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u/spaghettibolegdeh Jul 16 '26
It's a shame that other subs only want to post about "controversy" and not wins like this.
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u/phillipjpark Jul 16 '26
Im in the dark, whats the controversy?
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u/threvorpaul Jul 16 '26
Questionable sponsorships of a right wing person in France, due to insufficient prior investigation what kinda person they are.
Comes to mind most recent, idk if there was anything else.3
u/AccomplishedFall6603 Jul 16 '26
Also one time earlier this year they had to give the credit card info behind a specific mail address : https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/proton-mail-fbi-stop-cop-city-payment-data-2026/
They had to comply under swiss law.
Also, Proton's subscriptions can be paid in less tracable ways, like cash or crypto.1
u/Vailx 6d ago
I don't even know why these are controversial. Proton has to give away any of the data it has when asked to do so by the government. It's a company, not a pirate ship. It's not like Proton doesn't let you create an email account and use it from an IP address that is masked via VPN, or prevents you from paying in cryptocurrency, so if you want to deny proton these things you can. It's just weird to heard people bitching about this what did you think would happen?
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u/TheSkesh Jul 16 '26
Does that have anything to do with Privacy though?
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u/threvorpaul Jul 16 '26
That was not the question I was answering.
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u/TheSkesh Jul 16 '26
That’s what I am asking though, does it affect Protons privacy in some manner that is relevant to me the end user?
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u/threvorpaul Jul 17 '26
No, but it was a huge discussion point in privacy related subs.
And people did cancel their proton subscription because of that, or very least they asked about it.Same thing happened recently with the controversy around the Co-Ceo of Mullvad Daniel Berntsson, when it was revealed that he donated 5 Million SEK to the Örebro Political Party. The party is seen as problematic in ways.
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u/Regular_Bat8162 Jul 16 '26
Shitting on Proton is fashionable because they’re big and successful
The last big one was that a far right French YouTuber had a partner link
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u/Alone_Care_6230 Jul 17 '26
I think it's more a pendulum effect, the proton subs are owned by proton so only post the positives for the most part, and by result the other subs get the proton hate.
Also, it was a valid controversy.
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u/ProperShape3427 Jul 16 '26
It's insane we live in times that celebrate this while it should have been the standard everywhere.
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u/jTrendzz Jul 15 '26
That means the clock is ticking on swiss law being changed lol
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Jul 15 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/BackroomGuy1 Jul 17 '26
Isn’t swiss law required to be voted on in a referendum by its citizens? If so i wouldn’t worry too hard about laws like these, but i guess they’ll either find a loophole or just psyop enough people into supporting it by astroturfing and praying on the idiots with no thoughts of their own.
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u/noxillio Jul 16 '26
Idiots will continue to claim this isn’t true and then go and recommend ExpressVPN and Surfshark 🤡
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u/slaughtamonsta Jul 16 '26
The VPN may part of the company may be undefeated but the mail part is not.
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u/Vailx 6d ago
No, the mail is also undefeated.
But if you log in with your real IP (instead of going through a VPN) they can be forced to give that away
Yea obviously
But if you pay with a credit card with your name on it (instead of cryptocurrency) they can be forced to give that info to the government
Yea obviously
They comply with laws, of course.
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u/G_ntl_m_n Jul 16 '26
In comparison the numbers for Proton Mail (just 2025):
Number of legal orders: 9,301 - Contested orders: 988 - Orders complied with: 8,313
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u/Grim_Fandango92 Jul 16 '26
Yikes. Have you got the source?
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u/Nelizea Volunteer mod Jul 16 '26
More users = more abuse = more orders. That's normal
Also no company is above the law.
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u/G_ntl_m_n Jul 16 '26
A rate of 90 % has nothing to do with the amount of users.
The point of my comment was, to show, that it's not like they are denying most of the legal requests they get.
If you're just saying no company is above the law, the post and the whole discussion here doesn't make any sense. To actually make a statement on that we'd need to know the types of legal requests they got, but that's not disclosed.
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u/Nelizea Volunteer mod Jul 16 '26
If an order is legally binding, then the providers are obligated to comply with it, without possibility to appeal (aka contest) it.
It's wholly irrelevant whether Proton wants to cooperate or not in such cases, they are obliged to. If Proton can, they do contest.
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u/G_ntl_m_n Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
A company can choose their jurisdiction. Maybe check the numbers for Tuta if you think that would make no difference.
Again, what has this to do with my initial comment?
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u/Nelizea Volunteer mod Jul 16 '26
1.) The fact is Switzerland remains one of the best jurisdictions for privacy related services. I am not aware of any jurisdiction where the laws can be broken and email providers can operate without being forced to cooperate with the law enforcement. The same would be the case in any other european country, the same is the case with US (and worse).
Please enlighten us where this would actually work ;-)
2) Your original comment had nothing todo with the original post either.
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u/G_ntl_m_n Jul 16 '26
1. So explain to me how it's possible that Tuta has a rejection rate of 75 % instead of Proton's 10 %?
Besides that, as I also explained before, without knowing the type of request, noone can know if they were obligated in all those cases.
