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Proton CEO warns global age verification push will mean "the death of anonymity online"
(www.techradar.com)
this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2026
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Ah yes, Proton, the company infamous for providing anonymity online, and totally never rugpulling their customers everytime the swiss government rolls up with a search warrant.
They have always been very clear that they will comply with Swiss law, they have never said otherwise. They chose Switzerland to be based out of due to existing legal protections there are better than most countries. And they limit what they hand over to the legal minimum, again something they have been clear about.
They specifically advertised that they don't log IP and access data.
Then they logged and shared access data after the French authorities wanted to know the identity of a French activist.
Then they changed their fine print after sharing that data.
I could understand if Proton was discussing practically any other issue involving the internet. But talking high and mighty about anonymity online is pretty rich coming from them, especially since they don't provide it.
The other more arguable problem I have is that a solid half of replies to this sentiment is always "swiss law is pretty good, just don't be a criminal" because:
a. A foreign government got to decide what a "criminal" is, and the Swiss government just followed.
b. Unlike Proton, there have been much better services based in Switzerland that have actually put their money where their mouth is, my favorite being the devs behind Piratebay.
This is right on the homepage
What are they supposed to do when the police comes knocking with a warrant, not comply until they get shutdown for good?
Besides, afaik there has never been any instance where proton handed over any of the supposedly encrypted data like VPN traffic and EMails. They usually hand over the contact information that's part of the payment process people use, the stuff they are legally required to keep for 5+ years even if you send them a gdpr deletion request.
There was a lot of questionable stuff said and done by the board members and I'm really annoyed that they fight against ads but have the audacity to regularly send promotions themselves.
But in terms of data safety they do exactly what they advertise, keeping everything on their servers private.
But in this instance, are they wrong because of all that?