cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/40877
Email is inherently insecure. If you want or need secure communications, that’s what software like Briar, Matrix, or Signal (yes despite some drama).
Secure emails can always be done manually with PGP and will be a lot hardier than trusting an organization that gives away subscriber payments to Western-backed coup attempts and color revolutions.
Protonmail doesnt ask me for a phone number and is also relatively popular so i wont look like an outcast using it, if temp mail doesnt work proton does. email is insecure and shouldnt be used for anything confidential
whats so bad? the screenshot doesnt tell me whats so bad about protonmail. and the “market speak” is the same kind of marketing proton is known for, atleast since ive been using it, and as far as the posts suggests nothing related to the encryption at a technical level has changed.
“We support the us sponsored revolutions” is the bad part. Try and be a revolutionary in the us whilst using proton mail and see what happens.
source?
Already happened: https://lemmy.ml/post/79956
That would have been a better link than what was provided in this thread. This whole thread is ridiculously scatterbrained. Instead of a link, there’s a screenshot, be and a paragraph that is deeply unclear. If all email is not secure, what does that have to do with protonmail in particular or with their screenshot?
And what’s wrong with activist resistance in Hong Kong, Belarus and Myanmar? I don’t know much about the latter two, although a quick trip to the wiki suggests to me that political activism there is a good thing, not a bad thing. And I definitely feel that Hong Kong activism was a good thing and not a bad thing. And what do those have to do with Protonmail in particular, or with the U.S. in particular?
I’m not even saying it’s wrong, but for goodness sake, at least explain this argument or link to something that unpacks all these arguments because this is a complete mess. The post itself doesn’t make sense without additional explanation, and these cryptic one liner responses make things even more confusing.
Edit: I’m seeing this on lemmy.ml, but I guess since this was posted on lemmygrad.ml, it may make a degree of sense for those political positions to be taken for granted, although I don’t share them.
‘good’ and ‘bad’ are usually relative and open for debate. political ideas and judgements are best kept to certain times, places, and groups. Everyone has heard, i’d guess, that it is in bad taste to discuss religion or politics at a big family gathering table/dinner - such as Thanks Giving in America, as an example. I’ve seen my dad get into some uncomfortable debates at the dinner table with male relatives over 30 or 40 years old. I’d like to see more or even all businesses be neutral and simply ‘do right’ in their own dealings - be good to customers, staff, the environment, animals, etc. Start with a PERSONAL revolution and improve yourselves.
“Was slavery bad?”
“start with a PERSONAL resolution and improve yourself!”
🙄
If it interferes with a person’s freedom, property, or life, then one is a victim and the other the criminal. There are many shades of gray; nothing is all black or all white (all or nothing).
I’d like for more people to be polite enough to not impose their views on others. If you live a great life and are a great person, I will look at what makes YOU different and try to emulate those wonderful traits. No need to slam your ideas in my face (or knock on my door with pamphlets). Too many people fool themselves that they know best.
The takeaway is it’s upholding of color revolutions and nationalist movements.
Contrary to what many people in the West say, everything has politics to a degree, whether it be explicit or implicit. This thinking is unfortunately very prevalent in tech communities. The cries to keep politics out of things simply does not make sense; ambivalency and apoliticalness is a form of political expression which, in its nature of “not caring,” gives way to the dominant political ideology of the ruling class and it’s state power over society.
In this case, claiming to be for “privacy” and “activists” while citing explicitly money being funneled into pro-capitalist and nationalist movements pushed for by the ruling class, is hypocritical and is the result of what I said above. It shows their true colors and how untrustworthy they are, where their allegiances lie with the ruling class. Their upholding of Western capitalism means they cannot be trusted with actual liberation movements of the masses, of privacy from the insidious arms of the State, and actual freedom for the many.
The takaway is that Protonmail and anyone who pays for their services is an active terrorism enabler in Hong Kong and Belarus. I’m surprised they don’t fund Islamic extremists in Xinjiang too after hearing that.
I’m all for Hong Kong and Belarus being their own state/autonomous, but most companies should not take sides - certainly not so publicly.
be the change you want to see. live right and be happy enough and successful doing so that people want to emulate you, be like you. teach without words. people who preach are generally the biggest hypocrites. stop telling others to do the right thing and just do the right thing yourself.
I collect free email addresses and use them like file cabinets to segregate online activities. Friends get one. Websites get another, etc. High security isn’t needed.
Probably best practice when it comes to email privacy.
In 1998, someone did a finger search on the email server I was using and it returned my personal info. The lack of privacy at the time horrified me. I started a website dedicated to privacy. That attracted visits from every branch of the Federal govt. It also attracted stalkers trying to negate what I was advocating. I keep multiple layers between my online activities. You’d be amazed at how persistent people can be to silence you for having a difference in opinion to them. The layers don’t give me more privacy, but they do shine a spotlight on stalkers. One anonymous email provider posted on his site… If you plan on doing anything illegal, be aware that the FBI visited him daily and he was on a first name basis with the agents.