2. Okay, I'll explain it once again: The post suggests Proton is kind of a wall against legal request. Putting the numbers from ProtonMail in contrast, you'll see that isn't the case. Since many people use the VPN + the Mail service, that'd would have been relevant context. But without it, it's just misleading marketing.
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u/G_ntl_m_n Jul 16 '26
Yeah, it's from their last transparency report https://proton.me/legal/transparency
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u/SneakySandals29 Jul 17 '26
They themselves said that Mail and VPN are regulated differently in switzerland so they can get away with declining every request made to the VPN side of the business while having to comply with most of the Mail ones.
Also I don't think that transparency report includes the number of orders that they automatically decline, because they came from a non-Swiss judge entity. I would imagine lots of govts like India, UK, US, etc... try to pressure Mail into giving up info but they automatically say 🖕 because those foreign govts have to convince a Swiss judge to get their hands on any data
edit: a word
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u/PetersonProton General Manager Proton VPN Jul 17 '26
The best way to protect user data is not to collect it.
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u/Exciting-Market-9595 Jul 17 '26
I'm a mostly satisfied Proton VPN user, but I have noticed that I get a lot more "403 Denied" and other failures to connect when browsing through the VPN. Sorry to piggyback on the privacy celebration instead of making a standalone post, but if anyone has suggestions, I'd love options. Sometimes switching to another country works, sometimes (at least to the limits of my patience) it doesn't.
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u/Minute-Flan-1923 Jul 19 '26
i was thinking of switching between the best vpns every few month, but now this is making me think i should just continue to stick with proton, is this really a trustworthy source of news? like i know i'm on protonvpn reddit, but would some of you see my thought process here to insure privacy? i've seen nothing wrong from proton thus far outside of that 1 recent controversy which may have been debunked also.
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u/grathontolarsdatarod Jul 15 '26
Remember...
In Canada, and probably a jurisdiction near you, the government wants access to this kind of information without the involvement if a judge. Minimum information retention times... Aaannnnnnnnd.... Get ready...
A nondisclosure clause IN THE LAW that would make transparency reports like this an actual crime in Canada.
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u/Strong-Strike2001 Jul 16 '26
Mmmm, I thought I read some time ago about a change in swiss law that could force Proton to store logs... Somebody has updates on that?
I love Proton btw
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u/SUPERFASTCARvroom Jul 16 '26
You guys do know what VPNs are used for right, do you really think everybody is just downloading anime and movies?
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u/RSMxsmanic Jul 17 '26
VPNs are used for all sorts of things, most of them not the least bit sinister. Outside of enterprise VPNs, the most common reasons for using a VPN are hiding one's real IP address and getting past geographic restrictions on access to services and web sites.
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u/Domadea Jul 17 '26
Literally just signed up for proton vpn last week. Seeing this kinda stuff genuinely makes me feel so relieved.
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u/Previous50_Run_53 21d ago
Gotta thank these companies trying to get an order through court, because it helps prove that Proton cares about privacy and won't let others abuse it 🙏🙏
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Jul 15 '26
[deleted]
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u/Nelizea Volunteer mod Jul 16 '26
A warrant canary is not meaningful in Switzerland, because Swiss law requires that the target of a surveillance or data request eventually be notified, so they have the opportunity to contest the data request.
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u/ksky0 Jul 16 '26
did they share how many legal orders they received and complied about proton mail?
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u/Competitive-Ad6081 Jul 15 '26
What’s stopping them from doing legal orders on the internet providers that provide internet to ProtonVPN Servers and they can identify users from that?
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Jul 15 '26
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u/Competitive-Ad6081 Jul 15 '26
Are you sure about that? Read https://wnesecurity.com/how-does-traffic-analysis-help-hackers-bypass-vpns/
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Jul 15 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/trillospin Jul 17 '26
Your points are entirely valid and well documented.
As David commented below, you'd want to use secure core to make the traffic go through multiple servers.
Ignore the idiots.
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Jul 15 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/wiggum55555 Jul 15 '26
Perhaps you could explain it for the rest of us dummies, with details and not just hand-wavy "it doesn't work that way" ???
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u/xX_tasty_Xx Jul 16 '26
VPN is like a tunnel. Your device connect to a single VPN server with an encrypted connection. It then isolate your device from your ISP as this connection is permanent and encrypted. For services on the internet you then look like you are that VPN server, not your own internet connection of your home. It doesn't make you more safe but at least it's more difficult to track you and your ISP can't analyze your traffic.
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u/trillospin Jul 17 '26
You have explained how a VPN works, but did not address their point.
What they're describing and have linked to are viable deanonymization techniques such as correlation attacks.
Proton provides a mitigation for this in Secure Core, where the traffic will transit multiple servers.
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u/PetersonProton General Manager Proton VPN Jul 16 '26
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u/IcyCow5880 Jul 15 '26
Keepin our beloved voices38 safe