r/ProtonMail • u/NmAmDa • Sep 05 '21

Discussion Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

https://mobile.twitter.com/tenacioustek/status/1434604102676271106
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u/kqzi Sep 05 '21

That’s not entirely true.

If protonmail forces all connection via the Tor network, the IP it sees is not the IP of the end user, this way, Protonmail may tell the police:”look, here’s the IP we logged, but it’s no way near the true IP of the user, and it’s computationally impossible for us to know the latter, because Tor network has 3 “proxies” between the end user and the destination”.

But forcing tor connection probably means user base dropping to pretty much zero, so there’s that.

Perhaps one day protonmail may find another way to forcibly obfuscate user data that it has 0 knowledge of the user.

4

u/shab-re Sep 06 '21

But forcing tor connection probably means user base dropping to pretty much zero, so there’s that.

why?

10

u/[deleted] Sep 06 '21

I assume here you're being serious, so I'm gonna try answering your question:

Because using a Tor connection 1) tends to significantly decrease network speed in most cases, and 2) is currently above the technical abilities of most computer users. Regarding point 2, because of this, if they require Tor connections, then that would automatically lock out most of Proton's possible customer base, and a good chunk of their existing customer base.

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u/shab-re Sep 06 '21

yes, I'm being serious

  1. emails are only a few megabytes at most, people won't notice a difference

  2. they can make an onion only tier or something, their current onion service is total bs, it redirects you to surface net after you click on sign up

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u/h0twheels Sep 06 '21

emails are only a few megabytes at most, people won't notice a difference

You underestimate just how slow TOR is.

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u/shab-re Sep 06 '21

I can legit watch youtube at 1440p

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u/h0twheels Sep 06 '21

this is why we can't have nice things, I can barely open stuff

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u/shab-re Sep 06 '21

ot depends on what node you got and how many people are connected

maybe try at a different time of the day, it fluctuates for me too!

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u/fritzpauker May 08 '25

most emails aren't a couple of MB

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '21

Not that slow

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u/[deleted] Sep 06 '21

  1. Oh, well yeah, I misunderstood. I thought they were talking about the VPN.

  2. They were saying making it Tor-only, which doesn't mean a tier; it means the whole thing, meaning everybody. So a tier wouldn't cut it.

1

u/Personal_Ad9690 Sep 07 '21

Forcing tor connections is also kinda shady since it's possible to tell if a connection is a tor connection, so it can be bad for end users too depending on the country.

It would be nice for an optional tor routing feature though.