Right, so having to comply with swiss laws to log IP after the request by swiss authorities (otherwise the company is gonna be persecuted for it) and saying “We support activism” is all you need to step away from proton as a company. Ok, you do you, but i know for a fact i’m not using Signal which is a glorified SMS messenger and has literally same encryption to Proton, Matrix which is badly designed, and Briar (never heard of it). So how do i send job applications? How do i register to forums? Sorry having an email is good and convenient, if your intent is to break the law, please stop using widely known services. (Breaking the law doesn’t not inherently make you a villain, governments can be evil, however consequences happen people).
Use an email from a domain you own. That gives you the most flexability in jumping ship after stuff like thus happens without tearing your social connections apart. Many email providers support importing custom domains, and you can always self host using an open source encrypted email server, too. Use a reputable privacy friendly registrar that requires the least personal information and doesn’t display that info in the WHOIS.
I’m in a rut where I use Protonmail but really want to switch, but I’ve had the email for years now and all of my acquaintances and collegues know me by it. I don’t pay for Protonmail, never have, so hopefully I’m not contributing to their “investments”, but when I finally get my act together, I will probably buy a domain name and spin up an email on that instead of simply going to the next provider-linked email address.
Custom domains where what I used to move off gmail years ago, it makes it so easy to switch, and it’s why I could never consider posteo (unless they now allow for custom domains). Just point it to the new provider and import old mail and you’re good
I wonder if they support ALL activists, or take sides, or if they choose which ideologies should be cancelled or supported. The last thing I want is to support technocrats.
You can’t be entirely sure, but their plain outward support for these nationalist movements means they’re at odds with their opposition, Hong Kong/China & Belarus/Russia. For the former, the Hong Kong protestors were clearly a guise to attempt to destabilize China. The latter is slightly less obvious as Belarus isn’t socialist and Lukashenko isn’t a communist, and the protests weren’t entirely nationalist, but it was co-opted in an effort to further Western imperialism given Lukashenko’s dismissal of giving into neoliberal measures that benefit the US et. al..
And given everything I’ve seen from them is also in English, it means they cater entirely to Western audiences and obviously hyper-focused on English speakers, who will all fall under the umbrella of US hegemony more so than most. Yet they were incredibly quiet during the BLM protests in the US last year, making zero effort to proclaim they’re on the side of activists that aren’t funded by the US. There’s no mention of siding with the activists fighting the continued attempts to destabilize China, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Chile, etc. - and that’s all recent.
Overall it’s very suspicious. They cannot be trusted to provide encryption and security given their agenda easily made clear.
For example, if you’re an eco anarchist in France, you’re screwed. They do take sides
To be clear, this is not speculation. Protonmail actively collaborated with EUROPOL in a clear case of political repression against anarchists in Paris. It appears they were the ones suggesting to the french police that they make the request via EUROPOL, and that they did not try to delay/protest the request.
To be fair, Proton’s hands were tied. It was either give up the customer data for a few customers or their business would have to be shut down for all the users relying on it.
In reality the activists made a crucial mistake of not using a VPN. If they used the Proton VPN in conjunction with Proton Mail they would have been safe.
To be fair, Proton’s hands were tied.
No, not really. I know you mean it as a metaphor, but i think it’s important to point out in some countries as a sysadmin you could literally have your hands tied and cops beating the shit out of you. Avoiding this is a privilege european sysadmins have and can use.
It was either give up the customer data for a few customers or their business would have to be shut down for all the users
That’s definitely not so clear cut. Usually and to my knowledge the worst you can get for failing to keep logs (data retention laws) is a fine, which for a business like Proton is not really a problem as we’re not talking about a small hosting non-profit, and i’m sure people would be happy to take part in a crowdfunding for that.
And they could have just gotten away with it. As you can learn from other hosting collectives like njalla (or weirder “offshore hosting” companies) not answering to the cops is always an option, or even answering that you don’t have the information they requested.
If they used the Proton VPN in conjunction with Proton Mail they would have been safe.
Why always blame the victim? I agree it was preventable, but that’s no excuse for the way some of us tech people collaborate with those fucking fascists from the police who will do anything to protect the status quo.
Also worth noting, from what i gathered, Protonmail in fact setup IP logging just for this user specifically. So in this setup, Proton VPN would not have been safe either.
This is the PR version of Protonmail. While this could theoretically been a worst case outcome, they could have taken this to court and I believe the Swiss legal system might have ruled in their favor as using terrorism laws against non-violent activists is IMHO a clear legal over-reach of the French police.
That said, yes hiding their IP would have been better, but why do you think using the VPN by the same company would have helped at all? The VPN provider also knows the IP of the connecting users.
why do you think using the VPN by the same company would have helped at all?
