IT ministry looks to block Proton Mail on request of Tamil Nadu police
www.hindustantimes.com
The IT ministry decided to issue an order blocking the end-to-end encrypted email service at the request of TN police over a hoax bomb threat sent to 13 schools
  • umbrella@lemmy.mlEnglish
    113·
    9 months ago

    thats a point in favor of protonmail

    makes it actually look like its doing what it promises.

    • deweydecibel@lemmy.worldEnglish
      321·
      9 months ago

      Should be noted though:

      The spokesperson said that Proton received the request from MeitY “a few days ago”. “We are currently working to resolve this situation and are investigating how we can best work together with the Indian authorities to do so. We understand the urgency of the situation and are completely clear that our services are not to be used for illegal purposes. We routinely remove users who are found to be doing so and are willing to cooperate wherever possible within international cooperation agreements,” the spokesperson said.

      Although Proton Mail is end-to-end encrypted, which means the content of the emails cannot be intercepted and can only be seen by the sender and recipient if both are using Proton Mail, its privacy policy states that due to the nature of the SMTP protocol, certain email metadata — including sender and recipient email addresses, the IP address incoming messages originated from, attachment name, message subject, and message sent and received times — is available with the company.

      Their hands are definitely tied in the situation, they have to comply with them to a degree to operate in the country, I’m not judging them too harshly.

      But it is a pretty good reminder that at the end of the day, if you are paying a for-profit business to obfuscate and hide you from a government that has the ability to stop them, their financial incentives will be tested, and they will win out if there isn’t some sort of law or regulation to protect them from this type of strong arming.

      • Lord Wiggle@lemmy.worldEnglish
        14·
        9 months ago

        I had my concerns when I read this. But in the end, Proton has the best privacy protection out there AFAIK, outside of dark web mailing services maybe. So even though I’m not happy about their reaction (willing to cooperate if legally possible), it’s still better then Google, Microsoft or any other mailing service I’m familiar with. I find the services of Proton to be amazing, I won’t drop using them. Mail, vpn, drive, agenda, pass. It just works great and I feel safe.

        • dezmd@lemmy.worldEnglish
          31·
          9 months ago

          Worrying so much about privacy from your email service and not running your own goddamn email server seems a bit disconnected from the reality of using any cloud services hosted by anyone else at all.

  • Gazumi@lemmy.worldEnglish
    90·
    9 months ago

    The current Indian leadership is somewhat leading democracy towards the path of dictatorship style.

  • dtc@lemmy.worldEnglish
    37·
    9 months ago

    Maybe the IT ministry of India can do something about all the scam call centers and Botnets running out of sector 5…

    • newcockroach@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      Man! I dont know what our IT ministry is smoking but Censorship has become their goto to ruin their reputaion and show of their lack of IT knowledge.

    • bobs_monkey@lemm.eeEnglish
      9·
      9 months ago

      They can block the domain at the national level though. People that use their own domains with proton’s service might be fine and pass through, but it would likely be pretty easy to simply filter out all of proton’s own domains (@proton.me, @protonmail.com, @pm.me, @proton mail.ch) instead of trying to block the underlying protocols.

      • Tangent5280@lemmy.worldEnglish
        8·
        9 months ago

        Please explain. If someone uses a VPN, wouldn’t they still be able to access their email via the website and send/receive emails normally? The Indian government blocked all pornography IIRC some years(?) ago, but that hasn’t really stopped anyone. Won’t this also work the same way?

        • Deestan@lemmy.worldEnglish
          61·
          9 months ago

          There are some layers to this.

          First, it’s that working through VPN is too technical for most of the population. Just think of the many people running without adblockers, or people who leave their lamps and chargers plugged in branched power extenders forever instead of opening up their wall and rewiring to get more outlets in a better place. if something is important and becomes inaccessible, like porn, people will learn what they need to get around the block. If there are easily available alternatives - as there is with email - those will be picked instead. This effectively cuts off over 90% of the users.

          Then there is the case where it makes you more prosecutable if you do work around the blocking, even legally. I know this doesn’t sound fair, but it is to some degree necessary to make the unclear and muddy parts of the justice systems work. There is “innocent until proven guilty”, but “proven guilty” can sometimes be very subjective and based on circumstance, witness claims and “character profile”. if there is lack of clear evidence, but strong indicators that you did in fact collaborate illegally on insider trading, it will make a difference whether there is lack of evidence because the police could read all your communication and find nothing, or lack of evidence because you use encryption, VPNs and tend to burn all written notes you make at the end of the day.

          • umbrella@lemmy.mlEnglish
            3·
            9 months ago

            i think those people are less likely to be using something other than gmail in the first place

  • THE MASTERMIND@feddit.chEnglish
    5·
    9 months ago

    An indian sim called jio which is in cahoot with the government actually blocks all the vpns is that even legal ? And jio is growing up to be a quiete a monopoly.