The author omitted the complete statement from Reddit:
Hi everyone,
No, Proton did not knowingly block journalists’ email accounts. Our support for journalists and those working in the public interest has been demonstrated time and again through actions, not just words.
In this case, we were alerted by a CERT that certain accounts were being misused by hackers in violation of Proton’s Terms of Service. This led to a cluster of accounts being disabled.
Because of our zero-access architecture, we cannot see the content of accounts and therefore cannot always know when anti-abuse measures may inadvertently affect legitimate activism.
Our team has reviewed these cases individually to determine if any can be restored. We have now reinstated 2 accounts, but there are other accounts we cannot reinstate due to clear ToS violations.
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.
The situation has unfortunately been blown out of proportion without giving us a fair chance to respond to the initial outreach.
From what I’ve seen and read, Proton sit on their thumbs until Phrack used their twitter to publicly complain to Proton, and the CEO being afraid of bad advertising, forced its company to do something.
In reality, Proton never explained why it took so long to reinstate the accounts, why the accounts were blocked in the first place (beyond the ambiguity of ToS violation) nor which CERT had abused their authority.
Dante (the Proton support guy) told Saber that their account “has been disabled as a result of a direct connection to an account that was taken down due to violations of our terms and conditions while being used in a malicious manner.” Dante also provided a link to Proton’s terms of service, going on to state, “We have clearly indicated that any account used for unauthorized activities, will be sanctioned accordingly.” The response concluded by stating, “We consider that allowing access to your account will cause further damage to our service, therefore we will keep the account suspended.”
So the journalist didn’t get any chance of appeal nor any clarification beyond “here’s a list of no-nos, guess which want I think you did”.
If you’ve never had to contact Proton support, 2-5 business days just to get someone to say “hello, we started a ticket” is absolutely normal from my experience. Once they’ve opened the conversion, it goes faster, but anyone is guaranteed a wait of days.
The author omitted the complete statement from Reddit:
From what I’ve seen and read, Proton sit on their thumbs until Phrack used their twitter to publicly complain to Proton, and the CEO being afraid of bad advertising, forced its company to do something.
In reality, Proton never explained why it took so long to reinstate the accounts, why the accounts were blocked in the first place (beyond the ambiguity of ToS violation) nor which CERT had abused their authority.
So the journalist didn’t get any chance of appeal nor any clarification beyond “here’s a list of no-nos, guess which want I think you did”.
I’m very disappointed in Proton.
If you’ve never had to contact Proton support, 2-5 business days just to get someone to say “hello, we started a ticket” is absolutely normal from my experience. Once they’ve opened the conversion, it goes faster, but anyone is guaranteed a wait of days.