Ask HN: Complaint from Proton AG – what should I do?

Overall, point 2 is the most interesting/troubling. I'm glad to have read it.

However, point 9 is beyond ridiculous. You claim that Protonmail devs don't use Protonmail. That's an interesting claim.

I was expecting a quote from devs making this claim.

Instead, it links to an article and uses the fact that Protonmail devs don't have an explicit @protonmail.com email address on GitHub as evidence (of the 13 devs inspected, the most common case is not having an email address public).

The article even makes this snarky remark when the dev is using Protonmail with a custom domain: 'Does not use Protonmail.com (No pride in “@protonmail.com”)'.

That's a very weak point to make compared to the seriousness of your other claims.

So this seems like a great opportunity to open a dialogue with a company you are complaining about and have direct discussion over your concerns. You could even update your article with their responses, and have a better post at the end of it all.

Your statements may not all be convincing arguments, but Proton they say which exact part(s) they take offense at? Because you are entitled to your opinion and your interpretation of facts.

Ignore them, or take down the post, depending on how much this situation impacts you. It’s not worth suffering or fighting uselessy, and if your blog is not that popular, this suffering is probably useless.

Choose your fights wisely.

That will lend credence to your claims if true.

- an office building for whatever is located 1 mile away from whatever else... by that standard any NGO based in Paris or Washington cooperates with intelligence services ;)

- some shares of this private company are owned by reputable bad actors... by that standard any private corporation is malicious ;)

But yes they did behave like a honeypot ("all your data is safe and anonymous with us") all the while using "custom" (well openpgp.js i believe?) encryption strategies relying on good-faith servers. Moreover, i found it weird that a research project would have such marketing power... it's famous in IT circles that uni projects have great code but the worst PR :) (ever heard of GNU/Net? :D)

Overall, i think you may be imagining things and a title claiming "TRUTH" about proton doesn't help your case because you have little evidence. However, i believe no matter the conclusions you draw from them, the correlations you present in that article are of public interest because we may learn in the future that there were indeed hidden connections to intelligence services (of which you don't yet provide proof).

If i were you, i would certainly rename the article to "Disturbing facts" or "Alleged truth" but not claim it's an absolute truth, because you don't have hard evidence. And i would certainly add two new bullet points about:

1) Protonmail collaborating with EUROPOL in a clear case of political repression against anti-gentrification activists in Paris (and apparently they are the ones who suggested french police requested via EUROPOL), and setup IP logging specifically for that user... so even in the clearest violations they are not standing up for users if it means taking legal risks for them

2) Prontonmail joining the long list of censor trolls asking registrars about identity of domain owner?! (see also previous threads about Njalla and Peter Sunde disappointed in Proton) They broke away from a tradition of free speech (debunk claims publicly), and from a traditional form of law enforcement (first contact website owner, if it fails contact the host if the contact is obviously illegal [0], or just sue against X for defamation)

Time for some Streisand Effect?

[0] Yes contacting the registrar to obtain information or censor information is rather unusual. And let's be honest, beyond usual corporate trolls with armies of lawyers, contacting anyone to censor such vague claims on a random blog in a dark corner of the internet is also rather unusual. It's not exactly like the website is reachable at protonmailtruth.ch or whatever.

If it really matters, hire a lawyer familiar with such matters.

If it doesn't matter, then it doesn't matter.

Good luck.