So I work in an area of expertise that requires a good amount of privacy and secrecy to protect activists, and we originally used proton VPN and mail but now we do not use any of them as they now store user IP addresses and hand them over to the 3 letter agencies, And out of desperation our IT team tried mullvad. Best choice of our life, We trusted you guys even before the germans tried to raid you and we trust you even more after. Your impact on the internet is not to be undermined or diminished and your service frankly should be the only VPN service that has been labelled as “reputable”.
summer deserted angle shame straight badge engine tender pocket mourn
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Word of the day is RAM. Go ahead and take the server. Let me just unplug this for you…
What email are you going with? I’ve been looking at ditching Proton too
Mullvad Browser is top notch IMHO
They have a browser too!
I have proton mail unlimited for the same price as i bought my proton plus and all the added features like 600gb drive which made my life so much easier syncing files between phone, pc and laptop, proton pass (mainly use keepassXC for my important stuff tho). Unlimited aliases, 10 or more addresses/identities on top of custom domains.
Just having a well working secure email app on my phone plus the proton drive would have been enough for me! I have been wary tho since I’m afraid they will go too corporate like so many others have through the years.
My last mullvad subscription ended a couple of months back and i, as a poor fuck, decided to try the VPN i have included in my payment plan finally and super easy to set up in the router, pretty much zero captchas, serves all around the world.
I also love mullvad and as the outlaw pirate the government think i am it feels so good donating xmr to mullvad, just the fact that they put up every single document from the police/“justice department” on Twitter was gold.
I sponsor my favorite foss (and a few other privacy websites/projects too) with whatever i can spare, everything from VLC to whonix has helped me so much.
Regarding proton giving out IPs to agencies I must have missed it if you don’t mean that French dude a couple of years back. I read their blog sonetimes and felt like i didn’t have to worry, just that they are based in Switzerland and can ignore retarded EU decisions is worth so much for me.
Is there something new or obvious that I’ve missed and in that case could you fill me in?
Can i have a link to where they say that? Not that I’m wondering if it’s true, of course.
Ok, but what about the apps? They’re not covered.
Proton can log IP addresses used to access its mail services at request of authorities, but they don’t log IPs for the VPN service. Email providers and VPN providers are covered by separate laws from what I know. Even Proton themselves recommend using a VPN when accessing their mail service, although IP is the only thing they may log and not the actual mailbox contents.
It stems from that story where some French activist was caught by authorities because Proton was served a court order to log the IP for the activist’s mailbox.
Although it is kinda funny reading how Proton stores IPs and shares them with “three letter agencies” considering, you know, Mullvad is based in Sweden which is a member of the EYES boogeyman.
I’m using my custom domains more and more inside proton in case they get too greedy, but if you guys are european you should be a lot more afraid of stuff like Chat Conrol.
The Swiss has so many good laws for neutrality/the right to privacy but as with everything else it depends on what you use it for and whats most important to you as an individual.
Anyway if the IP problem is that much of a turnoff for you just make a new profile in brave, minimal fingerprints out of the box, and set it to tor connections/onion re-dieect only. Should mask your ip the same as tor browser does?
Just n my first thought reading this thread, but another thing is to use cock.li webmail if you want to send sensitive stuff from a throwaway acc, they are open for registrations now without invites needed.
This makes me want to give Thunderbird another shot, i never managed to get it working in my whonix VN
I was looking for a browser that hid my device ID and discovered Mullvad it’s my second most used browser now!!! ARC I tried and tried and tried still don’t get it.
I’m not sure that “activist” is the right description for these people:
For the past year, a group of people have taken over a handful of commercial premises and apartments near Place Sainte Marthe in Paris. They want to fight against gentrification, real estate speculation, Airbnb and high-end restaurants.
If they occupied by own apartment, I would call them delinquent villains with no respect for people, not activists whom I generally respect.
Swiss laws have nothing special in terms of privacy that other similar countries don’t. But there were persistent rumours that Swiss bank accounts could anonymise cash, so they got a reputation as some sort of privacy haven. It’s all just window dressing.
Swiss companies are just as required to hand over data to law enforcement as any other.
I love the way you can use it without the VPN
Fair enough, never really concerned myself with the “who and why” aspect of this matter, just the things relevant to Proton services 
They are not a part of the European Union and therefore not affected by the laws the European Union implements on their member countries. For exanple chat control. They were really damn close to getting that voted in this winter, where all to end encryption would be forbidden (Signal, WhatsApp, Protonmail) etc.
The reasoning was to catch terror cells and pedophiles. Just one country afaik voted no (Spain). Atleast delayed it enough for people to actually notice what was about to happen.
I assume they already do this as much as possible but that they (the European union) are willing to openly suggest breaking all encryption for its citizens and having AI scan their every interaction and if they find something suspicious a human was supposed to analyse it.
How fucked up does that sound? Proton was at the forefront making people aware, even tho i first got wind if it thanks to mullvad. Anyway, it wouldn’t affect Schweiz. And i am glad my stuff is on servers on that countrys soil.
But again, what might be the most important feature or issue for me might be the opposite of yours so each to his own!
Entirely understandable, that is the way it was reported and you just quoted it. Nevertheless, words carry weight and I appeal to everything to be mindful. Most people would react completely differently at the news that “Proton was forced to hand over the IP address of a criminal” compared to “Proton was forced to hand over the IP address of an activist”. They might think “I’m no criminal, but I might be an activist”.
Technically, from your point of view, this is irrelevant, I get that.
They are not a member state but signatories to great amounts of EU legislation, as required to be part of the single-market and Schengen-zone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland%E2%80%93European_Union_relations