Better than gift cards which are slightly more centralised, you can pay for proton by sending cash in an envelope by post
07.03.2026 19:04
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Better than gift cards which are slightly more centralised, you can pay for proton by sending cash in an envelope by post
It's literally send them an envelope with cash in the post, not digital: proton.me/support/paym...
To be clear "US authorities dealing with local authorities" is what happened here. Swiss authorities (who have an MLAT with the US, as does Germany) are the ones who compelled Proton. With payment in cash, Proton wouldn't have been able to turn over anything of use thanks to E2EE.
They let you pay by cash by post, specifically to prevent this sort of thing. Honestly, they're doing as well as anyone can: complies when compelled by legal authorities, keeps only information they have to keep to process payments, offer anonymous ways of payment. @404media.co dropped the ball here
@404media.co is being disappointingly sensationalist. This is unrelated to E2EE: Proton was compelled by Swiss authorities to turn over payment data (bc they can't access email contents and senders/recipients).
To prevent this @proton.me supports (and encourages) paying in cash by post
@404media.co is being disappointingly sensationalist. Proton was compelled by Swiss authorities to turn over payment data (bc they can't access email contents and senders/recipients). They didn't "collaborate" with the FBI.
To prevent this @proton.me supports (and encourages) paying in cash by post
Assuming you use a cloud provider (eg hetzner), they'd turn over data just the same if compelled by local authorities. Proton wasn't "persuaded", they were compelled by Swiss authorities.
The right lesson is better opsec for activists: pay with cash, use Tor/VPN to connect to Proton or Tutanota.
@404media.co is in the wrong here. Google would have turned over the contents of emails, Proton only had access to payment info (impossible to encrypt). Proton complied with Swiss authorities, but they offer (and encourage) payment in cash which would have fully prevented this. DO switch from Gmail.
Do you think a different service could have acted better in the face of a legal request from local authorities? If so, how? If not, then would we be better off without these providers?
By eroding trust in these services @404media.co is harming activists instead of educating them to pay with cash
Proton DOES let you fix this! You can pay by cash (snail mailed to them) and use a VPN or Tor. Then nothing traces you to them and the contents of your emails are inaccessible. @404media.co is doing their readers a disservice
It's an important distinction. E2EE means literally impossible for Proton, Swiss Government or FBI to access the actual email contents or metadata. Only information available in this case was credit card. Proton does offer a way to protect against that (mailing cash), but this user did not use it
Of course. The point I'm making is that @404media.co is incorrectly attributing blame to @proton.me in a way that makes activists LESS safe. You SHOULD use Proton (or a service like it), but you need to ALSO use a VPN and an anonymous payment method (cash in envelope). Good opsec, unrelated to email
You can't just say "their reporting is accurate". Context matters. As written, @404media.co 's article is harmful, appointing blame to @proton.me instead of educating the public: activists SHOULD use proton, but also anonymous forms of payment (cash in envelope) and a VPN.
@404media.co is incorrectly framing this
bsky.app/profile/cris...
@404media.co is incorrectly framing this
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It's disappointing to see this framing from @404media.co . The implication that @proton.me did something wrong suggests that activists would be safe if only they used a different service. Instead of educating the public on proper opsec: Proton is part of it, but use VPN, pay with cash in envelope.
Agree 100% but let's not change the subject: @proton.me acted as well as possible in this situation and @404media.co 's framing is irresponsible; a better article would focus on highlighting that activists should use private forms of payment IN ADDITION TO a service like proton.
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Tutanota would have to do the exact same if compelled by German authorities. And they are likelier to be affected if Chat Control ever goes through
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3. Proton goes further and makes it clear on their website that for maximum privacy you should use Tor/VPN and pay cash or crypto.
They shouldn't be taking any flak for this. This is gold standard and so much better than if the activists had used any unencrypted email service.
404media is framing this in a sensationalist way.
1. Proton complied with Swiss law, compelled by Swiss authorities (who have an MLAT with the US authorities).
2. Because they do privacy right, they were unable to provide anything other than credit card details. These need to be stored unencrypted.
This is irresponsible framing. The words "helped" and "provided" imply that Proton did this voluntarily, but they were required under Swiss law. I don't hear any information to indicate that they could have done anything differently.
You should clarify this. You're misrepresenting.
Is age bad? I use it for random files I wanna avoid accidentally exposing
It does vary due to DST dates being different. But more to the point, Dropout has an international audience, it was a suggestion to make our lives just slightly easier, of course it's a surmountable problem
Why do you say SD-10 is salting the earth? I only have a passing interest in the direction C++ is heading nowadays, but reading it (isocpp.org/std/standing...) is non-obvious: is it the "avoid viral annotation" that is at issue, blocking any explicit "safe" subset of the language?
The create a service interface on railway with tangled edited with hopes and dreams I don't have to keep doing railway up and can share "run this on railway" links
@railway.com imagine how cool it would be if y'all supported @tangled.org repos 👀
LLMs getting much better at pushing back against bullshit prompts.
“Green means the model clearly called out the nonsense. Amber means partial challenge. Red means the model let nonsense pass”
github.com/petergpt/bul...