Nelizea

First, let's correct the headline: Proton did not provide information to the FBI. What happened is that the FBI submitted a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) request, which was processed by the Swiss Federal Department of Justice and Police. Proton operates exclusively under Swiss law, and we only respond to legally binding orders from Swiss authorities, after all Swiss legal checks have been passed. This is an important distinction.

Second, let's talk about what this case actually involved. This wasn't a routine investigation. Swiss authorities determined that the legal threshold was met because a law enforcement officer was shot, and explosive devices were found during a protest in 2024. Switzerland has one of the strongest legal frameworks for privacy in the world, and its standard for granting international legal assistance is exceptionally high. This case met that standard.

Third, let's talk about what was actually disclosed. No emails were handed over. No message content. No metadata about who the user communicated with. The only information Proton could provide was a payment identifier because the user chose to pay with a credit card. This is information the user themselves provided to us through their choice of payment method. Proton also accepts cryptocurrency and cash payments, which would not have been linkable to an identity.

If anything, this case demonstrates exactly what we've always said: Proton holds very little user data by design. Even under the most serious legal circumstances, the only data that could be produced was a payment record. Our encryption means we simply cannot access email content even if ordered to.

We understand that stories like this can be alarming, and we take our users' trust seriously. We will continue to fight for privacy and challenge any legal order we believe does not meet the strict requirements of Swiss law. But we also want to be transparent: no service can operate outside the law entirely, and Swiss law requires compliance with valid legal orders in serious criminal cases. What we can promise is that the legal bar in Switzerland is among the highest in the world, and our architecture ensures we have as little data as possible to hand over.

For users who want maximum anonymity: use Proton VPN or Tor, pay with cash or cryptocurrency, and don't add a recovery email.

https://old.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1rlt75p/proton_mail_helped_fbi_unmask_anonymous_stop_cop/o8yccme/?context=3

If you used a CLI, the deprecated one.

Entirely different teams.

To my knowledge the team is looking to open source the project at the end of the quarter of post release stabilisation work. I'd expect that to be the case by the end of the year / start of 2026.

Github will be available in the upcoming weeks, an APK version might be available sooner.

Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1np7knu/new_proton_mail_app_just_released/ng3ikl1/

edit:

Android source code and APK is already on github:

https://github.com/ProtonMail/android-mail

From Andy:

There's some misinformation floating around that I think is worth a post to clarify.

Proton generally only suspends accounts if 1) forced to do so by a Swiss govt order 2) we are sure beyond a reasonable doubt the user breached Protons Terms of Service (ToS) or 3) we detect that the user has been compromised.

Contrary to what some people think, Proton generally only suspends a single service and not all services. For example, let's say you decide to start sending spam in violation of Proton ToS, Proton Mail may be suspended, but Proton Pass will continue to work. There are of course exceptions to this (for example, if an attacker is hitting your account or has already gotten in, we'll lock the whole thing down until you get in touch with us).

In general, account suspensions due to (1) and (2) are extremely rare, with (3) being slightly more common. (2) typically happens with newly created accounts with are used for spamming or registering large number of accounts at third party services (such as Instagram, etc). The odds of an account you have been using for a while suddenly being suspended is virtually zero, and even then, we have a 24/7 team you can contact to appeal.

For ToS violations, it is irrelevant who reports the violation to us, if the violation is verified beyond a reasonable doubt, Proton will suspend the account. Proton data is encrypted, but we use OSINT techniques, our datasets of dark web chatter, information shared with us by other tech companies, and various other methods to do verification.

From time to time, there are claims that Proton is suspending accounts improperly. Our policy is not to comment publicly on specific cases, but there is usually more to the story than meets the eye, and the anonymous posters on the internet generally don't disclose the full story. Such claims should therefore not be taken as fact, as the facts themselves are usually wrong.

To give an illustrative example, recently it was claimed that Proton was blocking the account of journalists. However, these were not "journalists" in the traditional sense, but hacktivists who were involved in a number of hacking incidents, which is a violation of Proton's ToS, and therefore subject to suspension of all accounts. In this case, I made the decision to exceptionally restore two accounts because hacktivism cases are not always black and white. However, Proton's policy is that if you use some accounts for illegal purposes, you will also lose access to the accounts where you have not yet conducted illegal activities.

Proton has no choice but to enforce ToS, because if activities which are illegal under Swiss law, or other activities which are technically not illegal but damaging to Proton (such as sending spam) where not forbidden, Proton would unfortunately become blocked by other email providers, hurting legitimate users.

In enforcing our ToS, we show no favor or bias. It does not matter your ideology or which "side" you are on, Proton enforces the ToS uniformly.

Proton's ToS can be found here: https://proton.me/legal/terms

Proton's abuse appeal form can be found here: https://proton.me/support/appeal-abuse

Abuse and ToS violations can be reported here (all reports are treated confidentially): https://proton.me/support/report-abuse

Thank you for your understanding.

https://account.proton.me/ --> Settings --> Dashboard --> Scroll down -> Application Notifications --> Disable "In-app notifications"

There you can deactivate that.

Lumo isn't a model; it uses open models, so this is a strange comparison. You can find the models Lumo uses in the privacy policy: https://proton.me/support/lumo-privacy

Additionally, as others have pointed out, the client apps are open source as well.

is it full account access?

Yes ,they can also as example keep paying for the account

Proton does not hold the access key in a form that allows us to decrypt a user's data. Instead, we store a copy of the account’s encryption key, which itself is encrypted using the trusted contact’s public key. This means only the trusted contact can decrypt it — and even they can only do so once Proton's system grants access, for example after a confirmed emergency or timeframe. Neither Proton nor the trusted contact can access the user’s data on their own — both are required for access to happen, preserving end-to-end encryption principles.

Still planned for summer, which in Switzerland (HQ of Proton) is until 22nd September

You're welcome, I am here for the community 👍

One of the Proton Linux devs just commented about that over in the Proton VPN subreddit:

We're going to work on it, there are some issues with the DNS resolver that debian uses, which is not the same as Ubuntu and Fedora, which makes split tunneling behave in an unexpected manner.

Out of curiosity, are you or any of the other mods with Proton officially? I appreciate the updates regardless, I was curious if this was an official / unofficial community

We are the same volunteering moderators as on all the Proton subreddits. Official in that way and that the owner of the board here is the Proton account beloging to the team, unofficial in the way that the Proton Team isn't really present here.

Do you still need help or did you get it sorted?

There are some good signals for now and it is unlikely this will pass:

The Federal Council has collected feedback on the planned revision of the Ordinance on the Surveillance of Postal and Telecommunications Traffic. There was hardly any positive feedback.

The Federal Council's plans to revise the Ordinance on the Surveillance of Postal and Telecommunications Traffic (Vüpf) have failed the consultation process: All major parties and numerous associations clearly rejected the plan.

https://www.inside-it.ch/vupf-revision-faellt-in-der-vernehmlassung-komplett-durch-20250507

Such a unified opinion across all parties in Switzerland is rare. This topic has also made the rounds in swiss medias recently with a big echo, it is fought by many swiss organisations and companies and as example Proton will leave Switzerland if it were to somehow pass anyway: https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/we-would-be-less-confidential-than-google-proton-threatens-to-quit-switzerland-over-new-surveillance-law

I copy the annoucements over here from reddit.

Legal HQ is in the USA

Please feel free to send that feedback directly to the Proton team through a support ticket