404 Media has a story about Proton Mail giving subscriber data to the Swiss government, who passed the information to the FBI.
It’s metadata—payment information related to a particular account—but still important knowledge. This sort of thing happens, even to privacy-centric companies like Proton Mail.
Doug • March 20, 2026 7:37 AM
Proton had a nice rebuttal to the article. The TL;DR is that any company has to comply with legal orders. Proton takes care to not keep data so no user content is available to the authorities. The users have an option to pay with cash or crypto or credit card. If the user needed/wanted anonymity, then cash/crypto is the way to go. I’m comfortable with these constraints and it’s a quantum improvement over google.
I do not know the proton system but posteo.de has separated payment and accounts. It’s not possible to get the user account from any payment action. If you use cash no trails at all are available
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Doug • March 20, 2026 7:36 AM
Proton had a nice rebuttal to the article. The TL;DR is that any company has to comply with legal orders. Proton takes care to not keep data so no user content is available to the authorities. The users have an option to pay with cash or crypto or credit card. If the user needed/wanted anonymity, then cash/crypto is the way to go. I’m comfortable with these constraints and it’s a quantum improvement over google.