Comment by j-bos

Comment by j-bos 6 hours ago

> Phrack reached out to Proton in private multiple times, and Proton ghosted them.

According to Proton's response in the linked reddit post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45227356

They say: "Regarding Phrack’s claim on contacting our legal team 8 times: this is not true. We have only received two emails to our legal team inbox, last one on Sep 6 with a 48-hour deadline. This is unrealistic for a company the size of Proton, especially since the message was sent to our legal team inbox on a Saturday, rather than through the proper customer support channels."

commmentator 6 hours ago

You'll note that Proton's PR only mentions the second date - " last one on Sep 6 with a 48-hour deadline."

Proton doesn't mention that the first email from Phrack which Proton ignored was weeks prior to that, which is what led to the second email in the first place.

You'll also note that Proton doesn't mention that their Abuse Team refused to re-anable the account after the article author did the appeals process, as per Phrack's timeline at the top of their article.

Reply View 5 replies

j-bos 6 hours ago

That's a great point. I guess at this point it'd be ideal for them to treat this an incident and do a proper postmortem with timelines and decision calculus.

Reply View | 3 replies
- commmentator 6 hours ago
  
  Definitely agree. A frank postmortem would be a good thing to see.
  
  Reply View | 0 replies
- alsetmusic 5 hours ago
  
  But that would be contrary to their clear intention thus far: to sweep this under the rug. /s
  I had previously liked Proton. I started seeing bits and pieces of info about their security being lackluster over the past year or so, causing doubt about their credibility. I'm definitely done with them after this.
  
  Reply View | 1 reply
  
  Insanity 4 hours ago
  
  This is honestly sad to see. I use Proton and advocate it to others. This does make me rethink my position somewhat - although I’d argue it’s still better than Google / Microsoft-owned email services.
  
  Reply View | 0 replies
[removed] 5 hours ago

[deleted]

Reply View | 0 replies

nsagent 6 hours ago

To be honest, I've found Proton's public customer service representatives to be very duplicitous, so it's hard to take their word at face value. It's pretty ridiculous to see their response to legitimate concerns start with: "That doesn't sound right..." 80-90% of the time.

Reply View 0 replies

a0123 6 hours ago

Sorry but doubt.

The whole "we have only received two emails" is a classic move of every company caught with their pants down. Considering Proton's history, they don't get the benefit of the doubt on this one.

As for the "company size excuse" sorry but considering the business you claim to be in (the private and secure email), having an on-call skeleton crew legal team available over the weekend for urgent requests is a bare minimum (and I'm pretty sure they have people available to hand over everything the cops request if "the proper process is followed").

Remember that they have turned over information in less than 24 hours before (for what they call an extreme case of course). So the "size" excuse doesn't hold. Doesn't matter how urgent it is, if they are the small bean they claim they are, there is no chance they can have a turnaround of less than 24 hours.

Again, it's not what they did that's the biggest issue, it's the coverup. Just like last time they got in hot water. Because the coverup raises a lot more questions.

Reply View 0 replies