I think the key difference is the amount of data the service can offer when it is asked to do so by some legal entity. Signal famously claims to barely have any useful data to turn over when ordered to do so [1]. If some provider states they are pricacy-focused and protect your data from governments, but can still offer loads of your private data when ordered to, that damages their privacy claim.

EDIT: "some provider like Proton" -> "some provider", never wanted to imply Proton specifically did or does this.

[1] https://signal.org/blog/looking-back-as-the-world-moves-forw...

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neobrain 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> If some provider like Proton states they are pricacy-focused and protect your data from governments, but can still offer loads of your private data when ordered to, that damages their privacy claim.

"Loads" of private data? When has this allegedly happened or how would it technically even be possible?

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streetfighter64 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Well, Proton themselves say they will provide information about who has contacted a randsomware attacker to law enforcement. https://proton.me/legal/law-enforcement

So that probably has happened. Whether they've even provided other private data I don't know, but

> how would it technically even be possible

Well, it's not possible if you trust their claims about E2EE, but that is just a claim. How's that any different from a non-encrypted email provider saying they won't provide your emails to others? It all comes down to trust in the end.

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0x3f 2 hours ago | parent [-]

They don't claim email is E2EE. Of course they need to know email metadata to route messages. That's unavoidable if you are using email. It's not encapsulated like that.

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streetfighter64 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes they do (the storage of your emails on their servers, that is). See this comment for a summary of their claims and reality https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47625229

Edit: A reply to your misunderstanding and accusation below:

What do you mean? By "provide your emails to others" I obviously mean the email *contents*, not the email *address*. (Which I also clarified with "the storage of your emails on their servers"). You know, the very thing that is almost the whole selling point of Proton: that they keep the contents of your emails encrypted so "only you" can access them.

> Proton Mail protects the contents of all your messages with zero-access encryption, meaning no one can read them except you and your recipients. Messages you send to other Proton Mail accounts are always end-to-end encrypted, as are emails sent to non-Proton Mail accounts when you use Password-protected Emails.

https://proton.me/security/end-to-end-encryption

Also, what in the SMTP protocol requires Proton to *store* that metadata? Could they not simply delete it after using it (or, crazy idea, encrypt it in the same way the message contents are encrypted in storage), so they would be unable to respond to law enforcement requests the next week, say? They did also previously claim that they didn't log user's IP addresses. Why would they claim something like that, if it's "obvious to anyone who knows" that it's a false claim? Marketing aimed towards their not so technically savvy userbase?

https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/07/protonmail_hands_user...

Let me also remind you that I was replying to a question about "how would it technically even be possible" to "offer loads of your private data when ordered". My reply was, it's easily possible for them to offer your metadata, and you still need to trust their claims about heir implementation of E2EE to believe they won't offer your message contents.

You're very quick to accuse people of spreading misinformation. Let me hit back with an accusation of my own, which is that Proton's PR team have a habit of regularly trying to discredit any critique as "misinformation". Perhaps you've just read too many of their rebuttals?

	▲	0x3f 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They simply don't. Please stop spreading misinformation. https://proton.me/mail/privacy-policy > Account Activity: Due to limitations of the SMTP protocol, we have access to the following email metadata: sender and recipient email addresses, the IP address incoming messages originated from, attachment name, message subject, and message sent and received times. This would be obvious to anyone knows how email works. It would be very silly for them to claim otherwise.

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kunley 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Thank you for bringing back the Signal's statement, btw.

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Yiin 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

can you expand on the "loads" part? ip and payment option?

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woutervdb 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Keyword is "like": a service like Proton. No idea if and what data they have offered to their government. I was merely trying to offer an explanation to the parent commenter, who was wondering how people can critique pricacy-focused services offering data when required by law.

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Yiin 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Fair enough, I agree. In Proton case, I'm biased because I used to work there ~2019-2022 and the company was basically printing money from subscriptions alone (covid likely helped with that), while fighting (pretty successfully) every request to avoid providing even that limited metadata, because alternative of ruining your core strength - privacy - meant the death of the business. I don't know if anything changed, but I'd bet the goals remain largely the same - providing good-enough privacy any commercial company can realistically give you. Unencrypted user data in this business is poison, and they're well aware fwiw.

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Scarblac 2 hours ago | parent [-]

But don't they have both the encrypted data and the decryption keys? I don't remember giving them my keys to use, and I can look at my stuff from multiple devices so the keys aren't stored on my device.

So they must have the ability to look at all that encrypted data anyway?

	▲	0x3f an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Did you not notice that you have to type in a password?

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izacus 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You seem to be hiding behind this "like" while writing into comments about Proton - making accusations and theories that imply it's Proton that actually does that.