Commercial VPN providers have proven time and time again to not be trustworthy. From VPNs handing over IPs they swore they didn’t have, to that one VPN getting hacked and the hacker leaking data they pinky promised they didn’t log, to the very real possibility of some VPNs being government surveillance honeypots. Using a VPN would very likely not have saved the environmental activist in question. Tor/Tails/Whonix might have, but when the Western State is this hellbent on ruining you because you undermined their capitalism/imperialism, you’re likely screwed no matter what/
Now if only they spent this much effort to catch rich sex offenders and not people who simply give a shit about the future of humanity on this planet.
To be fair, if they shut down it would be better because you’d have one less Western white knight funding terrorists on Hong Kong and Belarus.
Wait, what? How is Protonmail a white knight if they’re not standing up for anything? How are comrades struggling against injustice and domination in Hong Kong and Belarus terrorism? Sorry to be a little harsh, but you sound just like the nazis calling the French resistance, or the French calling the Algerian independence movement terrorists.
Here’s a short read about Hong Kong, and an entire anarchist blog from Belarus.
Dude, come on lmao. Don’t call rioters comrades and comrades nazis.
If your comrades are the riot cops and the intelligence services, i’m happy to call you a nazi even if that’s a stretch of the original definition. Fuck that shit! If you call yourself a socialist, think about it: which side are you on? Are you on the side of the people fighting against the elite? Or secret police detaining, torturing and disappearing them?
Hong Kong is already free, and became free when the Brits were driven out of it. The recent Hong Kong protests were nationalist/separatist. See here: https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/6d22ace49a8605ff1915577f9d992b37315e7618/socialism_faq.md#what-about-the-hong-kong-protests Some protesters were literally begging Trump to annex them.
I know less about Belarus, but https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7328 and @CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml’s answers in this comment thread https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10554/comment/18109 seem to be pretty useful resources.
Also see @savoy@lemmygrad.ml’s comment in this very thread for more info on both: https://lemmy.ml/post/90607/comment/93083
Hong Kong is already free
Oh well if the ministry of truth said so then i guess there’s no alternative interpretation?! I’d still like to point out that just because a country has some level of administrative autonomy doesn’t mean people are free: nationalist independence is not popular freedom.
That link you gave lists a lot of broken resources. First they assume China is a communist government, which is factually false: have you seen a classless society in China? Abolition of work and State? Then they assume just because some corrupt imperialist US media gave voice to one or two “leaders” (a figure they probably fabricated themselves) that all people supporting the movement are like them. It’s such a strawman argument that reeks of political police propaganda it’s a shame: it’s just like when the french government tried to paint the whole gilets jaunes movement as an antisemitic or royalist movement because you could find one or two of these in the demos, despite them being in the minority and getting kicked out of demos when they were spotted.
Also, i think it’s important to point out that just because some people appealed to the US and “international scene” doesn’t mean they actually support US imperialism. For example, the Kurdish revolutionary movement strongly relied on military/diplomatic intervention from USA and France to resist ISIS and Turkey… which of course failed to some extent when the interests of our respective empires were not aligned with the kurdish interests anymore. But as a strategy it has taken them so far (instead of being wiped out in the aftermath of the siege of Kobane back in 2014). Today the Kurdish liberation movement has strong(er) ties to the Zapatistas and other liberation movements across the planets: we can’t really say the Zapatistas are really friends with the USA. It’s easy for you to judge from your armchair that asking for help from this or that person is wrong: the day you face extermination by a government we’ll see how you react.
The linked mastodon post has been deleted. But according to other links, it seems on lemmygrad.ml it brings you upvotes to advocate for death penalty for people you disagree with, and to say the people being detained and tortured by political police are liars. Then to say because one nazi paraded a flag (where?) the entire uprising is a neonazi movement. Oh, and that the government of Belarus is leftist somehow? This sentence especially makes me laugh:
Belarus is the last ex-Soviet country that still holds some socialised institutions (Lukashenko famously said that trade unions would be established in all businesses by the end of the year)
So you’ve got “socialized institutions” yet people living in misery and you need permission from the chief supreme to establish trade unions? Is that what you call socialism? Does that sound like a compelling argument to you as a leftist?
On the topic of US regime change, the NED has funded projects in Belarus to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars.
OK so a few hundred thousand dollars thrown in by an imperialist org, and suddenly an entire popular movement has been bought? This makes no sense. When the US wants to fund a coup, they spend millions if not billions, and their PR machine works a lot better: just look at what happened in Venezuela, or back in the day with the Contras movement in Nicaragua. Or with the “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan (hello Ben Laden).
As a leftist, think about it: which side are you on? Are you on the side of the riot police and secret police? Or on the side of the people? Are you on the side of the Cheka or the Cronstadt soviet and Makhnovtchina peasants? Are you defending the established order of economic privileges of the ruling class, or siding up with the people burning shit down?
In case of that French activist, it was not for the political position made (on ecology) but because of having squatted in private property (as far as I remember reading). So there is some need for nuance here.
Based as fuck underrated. Wish I had thought like this a long time ago.
Imagine walking away from a product, that wasn’t designed to be secure, because it isn’t secure lmao
Imagine walking away from a dumpster fire because it can burn you.
Probably the most inaccurate and low effort comparison, but okay.
