protonmail blocks account creation through tor
so now proton completely blocking account creation through their onion adress? I have standard protection, javascript enabled. Time to swith for those who use this service as they are ditching tor and switzerland?
A lot of push against Proton on here lately. Makes me suspicious.
Valid criticism is suspicious?
OP said they are blocking tor users. I say the error message might just be legit and someone is spamming username existence checks through Tor.
Not saying it's some sort of conspiracy theory, but it do be kinda sus. People are just quick to hate Proton over anything. It's like bias confirmation. They seem to be justifying their hatred, or looking for reasons to do so. I mean, "leaving Switzerland"? Really?! I thought that was because Switzerland was considering a privacy-unfriendly law. That's bad, now?
it should be possible to criticize a mail provider without being flooded by it's evangelists. Especially proton, their image of privacy does not reflect reality at all
Is it that maybe someone on your exit node is trying to enumerate valid accounts?
He used the onion address, which doesn't go through an exit node like regular darknet-to-clearnet traffic.
and what can they apply that limit to, if not to all tor visitors? It's not like they can distinguish them.
Have you actually asked proton support about this issue, if so what have they said?
It seems like you got frustrated and instead of trying to get help you decided to complain on lemmy.
Hi, they have average response time 1 month. Probably it'is not useful when you want create account now, yes? "instead of trying to get help you decided to complain on lemmy" and what? proton blocked tor, it is their decision, it is not a bug. I have my other email provider so I do not need to beg proton to unblock tor registration. My objective was to inform lemmy users about this, I did not ask for help in my post as you noticed. If proton company is interested in their customers they can monitor such complaints but since they "cut their presence" on mastodon and opensource media platforms it will not happen.
I previously commented I would write the support, now I actually read the docs first and found out why:
If you want to create an account over tor you can, just not via the clearnet URL, probably due to rate limiting by IP adress. However if you use their Onion Link as specified in this article by their support (https://proton.me/support/tor-setup) it works just fine (as far as I just tested). So great! Because using .onion services is far more secure than accessing clearnet over Tor anyway.
Here the url, verify it with the link in the support article tho: https://protonmailrmez3lotccipshtkleegetolb73fuirgj7r4o4vfu7ozyd.onion/
The onion link was used, please see my screenshot first...
Huh, that's wierd. Because it worked for me... they must be rate limiting Tor.
I checked that (together with the clearnet link) a few times recently, got a nondescript error like "sorry something went wrong" every time.
Just tested it, same here. Clearnet works but tor not. I will contact support since part of the reason I like to pay for unlimited is to subsidize free, anonymous accounts.
Edit: here is my other comment:
I previously commented I would write the support, now I actually read the docs first and found out why:
If you want to create an account over tor you can, just not via the clearnet URL, probably due to rate limiting by IP adress. However if you use their Onion Link as specified in this article by their support (https://proton.me/support/tor-setup) it works just fine (as far as I just tested). So great! Because using .onion services is far more secure than accessing clearnet over Tor anyway.
Here the url, verify it with the link in the support article tho: https://protonmailrmez3lotccipshtkleegetolb73fuirgj7r4o4vfu7ozyd.onion/
Okay, if they will responder faster than in one month you could publish the respond here if you will like to do it. But I am surr they will say it is a "technical error". Every privacy leak now is described as technical error - apple, google, meta - all use this therm to justify their intentional action
Does anybody know valid alternatives to proton mail, I think they have been enshitified
Tuta ? But only for mail AFAIK.
There is a relatively small number of shared Tor exit node IP addresses.
So it’s more likely using Tor will trigger “too many attempts for IP” throttling for any service with bot protection.
It’s nothing against Tor, but is an expected side-affect of attempting to be anonymous by sharing the same IP address with many people.
Mailbox.org (option if you want custom domain) or Posteo.de
I use posteo.de provider, it costs 1 eur for month, 3 adress, they have inbound encryption of emails as proton, also they dont accept crypto but you can pay by cash and card and "All of our payment methods are anonymised using a payment system developed by Posteo. We do not link payment information with email accounts." You can learn more about their privacy features on their site https://posteo.de/en/site/features#featuresprivacy
A while back I tried to create an account with vpn and got notice that said something about how I couldn’t use it to validate other accounts without validating that account because other companies had threatened to label them as untrustworthy or spam.
Proton always felt like a scam to me. Their claims on privacy and security are questionable at best.
My issue exactly. Their marketing isn't careful, which I would expect from a security focused business.
to me it's not that they market their security, I think it's still meaningful. if they actually dont keep unencrypted messages, that rids them of the need to hand over past data when police comes knocking. but the way they do discounts, the way they publish prices on the pricing page, and things like that that make me question whether do I really want to recommend this to others.
They should fire their pro-Trump CEO.
Didn" t know they had one. In that case I wouldn't use them anyways.
Now with LLMs to provide extra security (not)
I got that same error when I was setting up my account.
yup, i keep saying it.
While on dread recently I stumbled across this old post regarding issues with their onion adresses https://encryp.ch/blog/disturbing-facts-about-protonmail/
When a user makes a new account with Protonmail on TOR they are re-directed from Protonmail’s “.onion” to “.com” address. This breaks your secure encrypted connection to their onion address, enabling your identification. There are absolutely no technical reasons for this feature. In fact, the only other websites that operate like this are suspected NSA/CIA Honeypots.
Goddamn. We live in a nightmare. There is someone fucking us all every goddamn second of the day.
Yes, I knew this info, there is a lot of strange things with company
Change your route, people using tor with the same exit as you are doing too many username checks.
As a said inmyp previous comment onion site was used so they dont have access to info and ip of my exit node, and,anywaty, I have tried to change circuit and access again but without success.
that sucks, this means no more hiding metadata. However, they aren't ditching switzerland (yet) - this only happens if the government applies the new surveillance rules which is not set in stone yet.
I use pgp and host mail myself. It's not as hard, and it's by far less problematic than a lot of people make it out to be. Don't trust hosters.
I generally agree with you but my current threat model allows it
that sucks, this means no more hiding metadata. However, they aren’t ditching switzerland (yet) - this only happens if the government applies the new surveillance rules which is not set in stone yet. I could agree with you but my threat model currently allows me to use third party providers