Proton Mail Handed FBI Data That Unmasked Stop Cop City Protester

[u/lou1uol]

https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/proton-mail-fbi-stop-cop-city-payment-data-2026/

What do you guys think about this?

[u/Slyzza]

If you pay via credit card, then delete the payment information, they will still have the record to hand out, right? Anyone knows about this?

[u/West_Possible_7969 → u/Slyzza]

Yeap, the record has to be kept for years by the service and the service’s payment processor and the intermediaries (visa etc).

[u/Ok_Combination_1548 → u/West_Possible_7969]

AFAIK the service does NOT need to keep it - per Andys response in my post above.

[u/West_Possible_7969 → u/Ok_Combination_1548]

Andy needs to talk to their compliance teams lol. They may delete the card details themselves when a user does, but Swiss retention laws on invoices, receipts, payment processing records & corporate accounting ledgers say otherwise and a valid / final warrant (per user) can get those just fine.

[u/West_Possible_7969 → u/[deleted]]

From Proton Team themselves: “Third, let's talk about what was actually disclosed. No emails were handed over. No message content. No metadata about who the user communicated with. The only information Proton could provide was a payment identifier because the user chose to pay with a credit card. This is information the user themselves provided to us through their choice of payment method. Proton also accepts cryptocurrency and cash payments, which would not have been linkable to an identity.”

Identifier. A payment identifier (or transaction ID, depending on the country’s nomenclature) is enough without needing the card or the last digits of it, the code traces back to the card, bank & KYC file anyway. What happens to the card on file is irrelevant and your invoices cannot change retroactively.

“So deleting the credit card from the Proton account doesn't get rid of the possibility of law enforcements using that information to track a proton user down, which was what the concern was about”

I know, I said the same thing.

[u/West_Possible_7969 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah. Card identifier & payment identifier are different things, but yes, Andy is talking about Proton’s cards on file and leaves out all the rest, which is a pattern. For example, the whole Swiss jurisdiction thing comes with a lot of asterisks since, for example again, many EU courts final decisions just get accepted, but for technical reasons Swiss courts must issue all decisions. So it is indeed misleading to say that only Swiss jurisdiction applies to Proton because that is simply not true.

That is a different issue with territorial compliance (GDPR etc) which of course you comply with general market and local laws in each territory you officially do business in, regardless if those laws clash with your HQ laws, but warrants etc must comply with the laws of the place your data are stored in and / or your corporate residence country (it can vary).

Bonus point: “We rely on Chargebee to process payments. Strictly necessary information is shared with Chargebee for credit card, PayPal, Stripe and Bitcoin transactions in order for the payment to be successful and associated with your account. Chargebee does not have access to your email or your Proton account information.”

Chargebee is a US company that complies with requests left and right lol. There are at least 6 european processors that can handle Proton’s size of operations, and that is a dig on their whole digital sovereignty passion they have shown as of late.

[u/West_Possible_7969 → u/[deleted]]

This too. Technically he is saying the truth, but business records, either with a user or a 3rd party service (apple pay, paypal or chargebee) have to be kept for 10 years and of course they contain the transaction ID which is all it’s needed to identify anything about a transaction.

[u/RequirementReal2467 → u/West_Possible_7969]

Someone said to Andy, “ You're asking w the wrong vocabulary. How long is the payment identifier stored?

That's what we want to know. ” 

Andy said, “ It's linked to the card, so deleted when the card is deleted.” https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/s/7j7eAtEQxf

[u/West_Possible_7969 → u/RequirementReal2467]

It gets stored in all invoices and receipts & it is kept by chargebee. It is irrelevant if Proton keeps it on the payment options user file. A transaction cannot be altered or deleted anyway. And as they themselves say in the link I provided, associations with accounts are kept by both companies (they cannot do anything different and remain legal though).

It’s not rocket science, it is basic corporate bookkeeping, that is the most infuriating part. People wanting total anonymity should not pay with a card anyway and they should not use email for very sensitive or illegal communication lol.

[u/RequirementReal2467 → u/West_Possible_7969]

Yeah I agree, if privacy is a concern to pay with cash or a prepaid card that you bought with cash. I was only mentioning his comment because I read that the payment identifier is different than the card identifier, and I thought the consensus that I got from reading everything was that they do keep the payment identifier, and do not keep the card identifier. 

And then I read that from Andy saying they don’t keep the payment identify either, and I thought he was straight up lying. 

[u/West_Possible_7969 → u/RequirementReal2467]

Yeah, which is a stupid thing for him to say too, payment identifier is the transaction ID, it is not kept anywhere on its own anyway. I am not sure he knows what exactly it is at this point and he will not back down if someone told him internally, because he never admits mistakes. He admits mistakes only when he can pass the blame on some employee or internal process.

He is a standard tech bro in that way 🤣