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ProtonMail provides information used to identify email owner...
(www.404media.co)
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this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2026
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Privacy
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I’ve been a paid protonmail user for years. What should I use instead?
If you don't give information to Proton AG which they can be legally forced to hand over, you're alright.
I'm not saying Proton was right or wrong to hand over data, who knows how much if a fight they really out up, but it seems more like an OpSec thing, where they found the account because they used that email to create a user account somewhere that they then posted about being a part of this group rhe FBI was going after.
I'd say your best bet to avoid this would be to create a free account that doesn't have any payment info and doesn't use your premium account as a recovery method of any kind if you're going to use it as the email associated with a social media account. Or like someone else mentioned, if there's an anonymous payment method, always use that.
Again, not a great look for Proton, but doesn't really go against any of their claims as far as data encryption is concerned. Not sure if they could encrypt that payment info.
Your technical and legal understanding seems limited. I personally work in the IT space and am a hobbyist in legal matters, in particular data protection.
I'm pretty sure there was nothing they could've legally done to protect the payment information.
It's not a "bad look" for Proton; instead, it's just people being confronted with reality.
If you commit a crime, law enforcement will be after you, and if your operational security sucks, there will be no service that can counter that.