortius wrote:
| Here you are: https://archive.ph/Zvw3O
| robcohen wrote:
| > Proton only has access to your IP and device ID, not your
| data.
|
| I like Proton. I use Proton.
|
| However, the problem with proton is that if you access your
| email via a web browser, there's nothing stopping protonmail
| (to my knowledge) from reading your email from within their
| webapp via JS. This type of attack could be targeted at the
| behest of authorities.
|
| So, actually, Proton COULD read your email (IFF you use
| webmail).
| gruez wrote:
| >So, actually, Proton COULD read your email (IFF you use
| webmail).
|
| The authorities can also read your self-hosted email if they
| had a warrant to search your house. Even if you enable FDE
| they can do a cold boot attack.
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(page generated 2026-03-05 23:00 UTC)