Most of the privacy claims (of all type of apps) are essentially garbage anyway because realistically, if a website or an app can be compelled to push an update to a specific user, then they can intercept anything they want.

It doesn't even have to be a specific binary, it can be "just turn on this A/B testing / debug flag for that user" or a piece of javascript

Privacy and security are not binary. Statements like “because it isn’t 100% secure or private, then it is not worth it” means one has essentially no clue. There is not such thing as 100% privacy or security, for starters.

It’s all layers of protection and/or trust and compromises.

>Most of the privacy claims (of all type of apps) are essentially garbage...

True. Everything has backdoored CPUs as its foundation. Consider, for starters: (Intel's 'Management' Engine); AMD's (PSP); Apple/Arm (black-box hardware).

You can layer as much theater as you like on top of the hardware-surveillance-layer in modern computers; it still won't grant you privacy.

> Most of the privacy claims (of all type of apps) are essentially garbage anyway

I think that’s a sweeping generalisation.

I don’t think that is a useful definition even if technically true. With that logic even Linux isn’t privacy because in theory they can push code that will only run for you.

You'll have to be more specific what kind of "privacy claims" you're talking about. Proton is definitely a lot more private than, say, Google. But, as always, you'll have to trust the party delivering the binaries you run. Also, any company operating legally, have to co-operate with court orders etc., but afaik they try to push back

>if a website or an app can be compelled to push an update to a specific user, then they can intercept anything they want

yes which is why i hoped they would implement a verification system like with a browser addon that compares the website client code used for encryption and alerts the user if it does not match the one served everyone else.

ctemplar mail used to have this many years ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20200201012958/https://ctemplar....

I once did some tinkering with Proton Docs and I was able to find that the comments within Proton Docs when I used it via curl definitely felt like it had something like logs (I feel like I should try doing this again to have more definitive answer)

Either way, the response was encrypted but they hold the encryption key atleast within proton-docs.

I also want to say that Proton allows the ability to change password through OTP, (Something which I sorta appreciate[0]) but that means that their infrastructure can then have the ability to change password and you can toggle that functionality by sending a request to proton to allow OTP and on which number, so proton themselves can do that too. Unless, I am getting it wrong, by default, Proton still has your encryption keys and even if you change them (which 99% including me might not do), even then I definitely feel like there can be some concern.

To be honest, There is nothing like zero trust, that's what I learnt, You are still trusting Proton Aka The swiss laws behind it so that you know that they won't get legally forced to give more data than usual (like US companies for example) but they will still comply with the swiss laws (recent proton incident)

Then, secondly, you have to trust Proton themselves, but with something like this incident where Proton Meet might be omitting somethings, it doesn't paste a clear picture of transparency or trust.

I don't really know why Proton might create something like Meet especially with its infrastructure relying on the CLOUD Act, and then, try to sell it within the idea of privacy. They both are contradictory.

Proton is, creating lots of products, On one hand I can appreciate that, but on the other, as part of community, I feel frustrated/sad because they don't have some core features like proper proton drive rsync support or even some API[1]'s surrounding it. I tried to do the experiment in first place because I wanted to create a commenting engine for static websites which could use proton-drive as its backend. They really could gain a lot from transparency with proper API support and letting the community do things with it, but that's not really the case :/

I am still using Proton but they definitely aren't a bastion recently. I might still recommend Proton, but I sort of hope that companies self host some open source applications themselves, whether self-hosting with hardware or in a proper EU cloud like Hetzner/OVH.

But Incidents like these are making me a little more hesitant to recommend Proton nowadays.

[0]: as someone who had lost one of my previous accounts after my Keepassxc database got deleted because of me accidentally wiping my archlinux with tinkering with it, Now I use Bitwarden with OTP on proton.

[1]: I was able to make something like an API myself by relying on something like puppeteer, even with puppeteer though, it was really hard to make something like that. I couldn't create a public endpoint of it because having puppeteer instances for a commenting engine would be very resource intensive.

Is there any evidence that the mechanism to do that is in place?

I think that would be widely decried especially on HN if that is one day implemented.